The Lake Place by Sarah Hauge July 2nd, 2013 Post to Facebook 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Post to Twitter Add to LinkedIn Post to Delicious Post to StumbleUpon Print with PrintFriendly A cabin that exudes timelessness In 2004, after visiting all of the lakes around Spokane, Carolyn and Jerry Santantonio purchased property on deep, clean Deer Lake. They had plans to remodel the existing building, a long and narrow water-damaged structure. They had a clear sense of what their lake place should become: a true cabin. “The vision for me started at Glacier Park,” Carolyn says. “I walked into the lodge. Suddenly my hands began perspiring, my heart picked up a beat. I wanted something that felt like a lodge.” They also wanted “a place on the lake that was hidden,” with the lake and the forest as its most prominent features. And they wanted the cabin to exude a sense of timelessness. “I wanted it to look like it had always been here,” says Carolyn. Their ideas were clear, but getting started with the transformation was surprisingly difficult. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of finding the right person for the job, and that was certainly true in this case. Four attempts at finding an architect were unsuccessful. “They never could get the vision,” Carolyn says of the ones they hired and then let go. Each architect, for instance, drew up plans that included a powder room—a feature that would never have existed in a cabin of significant age. It was proof that they weren’t in sync with the homeowners. Finally, the couple turned to Frank Gray, with whom they’d worked previously, but on very different projects; he’d completed extensive ironwork on their backyard in Spokane and had remodeled Carolyn’s advertising agency. Though he wasn’t the first person they thought of for this job, Frank immediately understood the Santantonios’ ideas, and they began an easy collaboration. “It was a combination of Frank and Jerry,” Carolyn says of the home’s design. “They drew on a napkin and came up with a house plan.” Frank encouraged the couple to build from scratch rather than remodeling the existing damaged structure. Though he jokes that it’s not necessarily easy to talk Carolyn and Jerry into anything they don’t want to do, in the end they were just as convinced that building from scratch was the practical approach. It was a matter, Frank says, of “analyzing the expense, where the dollar is best spent.” Frank is a true craftsman, and did an astounding amount of work on this project himself, from helping draw plans, to contacting friends to look out for lumber to use, to adding personal touches—building custom height nightstands and armoires, creating the intricate air vent covers, making cabinet pulls out of antlers, designing and building rustic window frames and railings, building the kitchen table out of a stump, and making door locks in the style of the one that had been on his grandfather’s outhouse. Carolyn and Jerry rave about Frank. “The wonderful thing about Frank is, he’s a hands-on contractor. He was here every day,” says Jerry. “We knew what we wanted, but it was up to him to make it possible.” They came into the project with many ideas, and Frank came up with even more. “Frank with his genius added all of these things that never would have occurred to me,” Carolyn says. For his part, Frank is clearly tickled with the finished product. “This doesn’t come around [but] once in a lifetime,” he says of the opportunity. The building process went fairly slowly, lasting about two years. Frank framed the house with just one other person, and it was time-consuming work. They built through two terribly rough winters, and Frank would often spend at least the first hour on site just shoveling snow. Plus, the design plans took shape organically, with decisions made along the way. “It was a lot of planning as you go, then making sure it was structurally sound,” says Frank. For ideas, Carolyn bought lots of books about cabins, all with the word “rustic” in their titles. Their favorite was The Rustic Cabin, by Ralph Kylloe. Carolyn purchased two copies and gave one to Frank. “We called the books ‘the bible’,” Carolyn says. She and Jerry would call up Frank and say things like, “Look at the bible, page 172—look at the fireplace.” The resulting cabin is rustic indeed—you can tell from the first moment you see it. The front porch perfectly captures the spirit the Santantonios had envisioned for their home, with its log framing, rock foundation and railing made of branches. It was during the framing process that Carolyn saw the front of the home for the first time. It was exactly what she’d wanted. “I looked at the front porch, and I started to cry,” she says—happy tears, she’s quick to clarify. That’s when she knew without a doubt that Frank was the one to build this house. The home teems with wood—mainly Ponderosa pine and some fir—much of which came from nearby Colville. A great deal of this wood is reclaimed, even down to the kitchen and bathroom countertops. “We went green everywhere,” Frank says. Sourcing the wood in the home was a major undertaking, and one that Frank loved. “It’s half the fun of it!” he says. Frank was a master at using his materials, adapting where necessary rather than forcing them to be something they were not. Some of the logs still have their bark, some don’t. Some of the pieces of wood are straight, some aren’t. There are knots and branches and color variation. Frank and the Santantonios embraced each of those details, just as one would have if building a cabin a century or more ago, when it wouldn’t be easy to run out and buy something more uniform (and with less character). Wood planks line the walls and ceiling. Logs were used for framing; they run across the rooms’ ceilings and extend from the roof’s peaks. Many of the handcrafted furnishings are wood as well. The planked wood floors show their saw marks and nicks, and the windows are framed in rough pieces, each warped and waving with the grain. The baseboards are done in a similar style. The front porch opens onto the home’s entry and great room just beyond. The interior choices were carefully sourced and purchased by Carolyn and Jerry; all of the furnishings are comfortable and inviting, and bright and cheerful accents come in through textiles and paint choices. The living room is full of cozy seating, with leather couches and chairs and gliders upholstered in Native American-inspired fabric (Native American materials and artwork were used throughout the cabin—there are even two totem poles, one in the living room and a large one outdoors). A deep-hearthed stone fireplace is the focal point of this cozy and intimate room. A round coffee table sits atop a large, cushy geometric area rug in jewel tones. The walls are decorated in Native American artwork, taxidermy like the buffalo head above the fireplace (Carolyn and Jerry’s grandson shot the elk also displayed in the living room), and family photos. The kitchen, on the other end of the great room, is the home’s brightest spot, with a rough-edged granite island, suspended lanterns, and distressed white beadboard-front cabinets. The counters are rich wood and the deep double farmhouse sink is a hammered copper. The accent colors make the room especially welcoming, particularly the cherry red of the Viking range, which has six burners, a griddle and double ovens, and the teal of the hutch the homeowners transformed with paint and chicken wire. The adjoining eating nook is surrounded by sunny windows and doors that open onto the deck. An antler chandelier hangs above the stunning round table, crafted from a stump carefully sought and transformed by Frank; the root forms the table’s base. The first floor also has a full bathroom with wood countertops and a granite shower. A black and white photo of Carolyn’s sisters as children, taken as they were “utilizing” an outhouse, makes for a funny conversation piece. The main floor guest room is furnished with two twin beds covered in brightly colored bow-and-arrow wool Pendleton bedding. These beds—intentionally designed to be high, as they would have been in the old days when people stored things beneath them—necessitated a custom-height nightstand. This, of course, was made by Frank, who crafted many tables like these throughout the home. Carolyn eschewed features like upper kitchen cabinets and closets, as none of them existed in older homes, so Frank also custom made armoires for each bedroom. His wife made beaded pulls to use in place of hardware. Off the entryway is an office and den with a double wood desk, which Jerry built himself in the 1970s. A bear hide hangs on one wall of this space. From the stone-floored entryway, which is lit with an antler chandelier, a wood staircase with a handcrafted rail made of bowed and beautifully flawed pieces of wood leads to the second story. The stairway and hallways are lit with sconces crafted from antlers, one of Jerry’s ideas. Frank used a small hand-held planer to create the look of wood treated with an adz. At one point, Frank says, he contemplated using this treatment on all of the home’s interior walls. He jokes now about how time-consuming that process would have been. “I’d still be working on it now!” he says. Upstairs, a log alcove leads into the master suite. Originally, spaces between the planks of the door meant it was a bit too easy to peek inside. To solve the problem, Frank lined the cracks with twigs, just one of the many ways he worked with wood to solve problems and improve the home’s aesthetic. “You won’t see a nail throughout this cabin,” Carolyn says. Everyplace one would have shown, Frank made a knothole and stuck in a piece of wood to cover it. The master bedroom has its own beautiful stone fireplace. The bed is covered in Pendleton bedding, and a slightly larger version of Frank’s custom armoires houses Carolyn and Jerry’s clothes. Sheepskins soften the wood floors. Doors lead onto a private deck that overlooks the lake. The adjoining master bath features a marmoleum floor in a tangerine color that echoes the bedroom wall color. A white and gold claw foot bathtub adds a bit of luxury; there is also a separate granite shower. The countertops are made of treated reclaimed wood, supported by legs cut from tree branches and small tree trunks. Down the second story hallway are two guest bedrooms, one with purple walls and one with turquoise. Carolyn’s color choices were inspired by something she’d read in a design book, a quote from a woman who said she chose colors based on the colors in a sunset. The wall colors are picked up by complementary hues in the rooms’ bedding. Each guest room leads to its own small and private balcony, and across the hallway from each guest bedroom is an accompanying bath done in similar colors. The marmoleum floors here, as in the master, have intricately designed borders with a Native American pattern, created with a painstaking process involving many, many cuts with a small knife, Carolyn says. Granite showers, rustic wood countertops, and a continuation of the rest of the home’s wood paneling complete these rooms. An upstairs laundry room makes for easy access for the homeowners and guests. The home’s daylight basement is a vast, open space with stained concrete floors, warm yellow walls, a roomy sectional, a large fireplace, a second, smaller kitchen and its own bathroom and laundry room. “This is where we entertain gobs and gobs of kids,” Carolyn says, noting that grandchildren, nieces and nephews—as well as the rest of their family—are frequent visitors. Two double beds (queen width rather than twin) mean this room can comfortably sleep a lot of people. “There are 25 people down there sometimes!” Frank says, laughing. Doors from this room lead onto a lower level stone patio, where there’s comfortable seating on a swing and a picnic table. A staircase leads up to a deck fully furnished for enjoying the outdoors, railed with rough, bark-covered pieces of lumber; this deck is easily accessible through the home’s main story via doors in the kitchen nook and the living room. Stone steps lead down to the beach, a boathouse, the dock and the cool, clear Deer Lake. The home is at one of its best views from the dock, with its jutting logs, gorgeous stone chimney and charming peaked roof. It’s timeless and charming, strong but subdued—a home at peace with its surroundings. It may have taken some trial and error to get the team in place, but the collaboration of Carolyn, Jerry and Frank produced a stunning result: the beautiful, and rustic, cabin of their vision. Contractor: Frank Gray, Shades of Gray Subcontractor: John Powell Mason: Jeff Wood
Posted on: Thu, 11 Jul 2013 18:36:11 +0000
Trending Topics
© 2015