Vacation Home, Take Me Away!
Right now seems like a perfect time to think about vacation. As luck would have it, it is always “right now!” In case you’ve been dreaming of your perfect vacation home, we’ve got some ideas and inspiration to share from our North Lake Wenatchee project.
Selecting a Site
Clients often come to us for help in selecting a site and assessing the overall costs and timeline for their dream getaway. This involves evaluating aspects like zoning, steep slopes and other environmentally sensitive areas, sun and wind exposure, views, privacy, design guidelines, local contractors and construction costs. At North Lake Wenatchee, we had some relatively steep slopes to contend with as well as mature trees and delicate shoreline habitat.
Planning for a Plan
As part of this early planning, we also create a project roadmap that describes the initial program, budget and schedule for the project. Pre-design is the perfect time to dig deeper into the underlying values that will guide the project. The owners of this cozy retreat in the Cascade mountains had been coming to this area for years and staying in a rental cabin. By the time they decided to build their own, they already had a good feel for how their active family liked to spend time there. Through early discussions and homework exercises, we distilled these “spatial histories” into three guiding principles:
The house should be flexible
It should blend with its surroundings, and
It should a support a sense of natural ease
The Big Idea
After exploring goals, constraints and possibilities, it’s time to bring everything together! Through a series of sketch and model studies, we came up with the idea of thinking about the house as a part of continuous path from the top of the site to the lake. This answered the goals of fitting the house to the landscape and of blending indoor and outdoor spaces and activities
Flexibility - “Cozy for Two, Comfortable for a Crowd”
Vacation homes are often called upon to serve varied sizes and types of gatherings. This makes flexibility a top priority, especially now that more people are able to work remotely. Unlike primary homes, the emphasis in vacation getaways is typically more on spending time in kitchen, dining and living spaces than in bedrooms.
At Lake Wenatchee, the owners set out to build a small house that could feel just right for the two of them yet expand to accommodate another couple or a larger group of their sons’ friends..As featured in our post about hidden doors and rooms, a media room hidden behind a bookcase handles overflow guests, as do two reading nooks and a bedroom sleeping loft.
Materials and Design
The warmth of the palette comes from a combination of 4 different species of wood. Douglas Fir glulam beams support the dramatic sloped roofs, western red cedar paneling lines walls and ceilings, as well as exterior cladding, wood floors are white oak, and the cabinetry is set off with plain sawn maple. Finishes were selected for their durability and compatibility with the surroundings. Thoughtful detailing at windows and support columns allowed the wood and glass to take center stage.
Click here to see more about this project. If you’d like help evaluating a piece of property or exploring a potential project, just give us a call. Even if you are just in the what-if stage, we could use a little vacation-dreaming, too!
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