How does Ceci Bates design homes for lakefront properties with significant storage needs?

Ceci Bates raises the main structure on site, placing garages and storage beneath to maintain architectural proportions. This approach, as seen in the Rock Creek project, avoids compromising aesthetics while meeting storage requirements.

What challenges are involved in integrating garages below a raised house?

Integrating garages below a raised house involves careful architectural planning and precise structural engineering. Ceci Bates’ team works together from the start to ensure that the home’s design is both functional and visually appealing.

How does Ceci Bates manage architectural proportions when integrating large garages?

Ceci Bates' approach includes elevating the main house to incorporate garages beneath, maintaining correct architectural proportions and visual presentation without letting storage dominate the home’s exterior.

Notes From Our Journey

From twenty-six years of building custom homes on Lake Texoma, here we share about our process and what we've learned about design, materials, engineering, and the decisions that shape a home built to last for generations — the questions clients ask us most often, and the answers we give around the table in our design center.

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Innovative Solutions for Lake Home Storage Challenges

Innovative Solutions for Lake Home Storage Challenges

Ceci Bates

July 23, 2026

Lake homes present a unique practical challenge that other custom homes rarely face — the significant need for storage. Owners often require space for boats, lake equipment, vehicles, and the myriad of gear that accompany a life by the water. When storage is not thoughtfully integrated from the inception of the home’s design, it risks dominating the architecture, leaving homeowners facing regret for decades.

The team at Ceci Bates encountered this issue while designing the Welcoming Grandiose Lakehouse at Rock Creek. The owners desired substantial garage space to host cars, lake toys, and entertainment equipment, essential for extended stays with guests. However, development restrictions constrained how the garages could present from the street. A conventional response might have burdened the home with oversized garage doors or resulted in a detached outbuilding that clashed with the intended architecture.

Roberth Jordan, our architect, envisioned a different approach. He proposed elevating the main house and locating the garages below, ensuring that they remained subordinate to the architecture above. This design maintained the home’s correct proportions as viewed from the front, allowing the garages to fulfill their functional purpose without overpowering the exterior. A grand staircase at the entrance enhanced the aesthetic, offering a sense of arrival rather than simply another driveway.

The successful implementation of this vision required careful coordination between architecture and engineering. Bogdan Taut, our structural engineer, designed a system capable of transferring the structural loads from the elevated house through the garage level down to a stable foundation.

The best solutions for challenging sites emerge when architecture and engineering work in concert from the outset. We invite you to explore how Ceci Bates addresses complex scenarios like this at cecibates.com.

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