he Native Plant Garden Tour welcomes visitors to a celebration of the resilient beauty and ecological importance of Central Oregon’s native flora. Featuring 9 homes and 4 public gardens, this year’s tour is sure to inspire!
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Some Discovery West homes sit on the edge of a green space, a tree-lined ravine with a trail running through its center. Builder Aaron Salvesen and his wife Heather decided to build their family home on one of these prized lots. With interiors featuring walnut wood and a color palette of chocolate brown, gold and black, the modern home exudes warmth and richness.
“Aaron is the one who talked me into doing a dark wall color,” explained Heather, who often works with her husband to choose finshes in their projects, but was initially nervous about the deep beige with red undertones that covers ground-floor walls. “I thought it’d be moody, edgy and dramatic,” said Aaron. The risk ultimately paid off, setting it apart from the ubiquitous white walled interiors of other modern homes. It also inspired Heather to select bold finishes and fixtures, such as the cork wallcovering with gold leaf in the primary bedroom and the bird wing-shaped Guild Manor entry pendants above the floating staircase. Eye-catching natural Splendido Quartzite, with veins the color of single malt Scotch, covers many of the home’s surfaces.
Craftsmanship Meets “Moody Modern” Aesthetic
A third-generation builder who learned his trade in the Seattle area, Aaron founded Salvesen Homes in Bend in 2010. He designed the floor plan and built the two-story home with three bedrooms and two-and-a-half bathrooms. “Aaron knows all the components of building so well,” said Heather. “He is a perfectionist.”
His craftsmanship shines in the dining room hutch, where brass hardware gives the built-in piece a furniture-like feel. In the entryway and bathrooms, hand-placed fluted wood panels add rich, intentional texture. To soften the home’s linear architecture, the couple integrated round accents, starting with a glowing, 8-foot backlit mirror in the entry. This circular motif repeats in the powder bath’s half-moon mirror, the custom steel stair railing, and the etched pattern on the Thermador range hood.
Despite the home’s moodier finishes, it doesn’t feel dark. The living room—with a high, angled ceiling—features large picture windows that frame views of ponderosa pine trees and let in abundant natural light. The white brick fireplace and white oak floors add a touch of brightness.
Multiple windows are a Salvesen signature, and Aaron dreamed up the decorative balances throughout the home, concealing electronic shades that resemble crown molding and don’t detract from the view or aesthetic. “I wanted it to look intentional and not like an afterthought,” said Aaron.
Luxe Finishes and Meaningful Details in Discovery West
Heather loves to entertain. A large sliding glass door makes it easy to open the main living area, allowing people to mix and mingle on the patio with a fire-rock water feature. The jewel-box bar, backed with glittering gold mosaic Ann Sacks tile, is where she displays a dark green 100-year-old margarita set given to the couple by Aaron’s grandmother. “I believe in using the things that bring you joy and evoke memories, not tucking them away,” said Heather.
Other meaningful pieces are displayed throughout their home, such as a framed print of the Tower Theatre, which stokes memories for Heather, who was born and raised in Bend. Aaron created the floating shelves on the second floor, the kids’ zone with two bedrooms and a bonus room, specifically to display the family of five’s extensive collection of large-scale Lego sets, works of art in their own right.
The couple is proud that the home has both character but a feeling of cohesion.
“There’s this consistency to the whole house,” said Aaron.
Builder: Salvesen Homes | Architect: Jason Todd Home Design | Interior Design: Heather and Aaron Salvesen and KMR Interior Design | Landscape Design: LandEscapes
When the homeowners began building their dream space in Tetherow, one thing became clear. They didn’t want to play it safe when it came to design. [Photo above by Benjamin Edwards]
“We wanted to risk potentially coming to hate the choices we made, and that approach gave us permission to fall in love with bold elements,” they said, adding, “We wanted to have a sense of continuity but surprise.” The pair created a home filled with interiors that they noted leave guests reflecting, “That’s interesting.”
The mid-century-influenced home features statement light fixtures, wall coverings with pops of deep blue flowers, tropical fish and birds, and an intriguing play between light and dark.
From a library with a bright yellow daybed evoking an Eames chair to a laundry room with copper piping inspired by a 19th-century diving helmet, every room has character.
Bold Home Design Choices
The couple had roots in Southern Oregon and fell in love with Central Oregon on a ski and snowboard trip. They began working with John Brockway and Michelle Wilson of Lightfoot A+D in 2019 to create a home with a main living area that would accommodate large gatherings such as for Seder. The upstairs was designed on a more intimate scale so their family of four would be encouraged to spend time together.
The home’s main floor is split into three terraced levels to follow the sloping landscape. The upstairs, including the main bedroom with floor-to-ceiling glass windows, has panoramic mountain views to the west. In a nod to Frank Lloyd Wright, the home has moments of compression and release with smaller spaces sometimes leading to larger ones. Think Alice in Wonderland, but with sophistication.
“The spaces feel engaging and playful, in a way that reflects the personalities of the owners,” said Brockway.
A love of reading inspired the book nook in the upstairs family room, featuring a Cisco Home pink velvet sofa. Built-in bookcases were designed to reveal a surprise, hidden doors leading to the daughters’ bedrooms.
The dining room ceiling is darker than the rest of the home. The vision was a steakhouse by way of Bend, with an oversized oak table where the family likes to play games of Mahjong. An array of hematite-like Tom Dixon Melt Pendant light fixtures that extend beyond the table toward the living room creates what the family calls a dining hall.
“Modern can be simple and minimal sometimes to a fault. This house has textural contrast. It has layers,” said Design Bar founder and lead designer Anne Mastalir, who began working with the couple shortly after they purchased the property.
Creating Contrast in Architecture and Design
The homeowners are the first to admit they have opposing tastes in architecture and design. The husband, chief marketing officer of a software company, prefers more minimalist modern designs. The style preference of the wife, a clinical psychologist, leans to the traditional.
“We decided we would give the other person what they love in areas, instead of always splitting the difference so neither person gets their way,” they said.
Clad in thermally modified ash and dark gray ledgestone, the home’s architecture is undeniably modern, but more traditional touches can be found throughout. Throw pillows in the family room are upholstered in maximalist Emma J Shipley and House of Hackney fabric, then trimmed with fringe. The wooden floor in the dining room is a traditional French-style herringbone parquet. Cabinet doors leading to the powder room feature multiple panels of glass made to look antique with a high-gloss paint finish.
“They weren’t afraid to bring in materials from suppliers that most people would not think about for a modern house,” said interior designer Mastalir.
Thoughtful Choices with stories to tell
Whenever possible, the couple chose products and materials that were ethically sourced and efficient. The Ann Sacks MADE Modern Collection black tile on the kitchen backsplash is made from clay sourced outside of the Portland area. The Rumford fireplace in the living room is shallower and taller than a typical wood-burning fireplace, so it burns less wood.
To support women, it was important to the homeowners to find female light fixture designers. Brooklyn-based designer Danielle Trofe designed the fixture in the guest bathroom with sustainable materials—the hanging lampshade is made from naturally grown mushroom mycelium.
Art is also deeply personal. The family put together the black and white Vitra Algue installation in the entryway—its seaweedlike plastic components snap together like Legos. A photograph of the interior of historic Hangar One at Moffett Federal Airfield, California, in the main living area was taken near where the homeowners met.
The family didn’t expect to love certain parts of the house as much as they do. In the kitchen, striking and moody with lower ceilings, matte black cabinetry and a large marble kitchen island, and a single large picture window frames tall trees and a putting green.
“I love symmetry, and I fought the architect. I said ‘really, we’re going to do one window?’”
But with rabbits, quail families and bucks often passing through as the seasons change, it’s like a living artwork, adding to the mystery and the wonder that this home reveals around every corner. “It’s our favorite place in the house,” they added.
Wandering through the rambling ranch house on Swalley Road feels like a tour of discovery. Each room in the 6,121-square-foot dwelling reveals something unexpected: hidden doors leading to secret spaces, a ceiling made of cloth, a spiral staircase and wall niches that serve as small shrines to mustang horses.
The home sits on 25 acres near Tumalo and was acquired by a local family to create what they call The Sanctuary at Varekai Ranch. As longtime sponsors of 3 Sisters Equine, a mustang rescue based in Central Oregon, it was important for the homeowners to live close to the horses they help rescue.
“[The client] came to me with a strong perspective,” said Kate Darden, a Bend interior designer. “She wanted it to have an Alice in Wonderland feeling, that everywhere you go, there’s a surprise.”
Darden, along with Josh Wilhite of Copperline Homes and dozens of subcontractors who worked closely with the family over the course of two years of construction, brought that vision to life. The original scope of the project expanded beyond the residence to include a new pole barn with rustic accommodations and a medical stall for horses, a remodeled carriage house and extensive landscaping around a pond and surrounding structures.
An architect designed the horseshoe-shaped, two-story ranch house, but didn’t provide the family with detailed enough drawings and specifications for construction. “[The clients] had a vision for this house that the plans did not reflect,” said Wilhite. “Only after getting into the home’s construction and working with them were we able to absorb what they wanted. Their vision was nimble and continually evolving, and they were open to advice from people with long experience. They trusted us to fulfill the mission.”
A House of Surprises
Though the owners call it a farmhouse, the home draws from a wide range of influences—Western, Pacific Northwest, Southwestern, Spanish and even modern—blending them into a cohesive living space for the couple, their three sons and five dogs.
A unifying material found throughout the home is handcrafted tile from Kibak Tile in Sisters. All bathrooms have tile accents, as do many other rooms. Darden describes working with Kibak’s Carli Strachan to select patterns, then building different color palettes to present to the client and ultimately deciding where each motif should go in the house.
Darden said the client favored turquoise and terra cotta, but didn’t want it to look overly Southwestern. “Since we live in the high desert, I brought in earthy colors familiar in this landscape to complement the turquoise and clay she loved.”
The primary bath exemplifies how tile can be effectively incorporated into a maximalist design. The roomy space with a balcony features a copper, stand-alone tub, a chandelier made of eucalyptus-hued coconut shells, an ornately tiled shower and a mirror from Santa Fe flanked by custom Apparatus Talisman wall sconces. The toilet room is adorned with Anna Hayman’s vintage-inspired wallpaper in complementary patterns and colors. As a final flourish, a Victorian-era tête-à-tête loveseat invites inhabitants to linger and marvel at the dazzling display of colors and patterns.
The powder room off the home’s entryway exhibits similar maximalist tendencies. This room is cleverly tucked beneath the stairs, incorporating a vanity from India, a black vessel sink and rowdy cowboy wallpaper that, on closer inspection, reveals images of punk rockers and surfers. The bigger surprise, though, is the hidden door in the powder room that leads to a hookah lounge. Low-profile seating upholstered in plush fabrics and rich hues, including Middle Eastern–style poufs, beckons friends into a place of relaxation centered around the exotic-looking hookah.
The entryway highlights two distinctive features of the home: custom-designed lighting and hand-forged ironwork. One of two chandeliers, imagined by Darden and lighting designer Chris Ferguson of Part & Process, welcomes visitors at the door. “It’s meant to emulate a horse bit on the sides, with a light that filters through an oculus at the bottom,” Darden said. “It looks so cool at night.” Overhead, a narrow indoor catwalk is built of see-through steel flooring, allowing light to pass down into the entry while offering curious eyes below a glimpse of what’s above.
Ponderosa Forge of Sisters handcrafted ironworks around the home, including the fireplace grates and tools, a triangular dinner bell displayed outside and hardware such as towel hooks and floor registers with an interlocking “H” pattern that stands for the couple’s last name.
In the kitchen nook dining area, the ceiling— made of multicolored striped fabric—is another marvel to behold. Darden designed it after she and her client bought yards of a Peruvian textile they saw in Santa Fe without knowing where the fabric might be used.
“I had piles of fabric at my office and wondered what I was going to do with it all. Curtains seemed predictable, so I went to the project manager, Simon Doss, and told him I had this crazy idea,” Darden recalled. Together, they designed a system of building frames that incorporated magnets for snapping fabric-covered panels into place. Colored stripes with alpacas and little bears are in perfect alignment with one another. “It was labor-intensive,” she admitted, “but it turned out really nice.”
Calming Influences
While parts of the home exude playful energy, other sections shift toward a calmer demeanor. The barn room (or family room) is such a place. It’s where the family gathers around the long wooden table for meals or together on the leather couch before the Montana moss rock fireplace on game day.
“My favorite part of the house is the barn room, with its massive, super-tall vaulted ceiling,” said Wilhite. “I worried it might feel like a cavern, but the client was confident from the start. As we moved through the design process, Kate covered every wall and ceiling in wood, and we added timber-frame trusses, large light fixtures and a ‘Juliet’ balcony with a small reading space, its own library and a hidden door. In the end, it all worked out.”
From this room, the family and its guests can flow onto the outside deck that hangs over a pond deep enough for the boys and dogs to jump in and swim around. Two wicker chairs suspended from a large beam are a favorite of the homeowners for sitting or even napping.
For nighttime magic, the family and its guests can retreat to the courtyard built between the home’s two main wings. Tiny lights strung across cables and the glow of the firepit set the mood for lingering in the soaking pool or gathering under the stars with a glass of wine.
Builder Wilhite summed it up by saying, “There’s an eclectic flair to the house, and everywhere you look there’s something fun.” It reflects the family’s playful spirit and love of surprise, their trust in the design team to fulfill their vision and a desire to make Varekai Ranch a true sanctuary.
Architectural steel: Iron Environments | Builder: Copperline Homes | Cabinetry: Bladt’s Custom Woodworking | Finish carpentry: Outback Finish & Trim Co. | Interior design: Kate Darden | Landscape: Outdoor Innovations | Reclaimed wood: Forged Elegance | Tile installation: Harlan Manley Tile Inc.
