Search results

If the Big Bad Wolf came upon the Beth and David Lawrence’s house, he could huff and puff, but he’d never blow this house down. Its massive wood beams, lava rock fireplaces, stone columns and timber trusses convey a sense of strength and permanence.

The recently completed home hits the mark for a classic Northwest lodge style, from its soaring 20-foot cedar ceilings to its solid wood plank floors. Its builder, Chris Christianson of Sunrise Construction of Oregon, said lodge homes went by the wayside in the past decade with the rise in popularity of modern styles, but “the Northwest lodge style really coincides with the Central Oregon landscape and is a timeless design.”

The Lawrences moved to Bend in 2018 from Orange County where they’d planned to build a craftsman home to be near their children and grandchildren. “The kids said they didn’t know how long they’d be in California, so we decided to do something for ourselves,” Beth said. Thus began their search for a new place to call home.

“We love the mountains and hate the heat, which eliminated Nevada, Arizona, Texas and the Southwest,” Beth said. “Our focus became Coeur d’Alene, Boise, a couple places in Colorado and Bend.”

David said they had never been to Central Oregon before. “We got to Bend and were here a couple of days, and Beth asked me if I liked it. I told her I really did,” David recalled. “We decided we didn’t need to visit any place else.”

The Tree Farm outside Bend’s city limits on the west side appealed to them. It borders on the Deschutes National Forest and Shevlin Park. “We’ve always been outdoor forest-y people,” Beth said. They found a building lot in the forest and retained Joey Shaw of Homeland Design to render their vision.

“They didn’t come with a lot of preconceived ideas,” Shaw noted. “They wanted angles, a great room, a single-story house that sat well on the lot and a shape that gave them privacy.”

Building a Best of Show home in a pandemic

Converting plans into a lasting home would be builder Christianson’s job, albeit it a challenging one. His crew broke ground in September 2019 on the 4,600-square-foot home, and were working steadily toward completion for the July 2020 COBA Tour of Homes, when COVID-19 hit.

“We encountered numerous delays due to COVID and lost about three weeks of production in the spring,” Christianson said. A limit of ten contractors could be on the job site, and they had to observe stringent distancing and sanitation protocols. They also experienced delays in getting building materials and other items due to factory shutdowns across the country.

Nevertheless, the crew finished just in time for the COBA tour, ultimately winning numerous awards, including Best Feature for its lava rock walls and fireplaces, Best Kitchen, Best Master Suite and Best of Show in its category.

While the award-winning features are many, one design element stands out—consistency in everything from materials and warm earthy colors to large-scale structures like the exposed, arched beams that carry over from the entrance through the great room and out to the covered back patio. Countertops throughout the home are double-thick granite and quartzite with hand-honed drop-chisel edges.

Three natural stone fireplaces, one made of Oregon lava rock and two from Montana Mossy rock, create warmth and focal points in the master bedroom, living room and family media room. Sunrise Construction’s design team, including interior designer Dani Bearup, added a lava wall in the powder room and a lava rock wall between the kitchen and dining room.

The kitchen is a cherished part of the home. The 7-by-12-foot island can seat eight humans or Goldilocks and three hungry bears. The kitchen also contains a built-in seating nook where Beth can enjoy her morning coffee. The wall behind the stove features a chiseled silver travertine with a granite inset niche that creates an elegant, Old World feel. There’s a butler’s pantry where the Lawrences can stash appliances out of sight and where David, who says he’s an ice snob, can have a special icemaker.

Some of the dwelling’s charm reveals itself in small details. The keystone, a favorite shape of Beth’s, was inserted into the rock walls above fireplaces, three art niches in the dining room and other “hidden” places. The builder used chains, nails, rocks and adze tools to “distress” the heavy beams. The long hallway leading to the master suite, mudroom and garage has tile between the wood planks and mitered square “Xs” at corners.

The master suite’s bathroom has a rarely seen fixture: a urinal, which is recessed into a wall. “For me, the urinal is kind of cool,” David said. There’s also a stand-alone bathtub set on mosaic tile with a chandelier overhead and a hand-forged bronze backsplash above the sinks and countertop.

Patios, fire and water features

“I love the outside of the house—its curved beams that soften the home’s straight angles, the way you can walk up the front steps and see straight out to the trees in back,” David said. “There are no ugly sides; the back and sides are as attractive as the front.”

Beth enjoys the five patios where she can follow the sun around the house or avoid it when the day heats up. The large covered back patio is a peaceful place to enjoy a gurgling low-to-the-ground water feature, a firepit and BBQ set into lava rock.

Coming from California where wildland fire poses a constant threat, the couple appreciates the Tree Farm’s Firewise Community codes, even though they had to remove thirty percent of the trees. The house also has interior fire sprinklers, a nonflammable roof, a fire moat around the structure and fire-resistant landscaping.

“The designers and builders—Joey, Chris and Dani—have made our vision come true,” David said. “It has been much more than just building out a set of plans. So much of what we love is a result of this team’s visions and their execution on those visions.”

The couple looks forward to hiking the many trails within a few yards of their home and observing wildlife as it crosses their property. And when the grandkids come for a visit and wander through the forest, they’ll warn them to run from the woodland creature with big ears, big eyes and big teeth, back to the sanctuary their grandparents built.

Resources: Designer: Joey Shaw, Homeland Design | Builder: Chris Christianson, Sunrise Construction of Oregon | Interior: Dani Bearup, Sunrise Construction of Oregon | Landscape: Becky Shaw, Homeland Design

Master Gardeners across the state were recognized in July for their volunteer efforts as part of the OSU Extension Master Gardener program’s annual awards. In Central Oregon, the “Master Gardener of the Year” award winner was Kathleen Geary of Bend.

When it comes to the awards, winners are recognized for their commitment, time and impact.

“They’re nominated by fellow Master Gardeners, and selected by their local chapter associations with input solicited with their local OSU Extension horticulturist and Master Gardener program coordinator,” said LeAnn Locher, OSU Master Gardener outreach program coordinator. “The awards for Master Gardener of the year recognizes an individual’s leadership, impact and support of the mission of the program: garden education,” Locher said. Statewide, the program had nearly 3,000 volunteers in Oregon last year, who together contributed more than 221,000 volunteer hours—valued at $5.6 million.

Geary said that she first earned her certification as a Master Gardener in 2015. “Since then, I actively participate in community-based projects that include recording for the KPOV radio segment, ‘Gardening: Get Good at It.’ that airs on the Tuesday morning program and The Point,” Geary said. Her favorite area of volunteer work is at plant clinics, where she helps people receive answers about their gardening questions.

Geary first started gardening at an early age when she used to tend to herbs, vegetables and flowers in her mother’s garden. “I grew to understand the growing cycle of plants, and was captivated by the importance of the bees and insects that pollinated the garden that produced my mother’s endless bounty,” Geary said. She became interested in gardening due to growing up in the era of the Silent Spring. Geary grew concerned about the environment, changing climates, food security and how to feed her family.

Geary is involved with the Central Oregon Master Gardener Association, where she acts as a volunteer, educating others about gardening. She also teaches gardening classes. Other OSU Master Gardener community programs she is involved in are Discovery Park Community Gardening and The Point. Geary said she’s been excited to see how gardening has played a role in helping the community with food security during the COVID-19 pandemic. “We are fortunate in Bend to have a community that cares for one another. Precarious times call for strength in numbers and gardeners have it all. We grow gardens of vegetables, fruits and flowers for ourselves, and we grow our gardens to share with others,” Geary said.

Outside of gardening, Geary enjoys hiking, kayaking, fly fishing and skiing. She also loves to entertain guests with cocktails and food and can be found in her library reading up on gardening. For more information on Central Oregon Master Gardeners, click here.

When it comes to space, we don’t always have as much as we might like. Do you live in a tight housing development, condo, apartment or ADU and yearn for outdoor space of your own? Whether your dwelling includes a backyard, balcony, deck, patio or front porch, a few simple steps can transform your outdoor space into a well-loved, go-to place imprinted with your own DNA.

First ask yourself, what do you hope to achieve? A place for chilling? Entertaining guests or barbecues with the family? A play area for the kids?

Once you’ve established the purpose, you’ll want a plan. Decide whether you’ll need the help of a design professional or prefer a DIY approach by gathering ideas from sites on the internet like Houzz or Pinterest, going on home tours or seeing how others have created their own outdoor living space. You’ll discover that good design ideas are surprisingly similar whether your space is large or small. It’s a matter of scale.

Steal Ideas from the Indoors

One enduring idea is to replicate your favorite indoor room, whether it’s the living room, dining room or even the bedroom. Consider traffic patterns and arrange furniture on an outdoor area rug around a patio coffee table or facing a firepit or artwork. Or set up an eating bar with stools and a buffet for food and drinks, cutlery and serving platters. If your space is a covered porch, why not consider a futon for both sleeping and enjoying your morning coffee upon waking?

If your space doesn’t allow for a grouping of furniture, a bench or a couple of chairs and a small side table will suffice. Add a freestanding umbrella or hang a colorful sunshade overhead for protection against the elements. Other space-saving outdoor escapes include gazebos and leafy arbors.

In any arrangement, remember to incorporate lighting—candles, LED light strings, non-breakable lamps and even hardwired sconces and overhead fixtures. Think about storage for brooms, step ladders, garden tools and other things you’d like to have handy. Seek out furniture that can double as storage.

Plan for Mother Nature’s whims

The obvious difference between inside and outside living is weather. On Central Oregon’s high desert, think of your outdoor space in terms of three seasons. Spend time learning about durable materials for our climate. Wrought iron and aluminum are safe bets for tables, synthetic woven wicker for chairs. Teak and cedar are traditional choices for outdoor furniture but require more upkeep. One relative newcomer to the outdoor furniture scene is recycled plastic—look for Adirondack and smaller chairs in vibrant colors that never fade, are strong and last for decades with minimal care. For temperature swings, buy portable or overhead fans for hot weather and heat lamps for cooler days and nights.

Pleasure in the Details

Once your basics are in place, consider the many options for enhancing enjoyment.

Incorporate greenery

If you have ground space, even a small patch of lawn is a good choice for the kids and dogs, plus it keeps dust at bay and your outdoor space green. The downside is it requires upkeep.

If you have a blank wall or a place to add a screen, consider a vertical living wall. Here’s one place it’s worth the expense to hire a professional. Plants in a vertical garden should be selected with care—they need a water source but can become a favorite feature throughout the seasons.

Planter boxes and pots add a pop of color to Central Oregon’s earthy palette. Put them on wheels and place them out of the way in corners. Incorporate shrubs, trees, perennials and herb gardens as space allows.

Birds, bees, windchimes and gurgling water

Get hours of enjoyment from watching hummingbirds chase each other around a feeder or install a bird bath and watch them flick water off their feathers. When the wind blows, as it often does in Central Oregon, chimes create music for the soul. Plant a butterfly garden or perennials that attract big beautiful bumble bees.

One of the most calming aspects of your outdoor space can be a water feature. The types of features available for home gardens are nearly limitless, from waterfalls that spill over a permanent rock formation to a portable yet elegant ceramic fountain.

Find the fire

Firepits have become insanely popular—they create warmth, light and a place to gather. Portable firepits the size of a carry-on bag can cast a long glow over the tiniest space. A table-top firepit can double as an eating area. And don’t dismiss the possibility of a fireplace. You can find a custom or prefabricated version to fit a small space that will throw off living room-like warmth and atmosphere.

Remember the art

Enhance your retreat with art. Consider free-standing sculpture or wall art, traditional or abstract, in metal, glass or other materials. Let your imagination roll and infuse your private place with your own aesthetic.

With the housing world trending toward compact living and smaller homes, expand that space into the outdoors we all crave.

Being a green thumb in the garden used to mean possessing a talent for cultivating plants, built through experience or natural aptitude. But in tech-savvy 2020, anyone can become a modern green thumb, aided by a variety of gadgets, apps and electronics to support your outdoor plots.

Worried you might forget to cover your plants during a late-season Central Oregon frost? There’s an app to prevent that. Not sure if your plants are being appropriately watered during a rainy summer in Bend? There’s a tool that can help you check. Want to know whether it was a deer or a rock chuck scurrying through the yard last night? There’s a garden camera for that.

While nothing can decisively replace your intuition or trusty copy of Farmers’ Almanac, there are dozens of high-tech gardening tools out there to help. Here are few we recommend for fine-tuning your green thumb.

Plant identification apps

While you can probably remember the names of most of the plants you have in your garden, plant identification smartphone apps like PictureThis and PlantSnap also can do this with a quick photograph. The apps can identify a beautiful flower you see in a neighbor’s yard, a plant at the park or foliage you see on an out of town vacation. And the apps are good for more than telling you the name of greenery. Snap photos of brown, dry or diseased leaves and the app automatically identifies what the problem is. Not sure how to care for some of your plant’s unique needs? Learn care tips, network with horticulture specialists and build your own collection of plants within the app.

Eyes on the garden

While there’s no shortage of home security camera options out there today, garden-specific cameras can offer tools like night-vision to spy overnight visitors, activity alerts and time-lapse video to literally watch the garden grow. When choosing the camera that’s right for you, consider the best spot to position it—likely somewhere with a wide view of the garden—and then consider whether a camera that runs on WiFi or cellular data makes sense for the location. Once your options are narrowed down, pick a camera that fits into your budget and get recording. Most cameras use an app to connect to your phone, so you can view your garden from just about anywhere.

Sensing trouble

Ever wish your plants could just text you and tell you what they need to stay healthy? Well they can, sort of. Insert a smart plant sensor into the soil near a plant you want to hear from, and soon you’ll be getting digital alerts on your phone with suggestions about sunlight amounts, water moisture and more. For inside, a Parrot Pot has the same technology tucked under the soil, to help busy people with indoor plants.

Alert: Frost on the way

After a particularly balmy spring week in the high desert, frosty winter mornings might seem a distant memory. But just like that, you’re caught off guard by a sudden chilly night and your newly sprouted garden is in danger of being ruined—it happens to the best of us. But with the ColdSnap! app, users can receive alerts for upcoming temperature drops, so you’re never surprised and can protect your plants from the elements before the frost settles in. For more weather insights, a smart weather station like Netatmo can provide indoor and outdoor weather insights, including temperatures, humidity, air quality and barometric pressure.

Sponsored Content

For twins Julie Hakala and Janet Powers, something just felt right about starting a business together after twenty-five years of living in different places. The duo had been working together from afar, both selling rustic barnwood for a Colorado company—Hakala out of a showroom in Tumalo and Powers back in the mountains of Colorado. Aspiring to do something different, the twins dreamed up their new venture, a company specializing in custom, interior accent walls made of finished woods and metal. “We wanted to do something local and bring something new to market,” Hakala said. After Powers made the move from Colorado to Bend last summer, they got to work in her garage dreaming up the products for accent walls at their new company, blended. “After months of experimenting, we have fifteen custom colors of wood planks and tiles with five colors of metal inserts and planks to create endless possibilities for custom designs,” Powers said.

Blended products are smooth, clean, custom-stained woods in colors like “Mt. Bachelor Frost’’ and “Deschutes River,” exclusively meant for inside spaces. The current colors are named after Central Oregon locales and come in a base shade or a metallic finish for a unique, subtle shine. Customers are invited to build their own accent wall in the blended showroom at 9th Street and Wilson Avenue in east Bend. They can play with two-foot planks of wood in a variety of colors, and two sizes of metal planks and inserts in brass, bronze, silver, black or pewter. Each item in the showroom has magnets attached, allowing for mixing and matching on large magnetic, DIY Design Walls. “We want to inspire people to get creative in a fun, comfortable environment,” Hakala said. This spring, the sisters started producing square and rectangle tiles, which also can be configured in a variety of arrangements to build a design. Every step of the blended wood finishing process is completed by the twins in their production facility attached to the showroom. For those who prefer a more rustic look, blended offers rough, naturally-aged wood planks locally sourced and finished off-site. Powers added, “It’s amazing how great the modern woods and metals look combined with the rustic woods. Everything we have in our showroom is meant to work together—that’s how we came up with the name ‘blended.’ Notice the bold letters in our logo spell Bend, as everything is made in Bend and we are proud of that.”

In addition to the hands-on studio, Hakala and Powers are also available for free design consultations, during which they visit a home or business and work with the client to design their dream wall or accent piece. The accent walls range in price from $7-10 per square foot, depending on the materials chosen. “It’s a great way to create art on your wall without a huge commitment,” Powers said. Once a design is selected, the materials are delivered to a customer’s home, or can be picked up from the showroom. Nationwide orders can be placed online and customers from other states can receive free virtual design consultations and free shipping.

Powers and Hakala have enjoyed the opportunity to work together on the new business, and said they’ve applied skills they learned as children, growing up working at their family’s hotel in Colorado. “We’ve really been influenced by our family,” Powers said, explaining that the twins are among five sisters, who all worked together when they were younger. “We learned about hard work, the value of family time, keeping life fun and the importance of making customer service a priority,” Hakala said. One sister, Sarah Lickfett, is selling for blended in the Reno, Nevada, region. The duo also draws inspiration from their faith, and displays this in the showroom with the letters “DV,” meaning Deo Volente, or “God willing,” in Latin.

Since starting blended metal and wood in the fall and opening their showroom in January, the duo said their typical customer base is a mix of architects, designers, builders and DIY-ers. To see a recent install at a location near the showroom, stop by the Luderman Crossing model home by Pahlisch Homes, and then visit Powers and Hakala to try a blend on the DIY design walls. The sisters are excited to grow their business here in Central Oregon and to assist new customers with unique designs of any size and for any budget. With lead times of only one to two weeks, customers can have finished projects by mid-summer.

blended metal and wood | blendedmetalandwood.com | 541-668-4708

As Bend continues its rapid growth and urban development collides with wild land, one neighborhood offers an example of how to do it right. The Tree Farm sits just outside of Bend’s city limits on the west side. Bordered by Shevlin Park and U.S. Forest Service land, the neighborhood is known for its stunning architecture and the kind of view that can stop a person in their tracks.

Bill Miller, of Miller Lumber, purchased the property in 1955. It was one of the first pieces of land to be logged in the area and remains a working tree farm today, although it hasn’t been logged since the 1990s.

“My father was an environmentalist before it was trendy to be an environmentalist,” said Bill’s son Charley Miller. “When he died in 2001, we continued to manage the Tree Farm the way our parents would have.”

Land use planning began in 2014 when the Millers partnered with Brooks Resources and West Bend Property Company. The 500-acre property was limited to fifty two-acre lots.

“Our family’s desire was to cluster the lots,” Miller said. “The idea was that the remainder of the land could be enjoyed by the rest of the community as well.” That’s why the public can still access the Shevlin Park trails and views of the property that the Miller family has loved for decades. “It’s turned out just how we envisioned thanks to the help of our partners.”

The development faced initial opposition by groups like Central Oregon LandWatch during the land use approval process. Concerns arose over safety and destruction over wildfire potential in the area, among other issues. The Bulletin wrote in a February 3, 2016 article that “Central Oregon LandWatch cited potential wildfire hazards and concerns about maintaining wildlife habitat in its prior opposition to the idea.” The neighborhood is also visible on the upper trails of Shevlin Park, a popular walking and biking area that had provided a secluded atmosphere from the city.

What could have been an ugly battle instead turned into an important conversation about sustainable and ethical future development that is inevitable for Central Oregon.

“It worked out great actually, sitting down with Central Oregon LandWatch,” said Brooks Resources VP of Marketing Romy Mortenson. “We learned what their concerns were, and worked together to make a better plan than what we had originally.”

The Tree Farm was the first neighborhood development in Deschutes County to integrate guidelines from the National Fire Protection Association into the planning before any development took place, setting a precedent for inevitable future development and growth along Central Oregon’s wildland-urban interface.

“There was a huge demand and interest in that kind of a property,” said Linda Schmitz, a principal broker for Brooks Resources and the sales manager for the initial release of properties. “We reached out to the brokerage community and gave tours while the infrastructure phase of the project was still under construction.”

It’s not surprising that the gentle slope of sagebrush, wildflowers, evergreen trees, mountain vistas and Shevlin Park in the backyard drew enough interest to sell out the properties by October 2017.

The properties were initially sold between $370,000 to $907,000. Over the last year, only three homesites re-sold, with an average sales price of $591,250. There are currently eighteen completed homes, twelve under construction, and four designs in review, which all homes must go through to ensure continuity and meet the neighborhood’s guidelines. The 328 remaining acres of the Tree Farm were transferred to Bend Park & Recreation District to expand Shevlin Park in 2018.

Charley Miller now lives on one of the lots in a house designed by Neil Huston that was completed in the summer of 2019. Miller said that his family wanted the neighborhood to have a diversity of architecture, similar to the range of styles in houses in downtown Bend where they grew up. There are guidelines and a review team to ensure continuity, but already there are a range of styles from mid-century to craftsman to lodge.

The location—“you feel out of town, but you’re in town”—along with the park in the backyard and lack of light pollution have made it a great place to live.

Mortenson said that she doesn’t expect much turnover in the neighborhood. Of the eighteen completed homes, none have changed ownership—a sign of a healthy neighborhood and people willing to stake roots in the land.

Sponsored Content

When John and Heather Cashman launched their furniture and design company over a decade ago, for many years, it was just the two of them at the helm. Over time, their passion for helping clients create beautiful spaces with high quality furnishings grew stronger. Today, Bend Furniture and Design has grown to a team of seven that provides seasoned, personal interior design skills and quality, North American crafted furniture to an ever-growing list of clients.

The success of the business rests upon superior products alongside excellent service, including comprehensive interior design services. While furniture has long been the most visible part of Bend Furniture and Design, design services have always been an integral part of the approach. “Buying furniture is a big decision and a process which requires skill and attention to detail. We work with clients one-on-one to fully envision their spaces,” said Heather. The team uses computer aided design and story boards to help homeowners “see” the rooms of their home, with specific furniture in place. “Clients find these tools incredibly helpful with their decision making,” said John.

The design process begins by meeting with the client. “It is here, we discover their lifestyle, interests, and their vision,” said Heather. A questionnaire helps guide this: are they active; do they have kids or pets; do they love to entertain? Next comes a conceptual process that includes what Bend Furniture and Design likes to call a “story board.” “The story board is an inspiration board, and a study in color, textures and finishes. You can see the exact piece of furniture layered in with imagery of the finishes and fabrics of the space,” said Heather.

Once decisions are made, the client relationship doesn’t end. The furniture is shipped to Bend Furniture and Design’s warehouse, where their own professional delivery team inspects the products, ensuring that each piece will meet clients’ expectations. ‘White Glove Delivery’ and expert assistance placing every piece in its perfect spot is the final step.

“We offer individual service and attention, whether you’re looking for a single piece of furniture  or furnishing an entire home,” said Heather. Between them, the team of seven has decades of home furnishing experience. “We collaborate, as a team along with the client, because the more creative synergy there is, the better the outcome for the client.”

The lovely showroom on Galveston Avenue in Bend features all North American made furniture, including lines from several Oregon manufacturers. “The reward for sourcing this way is lasting quality and environmentally healthier and more sustainable furniture,” said Heather. Over the years, the Cashmans have developed relationships with some of the top furniture manufacturers in the United States, including Copeland, Charleston Forge and American Leather.

While high quality and top-notch service can be equated with expense, the Cashmans say they often hear from clients that they are pleasantly surprised at how affordable Bend Furniture and Design is. “We offer an array of pricing options and along with the advantages of buying local and receiving personalized service, it is an exceptional value,” said John.

Clients continue to seek out the Bend Furniture and Design team for personal, experienced advice when it comes to beautifying their homes. “More than ever, people are reinvesting in their homes,” said John. “They are focused on making their dwelling a comfortable and beautiful place of refuge.”

“We’re interior designers as well as furniture experts,” explained Heather. “Our passion is building lasting relationships and enduring interiors.”

Bend Furniture and Design | 1346 NW Galveston, Bend | bendfurnitureanddesign.com | 541-633-7250

Tiles might be one of the most fun home design surfaces to consider. Tiles come in all shapes and sizes, as many colors as you could ever imagine, and textures to add depth and visual accents to even the smallest, most simple room. In fact, when it comes to tile style, your biggest challenge might be deciding which of so many choices you want to make your own. Here, we consider a few options for your next remodel or new build.

Accent  tiles

Add a random pop of color or texture to an otherwise clean, white tile surface for a bright, playful look in your kitchen.

Mix it up

Can’t decide if you want circles, rectangles, squares or octagons? Take a few different geometric shapes and textures and go wild with your home decor project.

Metal accents

Adding brass, stainless and even mirrored acccents to natural tiles is a hot trend this season. Match your fixtures or not—now is the time to play with design.

Monochromatic patterns

This tile pattern from Walker Zanger is on trend with 70s-inspired patterns and distinct colorways. Each tile is adorned in kaleidoscopic shapes, sharp lines and rounded corners, in a trio of earth tones.

Spending time with Eric Close is like hanging out with a friend. You can swap hiking stories, share intel on restaurant openings, discuss your favorite movies from last year’s BendFilm Festival and talk about the pros and cons of keeping junipers as part of your landscape. He lives modestly on acreage just outside of Bend with his wife, Keri, two dogs and three horses.

Close’s regular-guy attitude masks a career that has brought him fame and recognition. He’s worked with the likes of Clint Eastwood, Bradley Cooper and even the former Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, who Close hired for one of her first acting jobs. His best friend of twenty-eight years, Dr. Robert Lum, a radiation oncologist in Ventura, California, said, “Eric’s a celebrity but he does not view himself as more than anybody else. He’s a regular person.”

That perception is echoed among those who know him. When he’s out in Central Oregon, people may approach him and say things like, “You look familiar,” or “Sorry to bother you but aren’t you the guy on ‘Nashville?’” “It doesn’t bother me at all,” he said. “Everybody is really friendly and genuinely excited to meet an actor from one of their favorite shows. I try never to ignore anybody or miss an opportunity to engage with my fans.”

An actor’s life

The Close family’s migration to Central Oregon started with the ABC drama, “McKenna,” filmed in Bend in 1994. Close rode the train from Los Angeles to Chemult and rented a home in Tumalo to be on location with costars Chad Everett and Jennifer Love Hewitt. “The show was kind of like “Fantasy Island” set in the mountains,” he said. “We filmed all over Central Oregon featuring many of its stunning locations.” The show conveyed upbeat stories about a family of wilderness outfitters helping people overcome life’s difficulties through challenging adventures in the outdoors.

Despite being cancelled after six months, “McKenna” proved pivotal to Close’s life, career and future connection to Bend. During filming, Close proposed to Keri in the scenic meadow at Todd Lake. He told his future bride that “if we ever have two nickels to rub together, I’d love to have a little cabin in Bend.” Next to San Diego where he was raised, he added, there was no place he loved more than Bend.

After “McKenna,” Close returned to Los Angeles where his career took off, landing roles on TV series like “Sisters,” “Dark Skies,” “The Magnificent Seven,” “Now and Again,” and Steven Spielberg’s miniseries, “Taken,” for which he was nominated for two Saturn Awards for best actor.

But it was the crime drama “Without a Trace,” in which he played FBI agent Martin Fitzgerald, that put Close in front of millions of viewers. The CBS program aired on prime time from 2002 to 2009 and was nominated for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series award by the Screen Actors Guild. After the series ended, Close landed memorable guest appearances on long-running TV shows, such as “Criminal Minds,” “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and the hit legal drama, “Suits.”

And then came ABC’s “Nashville,” a musical drama which ran for six seasons. Close starred as Mayor Teddy Conrad, husband to country music superstar Rayna Jaymes, played by Connie Britton. The series was filmed in Nashville, requiring Close to be there for three years while his wife remained in Los Angeles with their two daughters. He jokes that because he traveled frequently between the two cities, the Southwest Airline crews would greet him with, “It’s the mayor of Southwest!”

Close has also acted in movies, most notably American Sniper released in 2014 in which he played DIA Agent Snead opposite Bradley Cooper.

Coming home to Central Oregon

In 2004, Eric and Keri began looking for property in Bend. Their friend, Troy Meeder, cofounder of Crystal Peaks Youth Ranch (for which Close serves on the board), connected them with a neighbor who was thinking of selling.

“Troy put together a fishing trip on the Deschutes River, and while we were on the river, the neighbor and I struck up a conversation about the house. He told me what he wanted. I told him what I could pay,” Close recalled. Before the trip was over, they’d agreed on a price and sealed it with a handshake. Thirty days later, Eric and Keri were owners of a home on five acres in Tumalo.

For the next twelve years, the Closes continued to reside in Southern California where Eric could be near Hollywood and work. But they returned to Bend and their property as often as possible. Preparing to become empty nesters, the couple began to wonder where they wanted to spend the next phase of their lives. Could they make Bend their permanent home and still allow Eric to maintain a successful career in entertainment? “There were always tears when we’d leave Bend. We loved it so much,” Keri recalled.

Around 2010, Eric began to work everywhere but in Los Angeles. So, in 2017, the Closes decided to make the move. Their daughters were about to head to college. It seemed like a good time to be where they loved the healthy lifestyle, could spend more time outdoors and support the community.

Vacation-turned-family home

In the early years of property ownership, the Closes made a few changes to what they fondly refer to as “Getaway Ranch.”

“Friends and extended family have come here over the years to get some much-needed R&R from their busy lives,” said Keri. “But it needed a little TLC. Once we made it our permanent home, we updated it and made it our own.”

For the past two-and-a-half years, the couple has been remodeling and expanding the original footprint. They added a detached three-bay garage, incorporated a front entry and completely renovated the kitchen and media room. Keri designed the kitchen around her love of cooking and entertaining, “with a little help from Pinterest,” she joked.

They purposely retained the home’s rustic nature. “We want people to kick back, relax and enjoy the view,” Eric said. One of his favorite spots is the jacuzzi on the cedar deck with views of the Cascades spanning from Mount Bachelor to Mount Jefferson and their horses grazing in the paddock below. “It’s a wonderful place to be, very peaceful and calming,” he said.

One thing they discovered about the property was the existence of a few buried trash heaps left by a family who lived in the area in the 19th century. “I bought a metal detector and would go treasure hunting with our kids,” Eric said. “We started finding things like skeleton keys and children’s toys. The girls called it the treasure museum.”

The next episode

The couple is producing a film based on Crystal Peaks Youth Ranch cofounder Kim Meeder’s best-selling novel, Hope Rising: Stories from the Ranch. Keri wrote the script, and Eric will direct the movie in and around Bend. “One of my goals is to make movies and TV content right here in Oregon. It’s so beautiful and diverse,” he said. Both Closes look forward to the annual BendFilm Festival for which Eric has served as a juror in past years.

In addition to serving on the board of Crystal Peaks, Eric’s career has allowed the couple to become more involved in local and global charities. While filming a public service announcement for CBS Cares in South Africa, the couple learned about the Africa Foundation which helps people in rural communities by providing health clinics, schools and clean water. Since getting involved with the foundation, Keri joined the board and the couple has raised enough funds to build two preschools and an Orphans and Vulnerable Children Center in South Africa. Part of the support comes from net profits on the sale of Keri’s handmade jewelry sold online (prescreative.com).

For fun and exercise, the Closes take full advantage of Central Oregon’s trails, rivers, mountains and golf courses as often as possible. They like to take their horses for long rides in nearby federal lands or go camping at Big Lake.

Eric pursues his passion for golf on numerous courses around the area and had the rare privilege, even among celebrities, of playing in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am golf tournament. “My best friend Robert was my caddy for eight of the ten years I played,” he recalled. “In 2015, I finally made the cut to play in the final round on Sunday. Making the cut is the coveted prize for the amateurs and you get an umbrella that says, ‘I Made the Cut,’” he laughed. “It was awesome standing on the 18th green with friends Jim Nantz, Nick Faldo and Clint Eastwood.”

So, if you see someone who looks familiar fly fishing on the Deschutes or Metolius Rivers, sipping a microbrew at The Bite in Tumalo or drinking coffee at Loony Bean of Bend, it might just be the celebrity among us. Feel free to say hello.

Many Central Oregonians are proud of our last-in-the-world VHS video store, like the idea of a rounded silver travel trailer tucked in the driveway for weekend escapes and probably have a vintage cruiser bike around somewhere.

Though, for most of us, retro styles don’t often come inside (except occasionally into our closets), and they would rarely come near our kitchens—rooms we’d rather fill with the newest tools and gadgets meant to make cooking easier.

But the latest trend in kitchen design involves a throwback to the glossy, brightly colored retro appliances of our parents’ and grandparents’ generations. Some are new, inspired pieces and others are truly antique restorations. And depending on appliance, budget and look, going retro doesn’t necessarily mean compromising modern technology or function. 

So move over stainless steel, there’s a new way to make a statement in the kitchen. Intrigued? Consider these three options when pursuing your kitchen’s retro resurgence:

Retro inspired

As part of the retro kitchen appliance revival, a growing number of companies are debuting lines of fridges, stoves and other appliances with bright colors, curvy angles, chrome trim and classic hinge handles.
Italian appliance brand Smeg has been around for more than seventy years, and launched its first line of 1950s-style refrigerators in the late 1990s. In 2014, the company added additional products in the 50s style, including toasters and kettles. 

Another company specializing in everything retro for kitchens is Big Chill, which offers up ovens, dishwashers, fridges and more in colors like Beach Blue, Buttercup Yellow, Pink Lemonade and 197 others. 

The appliances are energy efficient and state-of-the-art, but if you’re still on the fence, try a dishwasher panel to give your existing appliance a colorful facelift, without the full commitment. 

DIY restoration 

If retro-inspired appliances don’t feel like the real deal, a DIY restoration project might. Find your tribe of vintage appliance enthusiasts online, at an antique shop or at an appliance store that offers restored pieces.  

The internet is home to many others seeking or selling vintage appliances poised for a second life in a new kitchen. And don’t be afraid to search online for answers to specific upgrades or fixes. There are vintage appliance restoration forums with someone who might have an answer.

Restored and ready to use 

Dreaming that someone else will find, restore and then sell a vintage appliance ready for its new life in your kitchen? It might remain a dream. Because of the knowledge, time and money that goes into restoration, most are kept by their owners. However, some retailers advertise newly restored pieces available for purchase. Check appliance stores, online classifieds and newspapers and you may get lucky. 

Go Little

A bit apprehensive about switching out your built-in filtered water dispenser for something that reminds you of a childhood visit to grandma’s house? Ease into the world of retro appliances with something small, for your kitchen’s tabletop. In addition to Smeg’s sleek juicers, toasters and espresso machines and Big Chill’s microwaves, nearly every major appliance company is squeezing into the vintage market with their take on a retro mini fridge. Find them in colors like Bold Red, Silver Moonbeam and Mint Green, and take them for a spin on your kitchen counter.

Sponsored Content

When Francis Senger started Mission Building in Bend in 2008, he was focused on completing the historic renovation of a home downtown. During the recession, he continued to take on historic remodeling projects and added some small commercial jobs. Before long, the business had found its niche in Central Oregon, as a company focused on bringing the custom renovation approach to all projects.

Senger said he’s taken what he’s learned from multi-faceted custom projects, including historic remodels, and used the same sensibility with every job—building trust with clients, maintaining good relationships and taking a genuine interest in delivering a finished project everyone is proud of. “We bring that custom sensibility to commercial work, too,” Senger said. “In a sense, everything becomes custom. Certainly every client’s needs are custom, regardless of the level of finish.”

Inside one of Mission Building’s latest renovation projects in Redmond, custom elements shine through to highlight the history of the space. Once a bar with an attic on Sixth Street, Mission Building worked with the property’s new owner to transform it into two upstairs apartments and a fresh new commercial space downstairs for Ida’s Cupcake Café, a popular bakery. The new design is fresh and modern, with a nod to the building’s origins, repurposing original wood as shelves and benches, incorporating exposed steel beams and adding new brick walls throughout. It all comes together in a way Senger describes, with a smile, as “modern-historic-industrial.”

Mission Building’s custom work can also be found in downtown Bend, where the company renovated the historic E.M. Thompson Building. The 1915 structure and former home of Ranch Records was gutted and reimagined for Lark Mountain Modern, a home decor and design store on Wall Street, along with an upstairs space leased by the Tower Theatre Foundation.

Observing a building’s history and getting creative to incorporate it back into the finished design is what Senger and his team do best. This can be seen firsthand at the company’s new headquarters on Alden Avenue in Bend. The old Franz Bakery distribution center had collapsing structural elements, a failed roof, and other needs, but Senger thought restoring it would be right up his alley. After a new roof, new beams and footings, new garage doors, and a redesigned office interior, Mission Building has a new place to call home. “We took almost two years on this project,” said Senger, whose team worked on the new office between other jobs. “The client’s needs always come first.”

Today the space almost seems brand new, unless you consider the finer details—like exposed wood beams and original concrete and maple floors. Large glass windows were added throughout to create an open, bright space and the company’s signature industrial meets modern with a touch of history vibe is present throughout. Inside a modern entryway is the company conference room, which includes a table made from a handful of shined up two-by-fours on their side lit up by state-of-the-art hanging LED lights.  “I really like the look of slick modern elements against the rustic industrial backdrop of a warehouse,” said Senger, who was careful not to design the space as too “industrial.” He hopes the office will reflect the company’s style, as a business that can do anything—from medical offices and storage facilities to restaurants and residential, and of course any project with a little history behind it.

Senger said Mission Building is projected to do double the business in 2020 that it did last year, and exponentially more than a decade ago. But he’s careful to point out the growth is organic and purposeful, ensuring each project gets the time and attention it needs to be a success for the clients involved.

Today Mission Building has about twenty employees, and each is focused on how they play a role in building strong relationships with clients. “You’ve got to care about the client’s project as much as they do,” Senger said. “We don’t seek jobs, we seek relationships, I don’t really know any other way to do it.”

Mission Building | 479 NE Alden, Bend | 541-550-2747 | missionbuilding.com

Sponsored Content

Downtown Bend’s Mockingbird Gallery is celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2020. Surviving and thriving for thirty years is no small feat for an art gallery, especially in a modest-sized mountain town. “Art galleries come and go,” said owner Jim Peterson. “It’s something to be said that we are still here, still part of Bend and this amazing community after three decades. It’s something to celebrate, and that’s what we’re going to do—celebrate.”

This July, plan to attend Mockingbird Gallery’s 30th Anniversary exhibit, which will include works from the gallery’s representative 48 artists, plus new works from five guest artists. The exhibit opens July 3, with an artist reception planned for July 11. “The public is invited to come by, browse the work and enjoy the beauty,” said Peterson. The 53 works of art will be made available for sale by ‘purchase through draw’; hopeful buyers place bid forms in a box near the work, and at the end of a show, the winning purchaser is drawn from the box. “Purchase by draw is a different format, a fun and unique way to celebrate.”

Peterson and his wife Nathalie bought Mockingbird Gallery in 2007, from original owner Pamela Claflin. Jim got his start in the art gallery business in Scottsdale, Arizona, where at the age of 20, he became the shipping and receiving clerk for a fine arts gallery. He stayed on for twenty years. “I learned the business there, but after a while, we were ready to move on from Scottsdale,” he said. After a few trips to Bend, the couple took a “leap of faith” and bought Mockingbird Gallery—only to fall into a “rough beginning,” as shortly thereafter, the recession hit Central Oregon and the rest of the country hard.

“Ours is a story of survival,” said Peterson. “We learned a lot about how to run a business and came out even stronger. Within two years we were back on firm footing.” Since, Mockingbird has grown and evolved to be a cornerstone of downtown and a true gem for art collectors from Bend, Central Oregon and beyond. “We have a strong tourist base, and Portland is a big part of our success,” said Jim, who frequently crosses the mountains to help clients hang works of art in their homes.

At the end of the day, Nathalie and Jim Peterson’s philosophy is to promote art across all spectrums. “Our goal is to not only sell art, but to provide the community with a great cultural experience,” explained Peterson. “Coming into an art gallery should be a departure from reality, a bit of good medicine.”

Check the Mockingbird Gallery website for the latest information about viewing this summer’s exhibits.

Mockingbird Gallery | 869 NW Wall Street, Suite 100 | 541-388-2107 | Mockingbird-gallery.com

Peterson Roth Gallery | 206 NW Oregon Suite 1 | 541-633-7148 | Petersonroth.com

Spring unfurls slowly in Central Oregon, leaving many of us hungry for fresh greenery—both for our senses and our dinner plates. Fortunately, cultivating an indoor garden can satisfy those cravings all year long. Today’s indoor gardens are more than a few scattered houseplants. They are creative design elements that merge aesthetics with health, and blend culinary delights into interior design.

nature, relocated

With a growing season that barely stretches from summer solstice to fall equinox, Bend’s climate challenges traditional gardeners. Moving the garden indoors solves that problem, without requiring much real estate. Vertical wall gardens, kitchen tower systems or clusters of beautiful potted plants allow gardeners to maintain the best light and growing conditions, no matter the season. If the allure of year-round fresh veggies and greens isn’t enough, bringing the garden inside has additional benefits.

Indoor gardens are like nature, relocated. Just as a walk in the woods boosts mood and mental health, living among indoor plants lowers stress and increases creativity. Those organic colors and textures complement the clean lines of modern décor, but that pop of lushness adds more than visual interest. According to NASA, indoor plants scrub chemicals from the air as they process carbon dioxide into oxygen. Aloe, ivy, lilies and snake plants boost air quality and remove toxins that off-gas from carpets and building materials.

Indoor gardens for foodies

Foodie gardeners begin with their favorite herbs: chives, cilantro, basil and oregano all grow well indoors. Every kitchen garden should include microgreens, too—sprouts of kale, arugula or spinach with their first true leaves. Microgreens add an intense bite of flavor and a punch of nutrients to salads and sandwiches. Harvest them early, or let leafy greens mature and snip full leaves as needed. Deeper pots can hold baby carrots, radishes and beets while their feathery tops add dimension to the garden.

In northern latitudes, even the sunniest windowsill won’t provide enough light for indoor edibles, which need fourteen to sixteen hours of sunlight. Fluorescent and LED grow bulbs provide full-spectrum light without the heat of incandescent bulbs; the ballasts and cords tuck into garden shelving or tower systems for a tidier look. Complete growing systems range from small countertop options to vertical towers with pockets for dozens of plants. Some systems use a growing medium for soil; others go totally dirt-free and feed the plants with nutrient rich water.

Living walls: The ultimate indoor garden

Succulents, bromeliads, aromatic ground covers and reindeer moss … oh my! Vertical gardens bring life to empty walls and transform bland spaces. In rooms with limited window views, a living wall serves as a natural oasis. Home office wall gardens not only inspire productivity, they muffle distracting sound from the rest of the house. Hung over the bath, the plants create a relaxing mood (and they benefit from the extra humidity).

A wide variety of frames and modular containers can be configured to fit spaces small or large. Many DIYers start with wooden pallets, a water-resistant backing and plastic pockets for individual plants. Some plant arrangements create undulating waves of color, others are freeform clusters with occasional blooms of lavender or thyme. There are no rules. In fact, not all wall gardens are living—a frame of dried mosses and interesting twigs becomes a work of organic art that requires no maintenance at all.

By starting indoor gardens in spring, nature lovers can have living walls and herb towers well established and thriving by autumn. A little planning and cultivating now makes the shift from outdoor to indoor gardening a seamless transition, guaranteeing a dose of green when we need it most.

Sponsored Content

Working to meet the unique fiscal and lifestyle needs of current and future Bend residents, Pahlisch Homes is breaking ground on its largest Bend community to date: Petrosa, Latin for “rocky ground,” is planned as a 177-acre mixed used community in northeast Bend. Bound by Butler Market and Deschutes Market roads and a to-be-built extension of Yeoman Road, the new community will be developed over the course of the next ten-plus years.

Providing housing to middle-income households is one of the great incentives for the project. Low inventory levels and a booming Bend population have resulted in a “missing middle” to the housing supply with few homes that are affordable to middle-income households. Petrosa, however, will have approximately forty percent of its homes priced below the median price of homes at the time of construction.

“The entire team at Pahlisch is focused on creating quality homes for every stage of life,” said Dan Pahlisch, owner and president. “Whether you are getting your first apartment or buying your forever home, Petrosa is designed to accommodate the housing needs of a wide range of Bend residents.”

Made up of various architectural styles, the multiple types of housing will include single-family homes and cottages and townhomes for a total of approximately 1,100 residences. The community will also have an apartment complex, Solis at Petrosa, in the northwest corner of the property.

In addition to housing, Petrosa will offer the private amenities that are a well-known and enjoyed feature of many Pahlisch developments, in this case a pool, clubhouse, bike trails, and more than twenty-two acres of open space and a 5.3-acre park are planned at the community’s center. With the residents of the future community in mind, ten acres have been put aside for a new elementary school.

To further bolster the development’s walkability appeal, the design calls for a commercial area in its southwest corner that could accommodate a grocery store and other retail businesses. The site would not only serve the immediate community but also other northeast Bend residents and the users of Pine Nursery Park complex, which is just across Deschutes Market Road.

We are striving to create places that celebrate what we love most about Central Oregon.

Petrosa lies within Bend’s urban growth boundary expansion and is part of the city’s twenty-year growth plan in northeast Bend. To ensure adequate infrastructure for the community and the surrounding area, three new roundabouts will be built to provide access and Yeoman Road will be extended eastward to cross Deschutes Market Road and connect with Butler Market Road. The first housing phase to be completed will be the apartments, which are planned to be ready for occupation in mid-2021.

A long-time contributor to Central Oregon’s housing market, Pahlisch was established in 1983 in the Willamette Valley and moved its base of operations to Central Oregon in 2003. From its Bend headquarters, it now builds homes and communities not only in Central Oregon, but in the Willamette Valley and southeastern and southwestern Washington and has offices in Portland and Kennewick. The company, however, remains deeply committed to Central Oregon and the area’s ethos of community, and has supported the Youth Choir of Central Oregon, The Center Foundation, Habitat for Humanity, the Boys and Girls Club and many other organizations.

While Petrosa is the company’s largest master planned community in Bend, it has been heavily involved in Butternut Creek and Rosedale Parks, two similar projects, which are in the south Hillsboro expansion.

“We couldn’t be more proud of our plans for Petrosa,” Pahlisch said. “A community like this will bring much needed services to the northeast edge of the urban growth boundary expansion and we are striving to create places that celebrate what we love most about Central Oregon. Open spaces, parks, trails and community amenities such as a pool and clubhouse allow room for families and community members to come together.”

Thinking of refreshing and updating your shower or tub? Maybe you’re even considering an entire bath redo, in which case you’ll want to think about how the shower and tub, or the combination of both, integrate with the style and function of the entire bathroom. So, let’s take a wide-angle perspective on bathroom trends and then sharpen our focus on bathing fixtures.

Today’s bathrooms are trending toward minimalism, with lots of glass, natural materials and open space. Bright colors and vibrant tile patterns may be okay for small spaces or as a wow statement, but larger spaces are returning to classic white—a favorite among millennials—and neutral accents, such as black matte or gunmetal for mirror and window frames and plumbing fixtures.

With that backdrop, let’s turn our attention to what’s popular in tub and shower design, along with potential drawbacks.

A Resurgence of the tub

Remember the clawfoot bathtub at your grandparents? It’s back. The Modern Bathroom website says, “what was originally marketed as a glorified horse trough (adding legs turned it into a tub) eventually became regarded as a must-have luxury item for the wealthiest homes in America.”

Clawfoots and modern versions of freestanding tubs are turning up in master baths (and even bedrooms) as a spa-like feature or for a touch of class. Choices range from industrial cube shapes to oval and round and everything from all black or all white to sizzling colors. When considering a standalone tub, be aware that it may require floor reinforcements, and the high sides can make it difficult for bathers to get in and out.

Built-in tubs have moved away from yesterday’s oversized, jetted versions to ones that can be customized for your space and bathroom décor. Maybe you’d prefer to design your own built-in soaking tub with mood lighting or to overlook a garden. Perhaps you’d like easy access for the kids’ bedtime splash or an older adult who lives with you. Incorporate a ledge for shampoo, candles and a glass of bubbly water or wine.

No threshold, no shower curtains

Bathroom design du jour is sleek and open. Showers no longer hide in a closed space between the wall and curtain or a sliding door with hard-to-clean tracks. Instead, look for doorless showers with no threshold and a partial wall often made of glass to keep water from splashing out. Drains have also gone minimalist, with showers that slope toward a grate or linear drain near the wall, thus eliminating the central drain and its visual distraction.

Large-scale tile for floors and walls is a favorite choice and simplifies cleaning and reduces cracks in grout. Marble is making a comeback—its natural swirls and patterns create visual interest in tones of black, white and gray.

But the open, walk-in shower has its critics. Bob Vila, TV home improvement guru, cautions people that a shower barrier “keeps warmth and the humidity inside the shower enclosure and keeps cold drafts from entering while you lather up. In a doorless shower, you may feel cold despite the heat of the water.”

The ubiquitous tub-shower combo

In America’s post WWII construction boom, track homes and the ever-popular ranch style popped up everywhere. Built for a growing middle class, they almost always included a stock tub and shower fixture. This venerable workhorse of the bathroom is still going strong, but homeowners can refresh or remodel an existing one by changing up a few things. Replace the curtain with a half or three-quarter wall of glass or other bathroom-compatible material. Take out the old chrome faucets and install a multifunction fixture—maybe a waterfall or rain shower head and a hand-held wand. Cover a wall with tile or marble.

In the end, what you choose to do in your bathroom, well, should stay in your bathroom. Consider the trends, but pick the one that will last for you.

Keep the stress out of remodeling by employing good planning and the right team.

Most of us dream of changing something about our home, whether it be a major transformation or just a small project. When the time is right to dive in, there are a few things you can do to prepare yourself and make sure the process comes off as stress-free as possible. Save yourself some headaches and mishaps by adhering to these tried-and-true remodeling tips.

Set the Budget

While it’s easier said than done, begin by setting up a realistic budget and trying to stick with it. According to remodelingcalculator.com, the national average remodeling costs are $17,625 for a kitchen remodel, $11,362 for a bathroom remodel and $61,120 for an addition. Get a quote from at least one contractor and consider adding another 10 to 20 percent above the quoted cost for the unexpected, which can range from electrical rewiring that’s been inexplicably chewed up by some rodent, to wood rot and mold. Give yourself that extra cushion in your budget.

Hire a Good Designer

When working with your designer, be mindful of your priorities; the nice-to-have, versus the must-have items. Yes, you may dream big, but be prepared to be realistic and flexible with your design. Whether you choose an architect or a home designer, a good one will help you decide what is reasonable within your budget.

Also, a good designer usually knows all the city and county codes by heart, which is extremely important with issues like height limits, or how many extra bathrooms you can add onto a house. Many cities change codes frequently, so what may be allowed one year, could completely change the next. An experienced designer will also know what the neighborhood homeowner’s association will allow in your particular area. He or she can also help you choose and order fixtures and finishes well in advance of when they will be needed, avoiding delays down the line.

Find the Right Contractor

It might sound obvious: get the best contractor in your area for remodeling. But this important step takes some leg work. Find a contractor with years of experience, who’s licensed and bonded and has a good portfolio, and who is happy to give you references from their past, and recent, clients. Do call the references—all of them.

Your contractor will be responsible for getting your building permits, which will be displayed on the front of the house. He or she should provide you with a program of works, or schedule, so you know what to expect throughout the remodeling project, such as when electrical power may be turned off in the house or when water will be shut down. This schedule should also include the deadline date of when it is projected to be completed (though remodels are notorious for going over time).

Always keep the lines of communication open with your contractor. For the next few months, you will see each other almost daily, and if something is not done correctly, it will be your contractor who needs to make it right with his sub-contractors. If your contractor signs off on work not done well, you will have no recourse with the sub-contractor. All the more reason to make sure you trust your contractor and to touch base with him or her often.

Timing is Everything

In Central Oregon, late spring and summer are your best seasons for remodeling. With a steady stream of workers coming in and out of the house, a winter remodel may mean a lot of snow being tracked in, along with heat leaving the house with doors open. However, do keep in mind that in our area, spring and summer are the most popular time to remodel, so finding a contractor who can fit you into their schedule may be difficult. The key is to give yourself plenty of time to plan for and execute the remodel. If you’re lucky, schedule a vacation so that you are away during some of the work.

Be Flexible

Even when you have done all the planning you can, always expect the unexpected and delayed deadlines. Products ordered well in advance may come in damaged and need to be reordered. Weather, illness and all of the other challenges that life presents may rear their heads. Being flexible means you may have to compromise, especially if your budget is being stretched.

Be a Thoughtful Neighbor

Unless you live on acres in the middle of nowhere, your remodel will affect other people. When you make plans for demolition, make sure your workers aren’t jack hammering at the crack of dawn. Odds are, big trucks will be in front of your home from time to time, so let your neighbors know what’s going on, and what your tentative date for completion may be.

At the end of the day, there probably is no such thing as a stress-free remodeling project. But there are ways to mitigate some of the problems up front, and keep perspective when challenges arise. Remember, even when a project looks like it’s going sideways, know that the finished product will make you a happy homeowner in the end.

Architect Pauline Lyders landed the job of her lifetime—designing the dream home for her family. “We succeeded in creating something unique to us but very livable,” she said of the renovated pole barn that she and her husband, David Neidorf, along with their two daughters, moved into last year. “There’s nothing precious about the materials we used—it is just what it needs to be,” she said of the elegant, modern-minimalist dwelling.

The couple moved to Bend from Los Angeles in 2011, and bought the barn, situated on ten acres off the Old Bend Redmond Highway, in 2016. Instead of seeing a plain structure amid the junipers, they imagined a living space integrated into the environment. Neidorf credits his wife for achieving their goal, but she sought his input throughout the process. “Truth is, David was my client,” she said.

The third partner in the conversation was Jason Duckowitz of Contour Design Build. “It was really important to Pauline to have a builder with an appreciation and understanding of design and who was part of the project from the beginning,” he said. “The three of us had a nice back and forth. I’d sometimes tell Pauline that a design might not work from a construction perspective, but she’d hold onto a concept, and she was usually right.”

The two-story layout is conventional in some ways, with a large, open room on the main floor incorporating the living, dining and kitchen areas and master suite with a private patio. The upstairs has kids’ rooms, an office, studio/guest bedroom, lounge and a deck. But creative flourishes abound in the 3,900-square-foot home, making it unique to the Lyders-Neidorf family.

When Neidorf heads to his office, he gets there from the master bedroom up a winding staircase. This unique and private entrance is for him alone—a place from which he runs his own property management company, Full House Consulting, Inc. He loves the office with its large north-facing window overlooking another beloved feature—an outdoor hot tub accessed either from the bedroom or directly through a sliding LaCantina door in the master shower.

Duckowitz says it’s the first time in twenty years of building homes that he’s seen a sliding door in a bathroom. “It was important to Pauline to maintain an indoor-outdoor connection, both visually and physically to the space outside. The door through the shower was the simplest way to achieve that,” he said.

Without an attic, Lyders was free to design the second-story rooms with a combination of sloping roof and 10-by-10-foot cutouts or dormers, allowing for insertion of 10-foot-wide windows in each room. “When you sit in one of the upstairs rooms and look out those full-height windows, you feel like you’re outside,” Duckowitz said.

The couple’s daughters, Adin, 15, and Stella, 9, have bedrooms the envy of any child. “I tell my daughters they have the nicest rooms any kid ever had,” Neidorf said. Each is expansive, providing space for a queen bed, sofa, desk and areas for projects, games and music. Their mother also incorporated perhaps their favorite feature—a sleeping loft up a vertical staircase (Adin’s ladder is tucked in her closet). A small “sky” window in Stella’s room looks down into the living room and “gives her a sense of comfort and connection to be able to see us,” Lyders said.

The kitchen, dining and living rooms are spacious, with two of the barn’s original trusses exposed to honor the structure’s history. A series of tall windows faces the outdoors on two sides. Along the living room wall, a lichen-green recess houses the TV; another lichen-colored recess next to the dining room is for a bar and espresso machine. The bright green color matches the lichen that grows on junipers. A recess with neutral white vertical tile in the kitchen is for the range, oven and hood. A 14-foot, Caesarstone island divides the kitchen from the dining room where the family enjoys meals at the long antique baker’s worktable. The wool dining chairs are the color of blue juniper berries.

Large portraits of the daughters hang high on a wall and “make the room,” according to Neidorf. He commissioned Xander Berkeley, a well-known character actor and friend of Neidorf’s when he worked in film and TV, to paint the girls.

One of the family’s favorite spots is a covered deck off the second floor looking east over a pristine desert landscape. “It’s a place to meditate,” Lyders said. “Downstairs is about moving and engaging with each other. Up here it’s about witnessing nature.” The spiral stairs from the deck match the green-gold moss growing on rimrock. “It’s an escape hatch for my teen,” Lyders joked.

The pole barn’s exterior gable shape remains largely unchanged, although the new design lengthened the structure by 36 feet to include the garage and deck addition. “The easiest way to stay true to the structure and create a covered walkway from the parking lot to the main entrance was to follow the pitch of the existing roofline to the ground,” Duckowitz explained. “It tells a story of what the house was built from and draws you to the entrance.” With another nod to nature-inspired colors, the dark brown cedar siding was chosen to blend with the bark of juniper.

The creative collaboration between builder, architect and “client” resulted in a family home unique to its inhabitants while honoring its placement in the environment. “I live in my dream house that my incredibly talented and beautiful wife created,” Neidorf said.

Resources:

Building: Jason Duckowitz
Architecture & Interior: Pauline Lyders

Choosing the right mudroom setup can bring some order to a dog’s life. A dog, like a Subaru Outback with a CVT tent on top and mountain bike rack on the back, is part of the Central Oregon lifestyle.

Almost half of Central Oregonians own a dog, and with dozens of dog parks, off leash hiking areas and breweries that allow your pup to sit next to you while you have a beer, the high desert is one of the dog-friendlier places to live.

At home, mixing style and function with the realities of owning a dog can be tricky. Bringing some order to a home’s entrances and exits can alleviate some of the mess that dogs track in and keep the rest of your home cleaner. Here are a few ideas for creating a space that has both style and function.

start with storage

A multi-functional space like a mudroom offers a great template to keeping your dog’s supplies contained. Investing in a built-in setup that can house a washer and dryer along with extra shelf and cabinet storage that is easily reachable when you first get home or when you walk out the door can make a space infinitely more usable. There are even ways to create built-in beds or kennels to leave your dog at home in a comfortable space that’s all their own. Create easily reachable spaces for items you need every day like dog food, harnesses and leashes, treats and poop bags.

consider the paws

Lucky for those of us that live in the high desert, mud isn’t a big issue throughout the year, but flooring is still an important consideration. Large ceramic tiles are durable and offer a high-end feel. A more affordable alternative is vinyl flooring that resembles wood or tile. Found at large chains and local flooring retailers, there are hundreds of styles to choose from that can match your home’s aesthetic and look real, for a fraction of the cost and much easier to care for—and can be scratch-resistant. Increase the life of your flooring by placing mats at the door and in front of high-trafficked areas to catch any excess dirt, snow or mud.

bath time

One of the best features to incorporate into a mudroom is a bath or shower for your dog. While something like a tiled, built-in, elevated shower and tub combo would be ideal, there are standalone sinks that can function just as well, including those that are elevated and those that sit on the ground so your dog can walk right in after a muddy adventure outside.

We can’t forget about tech when we talk about the look and feel of a home. Our favorite gadgets help transform our spaces to function more smoothly, which is why the best tech is both fun to play with and makes our lives easier. Whether you’re looking for something to bring your home further up to speed, or simply want to treat yourself to a new tech tool, we’ve got a few ideas to get you well on your way.

← Lenovo Smart Clock with Google Assistant $80

Calling all sleepyheads, this smart alarm clock just may be your morning rise-and-shine solution. The Lenovo Smart Clock may help to get at the root of your sleep issues by reminding you to reduce smartphone screen-time at night. Plus, it can control any smart features in your home from your lights to your espresso machine, play music, and keep you on schedule for meetings and to-dos. The soft-touch gray cloth exterior blends in well with any style.

Sonos 5.1 Home Theater Surround Set $1,650 →

When you’re having friends over to watch the big game or indulging in a movie night, you want a system you love, and can easily use. This set delivers on both, offering quality sound carried through just four pieces—a Sonos Beam, Sonos Sub, and two wireless speakers, making set-up easy. Once plugged in and ready to go, the system responds to voice command, your remote, the Sonos app and Apple AirPlay 2.

← Google Nest Hello $229

Google Nest Hello is a smart doorbell that offers both convenience and peace of mind. It provides 24/7 streaming and continuous video recording, video coverage that’s wide and tall to give you a fuller picture of your doorstep and HDR video that shows sharp details even when it’s extra bright or dark out. Google Nest can also be personalized to you and your home to recognize familiar faces and play prerecorded messages when you can’t answer the door.

Sensate Faucet with Kohler Konnect $919 →

This smart faucet is like having another hand in the kitchen. With voice-activated technology, the faucet can connect to Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant or Siri to follow voice commands. You can ask your faucet to turn on or off, dispense measured amounts of water, fill to presets such as your coffee pot and even check your water usage. You can also use the faucet’s sensor to turn on, hands-free. But aside from the smart features, the faucet itself is a great fixture, allowing you to choose from two steam settings and four chic finishes.

← KitchenAid Smart Display: Coming soon

In the cold winter months, many of us spend a lot more time in the kitchen, which is why we welcome a gadget that makes cooking easier and more fun. Whirlpool’s new KitchenAid Smart Display is a water-resistant, ten-inch standing screen meant for your countertop. Messy hands in the midst of cooking? The KitchenAid Smart Display takes Google Assistant voice commands. You can ask it to play a YouTube recipe video, call your mom for help with your turkey or pull up recipes from Yummly, another Whirlpool brand. The only thing we don’t like about it is that it hasn’t reached consumers yet—but the display is expected to be released by early 2020.

Dyson Pure Hot + Cool $500 →

A combination heater and fan that purifies the air, the Dyson Pure Hot + Cool is a three-for-one tech find. The Dyson 360° Glass HEPA filter removes allergens and pollutants you can’t see from the air, while keeping your home cozy or cooling it down. Its design also allows it to circulate purified air, instead of only purifying the air around the fan.

Backyard forests are behind the latest trends in interior decorating. Designers from all over the globe gathered recently at the largest furniture and decor industry trade show in the world, High Point Market in North Carolina.

Taking cues from Mother Nature, these contemporary interior design leaders pointed to our mountains, rivers and forests for nature inspired designs for the coming seasons. Coastal environments aren’t to be left out either. Right now, designers are wild about anything natural, whether derived from a branch, a rock or a seashell.   

The trend boils down to bringing the outdoors, indoors. Looking to natural materials means living more simply, and finding sustainable, organic, and environmentally friendly approaches to decorating and living in our spaces. Getting back to nature in one’s own home allows the homeowner to relax and feel peace and tranquility.

Even more upsides to using natural materials: eco-friendly materials found in nature really never go out of fashion. Natural materials are typically longer lasting and hold up better than man-made items, as well. Choosing natural materials almost always means a reduction in off-gassing of toxic chemical compounds that can pollute the air you breathe within your home.

Natural Touch

The warmth of wood and rocks gives a home a warm and cozy feel. In Central Oregon, we see many homes already with a natural stone accent wall or hearth, along with a rough-hewn exposed beam, which gives an earthy and comforting feel. Bringing in a river rock wall or a brick feature wall will add texture to any home. Also trending are wood paneled walls, and entire ceilings made of reclaimed barnwood. For a more minimalistic and Zen design, eco-friendly materials like bamboo and linen for interiors will create a similar atmosphere.

At the High Point Market this year, rattan, cane and wicker furnishings were the rage, coupled with rooms filled with tropical leaf print wallpaper or Audubon-like prints of colorful birds. The look of these natural materials is a historical glance back to British Colonialists in Africa and India, when nature played a significant role in design, and furniture was made with what was on hand in the region.

As the colonialists found then, it’s still true today that natural textures of rattan and wicker pieces pair well with vibrant colors coming from floral or botanical prints of that area, and so designers are bringing back that look once again, in various motifs. While the color wheel may surround the earthy taupe, tan and camel hues, pops of vibrant color from nature are also an inspiration; greens, saffron red, cinnamon and persimmon orange will warm up the space and add personality to any room.

Décor from the Earth

Anything nature inspired is on trend this year, from mirrors framed with seashells, sticks or rocks to seashell light fixtures. It’s as if Madison Avenue designers came to Bend and borrowed some of our ideas, because interior décor such as taxidermy and antlers are being installed in client’s homes, to give homeowners that rustic, down home appeal. Another hot trend are stones. Cut polished stones are placed as décor: think thundereggs, granite and marble.

Organic materials are popular for flooring, whether it’s hardwood floors, or rock slabs, or even sisal and jute floor coverings. To fit this design aesthetic, window treatments should be made with organic materials as well, such as bamboo blinds, linen shades, and cotton or silk drapes.

Because designers and homeowners seem to be embracing new environmental consciousness with green natural materials, the push to natural décor may not be an actual trend, but a movement that is here to stay. As they say, nature never goes out of style.

It was 1970. Bend’s population was just over 13,000 and St. Charles Medical Center’s current location wouldn’t open for another five years.

But the then-small upstart Brooks Resources had the foresight to predict the town’s growth, and took a bet on developing a hill west of downtown Bend called Awbrey Butte. Now fifty years later, that bet has more than paid off.

“We always viewed Bend as a desirable place,” said Brooks Resources chairman Mike Hollern. “We thought Awbrey Butte was a good investment, and it in fact turned out to be.”

Today, there are close to 800 homesites on the butte that sits about 500 feet in elevation above Bend’s west side. Developed with attention to how each site could have ample space and privacy as well as fantastic views of the surrounding region, Awbrey Butte has attracted homeowners who are looking for all the perks of living near the hustle and bustle of Bend without being squeezed into urban-sized lots.

It took almost two decades for Brooks Resources to develop the butte. But in the 1990s, once water service was delivered and roads were carved into the hill, with the intention that they blend into the landscape, Awbrey Butte took off as one of the most desirable places to be in Bend.

There are a wide range of homes on Awbrey Butte, named for the pioneer Marshall Awbrey who lived in the area during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Buyers can choose from mid-century modern homes to classic Northwest craftsman—though there is continuity among the homes, driven by the homeowners’ association guidelines for building, including outdoor paint colors that match the surrounding landscape in order to better blend into the hill.

North Rim is the newest neighborhood on the butte. The private community has 121 one-acre homesite with a collection of custom-built homes. Other exclusive amenities include a lodge and park available to homeowners and guests as well as private tennis court. Awbrey Butte’s two public parks include Sylvan Park and Summit Park, with tennis courts and ample green space to play. A small business park sits on the butte’s north side, as well.

Kristi Kaufman, a real estate broker at Coldwell Banker Bain with two decades of experience in the area, said that homes on Awbrey Butte have seen an appreciation in value that is following the trends of the region. Buyers can expect to spend between $700,000 and $1.5 million for a home on the butte. “There is a wide range of homes that work for retirees who are downsizing, as well as 7,000-square-foot homes for large families,” she said.

The large lots, location in Bend and quality of homes continue to draw more buyers to Awbrey Butte, said Kaufman. “It’s a huge draw for people wanting to be on the west side for access, but who want a little bit bigger lots,” she said. “Awbrey Butte gives a little more space, more elbow room. The homes are larger than what you would find in west Bend, and value seems to be pretty good.”

Jason Epple and his wife Trisha built their home on Awbrey Butte in 1998, selecting the lot for its privacy as well as space for a long driveway and yard for their future family. Today, they’ve raised four kids in the house and have built long-term friendships with their neighbors.

“It’s a place where there aren’t busy streets or cars driving fast,” he said. “Our kids grew up playing in the cul-de-sac and the yard. The most important thing for us is the neighborhood community we’ve had over the years. That’s what makes it for us.”

They also appreciate life on Awbrey Butte because of its location in town and how it’s become a retreat from the ever-growing construction and traffic. “Bend has been expanding and growing outward, and it helps me appreciate the butte even more. We drive down the butte and it’s busy with a lot more traffic and people,” he said. “It’s really nice to drive up on the butte and have a quiet neighborhood.” 

With kids in college, Epple has considered a move from Awbrey Butte, but they haven’t been able to find a place that matches everything they have in the neighborhood, including close access to trails, popular west side amenities and attractions, and of course, their neighbors.

“My wife and I would love to build a new house, now that life and circumstances have changed, but I don’t know where we would go,” he said. “I don’t think that there’s a place where we would go in Bend to be happier.”

Sponsored Content

Bend home builder leads the way in taking green practices, homeowners’ visions to heart.

When it comes to building a custom home, you want someone you can count on from start to finish. You need an expert guide who is going to stick with you.

That’s exactly how Dennis Szigeti, owner of Leader Builders, approaches his work in Central Oregon. Leader Builders is a boutique builder, specializing in high-end residential construction. At 65, Szigeti has been in the business for forty years—somewhat of a rarity in a line of work that includes long hours, daunting projects and big asks.

“As we say, we’re custom building your dreams,” Szigeti said.

After building in Hawaii for sixteen years, Szigeti moved back to Bend in 1995 and opened Leader Builders in 1997. The length of time Szigeti has spent in the industry is in line with his general approach to his work—going the extra mile.

Szigeti runs the business with his son, Ryder, who is project manager. The father-son team is supported by a couple of employees who, all together, build some of the most magnificent custom homes in Central Oregon.

But as in every aspect of Szigeti and his team’s work, they don’t stop there. They build these jaw-dropping homes using green building practices as a partner of Earth Advantage and the Energy Trust of Oregon. Leader Builders even earned a Green Home of the Year Award in 2018.

“A lot of it’s in practice,” Szigeti said. “We do a lot of recycling way above and beyond what would be the norm throughout the course of the build.”

And they’ve been known to use recycled materials where they will make a statement, such as building a ceiling out of reclaimed wood.

It’s the visionary aspect of the work that has drawn Szigeti in for so many decades. He loves getting to hear people’s ideas for different rooms and areas, and bringing together the various elements they’re looking for into one, cohesive home.

“I’m very passionate about the creative element and then building something people will love and enjoy for many, many years,” Szigeti said. “I look at it as the legacy I’m leaving behind.”

Making someone’s vision of a home a reality comes with plenty of challenges, which Szigeti thrives on. Even if it takes the Leader Builders team staining twenty samples to get the right look for a wood beam, they’re willing to do it—and have.

Whether it’s ensuring someone is on site for the build each day or doing walk-throughs with the homebuilder, Szigeti prides himself on being a builder who’s always willing to lend an ear.

“You’ve got to show up,” Szigeti said. It’s how he’s ended up crafting homes that are gorgeous to anyone yet personal to the homeowner. “We don’t pigeonhole ourselves into one category,” Szigeti said. “Northwest contemporary and mid-century modern are our two strongest styles, but we’ve done everything.”

Take for example, the home Szigeti recently built in Bend’s Tree Farm neighborhood. With a standing seam metal roof and Asian influenced architecture inside and out, the home perfectly suits its owners’ Japanese heritage.

The front gate to the residence stands tall with four wood pillars, clean lines and dark accents for a look that Szigeti calls “PNW meets pagoda,” which his team designed. In the living room, stained black panels encase the fireplace above the mantel, providing the perfectly contrasted backdrop for the homeowner’s white wedding kimono.

Adding a unique material to walls to create a standout scene in an unexpected place is a skill of Leader Builders. In a recent build at Tetherow, the team placed a steel panel in the living area above the entertainment center for a surprising texture that adds depth and texture to the space.

In every one of Leader Builders’ projects, it’s these custom details that make the home unique. From carefully chosen finishes and painstakingly placed lighting to upcycled materials and artfully laid tile—placed by Szigeti’s daughter—every detail is accounted for in Szigeti’s homes, and then some.

Sponsored Content

Nathan Good Architects tailor home design solutions to each client for stunning, award-winning results.

Imagine offering an object, an abstract idea, or perhaps a photograph of a lone sand dune to an architect and saying, “This is the design inspiration for my home.” Now imagine your personal style being seamlessly integrated into a stunning home design that honors its environment and goes on to win accolades for its green sensibilities and architectural innovation. Let’s take it a step further: your new home produces more energy than it consumes, and supports your aspirations for health and wellness.

Oregon architect Nathan Good can imagine all of this, because that’s what his firm does. “We once had a client tell us her inspiration for her home was a synthesis between the hemline of a flamenco dancer’s skirt and the interior of a nautilus shell,” recalls Good. “We had another client who wanted us to design a home that could withstand sustained winds of 150 mph, a forest fire or marauding bands of thieves. She wanted it to be off the grid, energy-independent, with a safe room where she could live up to two weeks without needing anything from the outside.”

How does this happen? How do you bring a sand dune, a skirt hem or the desire to age-in-place in a future-proof home to fruition? “Well,” says Good, who was one of the first in the United States to become a LEED-accredited professional, “We tailor our architectural solutions to our client, rather than plugging them into a preset aesthetic. All of our projects express our passion for daylighting, views, exemplary indoor air quality, and environmental responsibility.”

Another hallmark is also clear after perusing their portfolio: their ability to incorporate opposing ideals into their work, resulting in a smaller space imparting a sense of spaciousness, or casual luxury with precise attention to detail. “We had a lovely couple who wanted to build a unique home along the Oregon Coast,” remembers Good. “They were committed to utilizing all of the wood from a eighty-year-old barn that had been on their family’s property for generations. Everything was carefully dismantled because it was important to them that we infuse elements of their family history in every aspect of the home. They wanted it designed and built to last for many generations as a legacy project.”

Nathan Good and his group of three other architects and an interior designer are known for their highly collaborative methods, involving all project stakeholders in a thorough, thoughtful design process. Their initial site assessments include analyzing views, rainfall, prevailing winds, annual temperatures and the path of the sun across the site through the seasons. They welcome input from their project’s clients and other team members, including interior designers, contractors, suppliers and energy consultants, resulting in the creation of a distinguished custom home.

Although Nathan Good Architects is headquartered in Salem, they have recently opened an office in Bend. Their custom home designs can be found throughout the western United States, Mexico and Hawaii. Demand for their services has resulted in a wide range of unique custom homes that span the spectrum from a modest fishing cottage overlooking the Deschutes River in Maupin to a 36,000-square-foot estate south of Denver, Colorado. “We’ve been designing custom homes in the Bend area for over ten years,” says Good. “Like many others, we see Bend as a haven for those who love the outdoors and feel a deep connection to the environment.” It’s no surprise, then, that when asked about some of their favorite projects, their designs in the Bend area quickly top the list. Central Oregon has been an opportunity for Nathan Good Architects to showcase their wide range of abilities, from multi-million-dollar residences to more modest cabins and retreats.

One home that captures the look and feel of Bend’s natural and cultural spirit is the Live Edge residence near Tumalo. The modern blufftop beauty is a LEED Platinum-Certified residence and was named GreenBuilder Magazine’s “Luxury Green Home of the Year” for 2018. Overlooking the Deschutes River from its rocky perch surrounded by ancient juniper and other indigenous plants, Live Edge complements the high desert landscape as if it took root among the sage and rocky outcroppings. The owners requested that the natural setting be preserved as much as possible, resulting in the home being designed to flow around ancient junipers and unaltered rock formations.

Still scratching your head over how a sand dune inspires a home? A signature project designed by NGA is still garnering recognition years after its completion in 2005 for its groundbreaking biophilic design. One national publication hailed it as “ingenious” for its functionality and beauty with a curved vegetative roof that reflects the client’s photograph of a graceful line defining the top of a wind-blown sand dune.

After downsizing into a 1,180-square foot home, Kathi and Tom Denton have no regrets, although Kathi misses a walk-in closet, and Tom parks his car on the street because the single-car garage functions as their primary storage space. The residence is about half the size of their last home, but the couple says its location in NorthWest Crossing’s Farmstead 12 development and the thoughtful layout has made the transition smooth.

“This location is perfect,” said Kathi. “We can walk to Portello Wine Café or Discovery Park, meet our neighbors at the firepit or snip herbs from a small raised garden bed.” It’s also close to hiking and biking trails and Shevlin Park, where Tom goes to practice tenkara, a Japanese fly-fishing technique.

Farmhouse 12 is one of several small-scale cottage developments in the popular and growing Northwest Bend neighborhood that prides itself on sustainable building practices, where every home is required to be Earth Advantage certified. Eric Meloling Construction teamed up with Greg Welch Construction to form Farmstead 12 LLC, which recently finished its last dwelling.

“Our intent is to make small homes livable and not feel like a small home,” Meloling said. The project features farm-style cottages arrayed around a parklike setting with a common area and a small barn with picnic tables and a fire pit where residents can gather.

The philosophy of downsizing corresponds with a housing-market trend toward smaller, more affordable homes. A recent story in the Washington Post cites data from the National Association of Home Builders that shows the average size of new houses fell for the third straight year in 2018. (Data for 2019 is not yet available.)

The Dentons bought their residence less than two years ago after Kathi completed treatment for breast cancer, and they found themselves regarding their lives differently. “Life is short, and the new house gave us a fresh start,” she said. “I don’t think about having cancer all the time.”

The two have been married twenty-three years and feel strongly about reducing their environmental impact. Moving into a smaller, more energy-efficient home is a big step toward that goal. They’ve never had kids, although they parent two cats, Gus and Deud. The couple explored the idea of small-scale living and became obsessed with tiny-home TV shows but ultimately decided that 400 square feet of living space wasn’t for them.

Instead, they ended up with a home that relies on a “reverse living” design that features a kitchen and master bedroom on the second level. It may seem novel, but it’s a case of form following function.

The Dentons’ home is squeezed into a narrow lot that required their designer, the late Charlotte Van Valkenburg, to create a two-story home that captured views, sunlight and access to Farmstead 12’s common outdoor areas. “It’s the genius of the designer who is able to see a piece of dirt and imagine what is not there now, but will be there someday,” Meloling said.

By necessity, the ground-level had to include the garage, which currently sports a T@B teardrop camp trailer as a fun sleeping place for visiting nieces and nephews. Tom added tall storage cabinets for shoes and coats that they don’t have space for in their bedroom. Sports equipment hangs on racks from the ceiling, and plastic bins store everything from photo albums to holiday decorations.

Visitors enter the cottage on the first floor, where a sliding barn door opens into a den that functions as a guest bedroom, TV room and office. A guest bath with a soaking tub, a laundry room and a converted coat closet for the cats complete the first-level layout. 

But it’s the upstairs “reverse living” where the magic happens. A narrow staircase opens into a large, vaulted and contiguous space for the kitchen, dining and living rooms. One comfy chair and a sofa face the natural-gas fireplace and TV. The room is filled with plants (plastic because Kathi says she doesn’t have a green thumb), a large dining table with bench seating, an island and well-appointed kitchen with high-end appliances and hardwood floors. A deck off the living room is where the Dentons go to enjoy coffee with the sunrise or fresh air in the evening.

At the opposite end is the master suite with the bath, and one shared sink that they say is just fine. The bedroom has a view of Mount Bachelor and is large enough to accommodate a king-size bed and two nightstands, as well as a small nook with a view of Awbrey Butte. To add texture and character to the room, Tom built a floor-to-ceiling herringbone pattern on the wall behind the bed made of pre-cut barn wood.

When the Dentons moved into the residence, they left most of their previous furnishings behind and instead selected much of the cottage’s décor based on functionality, style and artistic preferences. “Living small forces you to choose the things that make you happy,” Tom said. “This fits our needs.”

Editor’s note: Designer Charlotte Van Valkenburg was killed along with her cousin in an automobile collision with a drunken driver in British Columbia this past summer. Bend Magazine featured Van Valkenburg previously for her work as a mentor and coach of the Summit High robotics team.

Some of us wouldn’t dare trade out our family’s heirloom holiday decor for something new and flashy. Grandma’s ornaments, auntie’s crystal and mother’s china are what make the holidays the holidays. But others crave a fresh, clean and new look to spruce up the winter season. For those intrepid decorators, we offer these contemporary solutions to tired old traditions.

Monochromatic Accesories ⇾

Ditch your relative’s complicated nativity for strikingly unusual accents that still speak to the warmth of the holiday season, and carry over easily into the new year.

⇽ One Accent Color

Choose light monochromatic shades like white, gold and silver, and contrast them with bold splashes of red or green accents for a modern take on your tree.

Natural Elements ⇾

Bring the outdoors in during the chilly days of winter with elements of nature like pinecones, branches and tiny accent boughs.

⇽ Winter White

White is clean, classy and contemporary. Choose the most basic color for linens, candles and china for a simple but striking look this season.

Light it Up ⇾

Rather than the multicolored tree lights of Christmases past, string a multitude of single shade lights for illuminated appeal.