39th annual Longboat Key Garden Club Home Tour: The French connection

The Cook home, 570 Putter Lane

Prepare to be whisked away to France when you visit Frank and Janice Cook’s Country Club Shores home.
The exterior of the home is modeled after a French chateau with nearly perfect symmetry, mansard tile roof, elongated windows and contrasting slate-colored shutters. But the entrance to the home hints that the residence isn’t all formal. There’s a colorful flower sculpture made from ceramic plates that’s “growing” in the garden. Inside, the home is filled with unique and whimsical decorations and trinkets, including a handcrafted camel in the hallway and three porcelain masks in the dining room.

“This house has all the little things I’ve collected over the years from travels and art festivals,” Janice Cook said. “They make us smile every day.”

Builder and designer John Cannon built the Cooks’ dream home in 2012 — one of the first residences he constructed on the Key.

The 2,600-square-foot home includes a two-story living room that has a view of the pool and canal behind the home and a dining room that was designed specifically to hold the family’s formal Philadelphia-style set, which is the only furniture the Cooks brought from their old home in Pittsburgh.

“It’s easy living for us,” Janice Cook said. “It’s very livable.”

— Kristen Herhold