Two Harbors home on Lake Superior with ‘Montana lodge vibe’ lists for $4 million

Steve Lehr has always loved building things out of reclaimed wood.

“When I was in college I was driving down the road and I saw a barn that had fallen down and asked the owner if I could have the wood,” he said. “I used it to build bunks in my dorm room.”

So when he decided to build a home in Two Harbors on the Lake Superior shore, Lehr bought hand-hewn white oak, hickory and chestnut, originally part of a barn in central Ohio built by a Civil War veteran using wood from old-growth forests.

An Amish construction team came from Ohio to build it in 2022, using about 80% reclaimed wood. The ends of the reclaimed beams were used in the kitchen to construct a cutting board that serves as a section of the counter.

“We had these massive blocks that had this cool grain to them,” said Lehr, a real-estate land broker who lives in St. Paul.

Other parts of the counter are made from granite quarried from the Mesabi Range, a part of the Iron Range.

The wood-burning fireplace, which features a 6-foot-tall firebox area that opens on one side to the living room and the other to the dining room, is fashioned from stones quarried in northwestern Wisconsin.

The home’s interior is spacious and awash in natural light. The walls soar to 19 feet, and the vaulted ceiling peaks at 33 feet.

“I was going for a little bit of a Montana lodge vibe,” Lehr said.

Lehr originally wanted the home for himself and his wife, Natalie. They missed a place they used to have in Lutsen, Minn., and wanted to live on the lake again. But their plans changed — although the couple have used the house for occasional getaways, they’ve decided to remain in the Twin Cities. The house is listed for $3.999 million.

The second floor of the 4,587-square-foot house has two bedroom suites looking onto the lake with bathrooms, walk-in closets and office/loft spaces. Each has its own private deck. Below that, a first-floor deck spans the length of the lake-facing side of the house. A guest house on the property has two bedrooms and two bathrooms.

The house contains still more rugged reclaimed materials, including a bar constructed from three barrels that once held Buffalo Trace bourbon. Lehr obtained the barrels from the Bachelor Farmer, a Minneapolis restaurant that closed in 2020.

The glass walls standing between some of the rooms were fashioned from Truscon Steel Co.-brand windows that came from a factory in Minneapolis and date to the 1920s.

“They’re fully operable, so you can get a breeze going back and forth through the house,” Lehr said.

A pantry off the kitchen holds appliances such as the refrigerator and “all the things you want out of sight that you’d need to put in a cupboard otherwise,” Lehr said. The pantry can be closed off with a sliding barn door.

Furniture in the house — including a dining room table, coffee table and game table — were constructed by a local craftsman. They’re made of wood obtained from the Old Globe Wood Co. in Superior, Wis. The company carries wood reclaimed from an 1887 grain elevator in Superior that was built from old-growth forests. The furniture is not part of the listing, but Lehr said its inclusion in the sale is negotiable.

“I think it kind of belongs with the house,” he said. The pieces “were handmade for the dimensions of the rooms.”

The house sits on a heavily wooded 62-acre site, off Highway 61 but out of view from the road, featuring 2,000 feet of Superior shoreline. It’s protected by a conservation easement through the Minnesota Land Trust, which preserves the property’s natural features with permanent land-use restrictions.

Because of the powerful waves of Lake Superior, the beach “changes with every storm,” Lehr said. “We get a fresh set of pebbles, and we get some awfully big rocks in the yard.”

Mike Lynch (612-619-8227, Mike.lynch@lakesmn.com) of Lakes Sotheby’s International Realty, in partnership with Jon Chapek (952-715-7707, Jon@odysseyrealestate.com) of Odyssey Real Estate, has the $3.999 million listing.