Weekend visit turns into a permanent stay.
They weren’t looking for lake property — or even thinking of building a house, for that matter — but then Scott Sigler and Jerilyn Bing spent a weekend at The Cliffs at Keowee Springs.
Call it kismet. The couple got a call from old friends in Texas who were heading to the Carolinas for a sales event hosted by The Cliffs real estate team. They invited Sigler and Bing to join them for the all-inclusive visit.
“We thought, ‘Why not?’ We’d never heard of The Cliffs, or been to Lake Keowee, but it sounded like a good excuse to get together,” Bing recalls. They were living in Atlanta, so it was an easy two-hour drive up. “We didn’t do any due diligence. We just came to see our friends.”And they didn’t want to leave.
“We fell in love with the atmosphere,” says Bing. A boat tour, a walk through the wellness amenities, a gathering at The Beach Club, and they were in. “Lake Keowee is spectacular, the community is amazing, and right away, absolutely, we could see ourselves here.”
They found an ideal lot — flat, perfectly positioned on a point, at the quiet end of a cove — and immediately set forth building their first-ever custom home. 
“We warned everyone they were going to have to hold our hands,” Sigler chuckles, noting they worked with architect Mel Dias of Mel Dias Designs, interior designers Katie Skoloff and Ashton Acosta of In Site Designs, and custom builder Howard Eaton of Eaton Properties. “And they did! We got such expert guidance — we couldn’t have had a better experience.”
The result is a 6,700-square-foot contemporary home comprising an abundance of living space, both inside and out. To maximize the lot’s natural advantage, Sigler and Bing asked the design/ build team to orient the home so that every room overlooked the water. The panoramic positioning is so perfectly on point that the first thing everyone who walks in the door says is, “What a view!”
Sigler describes his tastes as fairly basic — “give me a house and a boat, and I’m a happy guy” — but he is delighted with this home’s modern flair.
“The interior design is more contemporary than what you might expect at a lake house,” Bing notes. “We wanted everything to be beautiful — but also warm and welcoming. A home needs to feel comfortable and this one feels good all over. There’s just this warm, serene ambiance no matter where you are.”
Sigler and Bing brought only one box to their home at The Cliffs, filled with a couple of paintings and a few sentimental pieces, including an antique barometer, a federalist mirror, a Chinese porcelain figurine, and The General — a replica of a Xi’an terracotta soldier that Sigler brought home years ago from China.
“He has moved with me several times and now, he sits on the porch looking out at the lake,” Sigler says.
All other furnishings were hand-selected by the In Site Design team.
“We were ready for something different,” Sigler says, noting the contemporary style is a 180 from the other homes they maintain in Atlanta and the Florida Panhandle. “This freshly-furnished house is a new experience for both of us — and we love it.”
While Bing adores all the furniture, art, and accessories, she points to one piece in particular.
“We were struggling to fill this blank wall [in the stairway],” she says, and finding the perfect piece of art was proving elusive. Unbeknownst to his wife, Sigler commissioned Teresa Roche of Art & Light Gallery in Greenville to create a painting echoing the new home’s view. “It’s absolutely perfect.”
Like the home itself.
This story was featured in Cliffs Living magazine. To read more stories like this one and learn more about The Cliffs, subscribe here.
