Marc and Deborah Renner in front of their home in Scio Township,

Lon Howedel | AnnArbor.com

Deborah and Marc Renner wanted everyday to feel like a vacation day. The couple went looking for a house in the woods, away from the hubbub of Ann Arbor but close enough to be convenient.

When they entered the property at 1830 Kestrel Way in Scio Township, they knew they had come home. With soaring 35-foot ceilings in the main living area, the timber-frame house feels like a rustic vacation lodge. The post and beam construction rather than a frame and walls support the structure, giving it a warmth that comes from exposed wood. “It’s the way they built barns,” Marc Renner said.

The Renners' house will be one of four stops on the Oct. 15 Conger Alumnae Group Home Tour, held annually to raise need-based scholarship funds for women to attend the University of Michigan. Conger has awarded $350,000 over the past 10 years.

Down a winding dirt road edged by wild purple asters and goldenrod, the Renner’s four-bedroom house is surrounded by trees. It sits on more than eight acres and shares the neighborhood with only three other houses. They also share the land with a host of wildlife, including deer, wild turkey and coyote. “Once we even had a big (garter) snake on the front porch,” Deborah Renner said.

The den/work room in Marc and Deborah Renner's home off Scio Church Road in Scio Township.

Lon Horwedel | AnnArbor.com

The interior belies the traditional New England colonial farmhouse cedar exterior, stained barn red. Inside walls are covered in bold colors such as russet, deep French blue and mustard. Antique and modern art picked up from art fairs, galleries and the monthly Ann Arbor-Saline Antiques Market fill the house. A whimsical 13-foot sign from the Mokawana Holstein Farm hangs in one of two studies.

“It’s a really happy house,” Deborah Renner said. “The house we had in Ives Woods was from the 1920s and it was darker. I wanted a really fun house. I wanted to feel like we were on vacation.” The house has a geothermal system for heating and air conditioning, with utilities averaging less than $100 a month.

The house was built in 1997. The Renners purchased it in 2006 and added their own personal touches: They pulled up the wall-to-wall carpet and replaced it with Michigan ash. They remodeled the kitchen, adding stainless steel appliances and a new island with cherry top to match the cherry cabinets. They also added flamed granite countertops, a process that adds texture to the surface. The existing kitchen island and appliances were moved to the lower level, turning it into a mini-apartment, perfect for privacy for teenagers.

They replaced the laundry room floor with black and cream checkerboard limestone tile and rearranged the upstairs bedrooms to include a loft suite for their daughter, replacing a ladder to the loft with stairs. “The sleeping loft feels like you’re in a tree house,” Deborah Renner said.

The bonus room above the garage, used as a women’s training gym by the former owners, has become an all-purpose room: Storage, exercise, music practice and dog grooming, Deborah Renner said. “It’s all the things you don’t know where to put in the rest of the house.”

The other houses on the Conger tour include:

• 1010 Berkshire Rd., a renovated Tudor-style house in Ann Arbor. It has a custom wood ceiling and stone fireplace and a hand-rubbed walnut mantle. It was expanded from a three bedroom, two bath home to include five bedrooms and five baths.

• 2108 Copley Ave., located in Ives Woods. This serene English Tudor home has a cook’s kitchen at its heart with an attic area that has been turned into a suite with custom-made furniture.

• 428 S. Main St., a brownstone in the heart of downtown Ann Arbor. This four-story condominium has an open floor plan and fuses old-world Provincial with modern Italian design.