The Douglas Boathouse and Keepers House

Spacious, close to town and beaches. Great for large families.

We visited the boathouse to celebrate my birthday with four other couples and their kiddos - and had the greatest time! There was a total of 16 people in the main house (there's a carriage house as well). Our kids made great use of the lower level that had a huge movie room and a puppet theater! The wet bar and additional refrigerator down there also came in handy.nnWe spent the first day at the beach, returned our rentals from the surf shop and stopped at the beer barrel for a Chicago Dog just down the street from the house! Every night we spent visiting in the back yard around the fire pit (smores galore) while the kids played freely.nnThe community of Douglas (and Saugatuck) offers so much for us and our kids, which is why we plan to return. Dune rides, retro boats and traveling the Kalamzoo lake just to name a few. Oh, and we spent our one rain day at the local bowling alley which was also tons of fun! Next time we visit the Boathouse, we plan to bring our bikes - lots of storage for all.nnWe were so bummed to leave this hidden gem, but we're already booking our next visit. The owners are extremely accommodating - and we booked direct which saved us over $270 on our rental, win-win! Thank you so much for a memorable vacation and looking forward to our return next summer.

Wonderful place! We were amazed at the very comfortable accommodations that our hosts Joanie and John offered. Besides being super clean, everything was beautifully appointed: wood flooring throughout, new mattresses, modern kitchen with 2 dishwashers, plenty of bathrooms.nMany gathering places meant memorable family time. The custom fire pit surrounded by a dozen Adirondack chairs was our favorite, used morning, noon, and night.nLots of activities, board games, outdoor games around the Boathouse are only the beginning of a 5 star vacation. We walked and biked to the historic root beer barrel, to Douglas Beach, sunbathed at OvalBeach and Saugatuk State park, ate at many of your fine restaurants, shopped and shopped.nWe plan to return next year and try the chain link ferry.

This house is amazing! It is perfect for large gatherings and entertainment. It has space galore. It is beautifully decorated and very well maintained. We paid thousands of dollars to rent the space for a long weekend. Prior to booking, I called the owner, Joan, and was very very very transparent with her about how we planned to use the space during our stay. She was kind and completely on board and gave us some parameters for the space. We even set our guest list based on those parameters. We would have never booked the house otherwise. The owner had scheduled lawn service on Friday during our stay. Unfortunately, they could not mow the lawn at the time and had to come back at a later date. We were never told that there would be lawn service during our stay. Within the packet they told us that we could park our cars in a specific parking lot up the street. During our stay the owner of that parking lot came and told us to move all of our cars so we parked them along the street, mind you there is no sign that says we cannot park there. In fact, the day after this happened the neighbor across the street had all of their cars parked along the street for an event they were having. The other owner, John, came up to the house during our get together and started screaming at my mother about the lawn care and the cars and about how we were using the space. He told us that we will have to pay for his lawn service. We went back through the contract, and nothing in there states that he is allowed to charge us for that. We left their house in absolute perfect condition (I have a photos). We got a security deposit back and they took over $450 of it. Stating that they had to pay somebody to put a wood property-line marker back in the ground, pay Comcast to fix a cable that was torn out, charged us an event fee, and charged us for lawn care. We never ripped out any cables, I called Comcast anyhow and asked if they charged homeowners to fix downed cables and they said “absolutely not it’s free of charge.” These two are hot mess con-artists. I tried to kindly talk to him over the phone regarding the security deposit and he screamed at me the entire time. If you still plan to book here and are making any arrangements or agreements outside of what they specifically state within their contract, make sure that you get it in writing. Also make sure that you’re comfortable with potentially losing your security deposit to these cons. He literally said to me on the phone when I was trying to discuss what his wife and I had agreed to that “no one will believe you because it’s your word against mine and I own a lot of houses around here.” His wife is writing checks that he doesn’t want to cash or they are just horrible at communicating with each other as a whole. Either way, they treated us horribly and very unprofessionally, especially considering how much money we shelled out to stay there. Unfortunately, it has tainted the memories of our time there. I’m really heartbroken by how cruel and unprofessional these two people are. It’s such a beautiful space and it’s really a shame that they treat their guests so horribly. Renter beware!