Houzz Tours
Houzz Tour: Reclaimed Wood Warms a Refined New Home
This house is a mix of rustic and refined, an ideal combo for an active young family that entertains a lot
“There’s a real interest today in natural materials, especially reclaimed wood,” designer Linda Engler says. “In this home, we used reclaimed wood in a compelling way, by pairing it with crisp, refined architecture. Put another way, we paired sophisticated bones with crude materials to create a tension throughout the house between the rustic and the refined.” For a family home that needed to be dog-friendly, kid-tested and used for entertaining every week, the pairing works like a charm.
The dining room opens to an outdoor porch with a wood-burning fireplace constructed of a Fond du Lac and Chilton stone mix. Above the fireplace the television is bookended with sliding wood doors. “Both the architect and the homeowner had a strong vision for the ceiling,” Engler says. “They wanted to see the stars and have a sense of outdoors inside.”
To create a sense of intimacy in the cavernous space, the 12-foot-long walnut parsons table “is beefy enough to anchor the volume,” Engler says, while the gray-lacquered buffets slipped into alcoves draw the room down. The tops of the buffets are a honed, matte granite “with an earthy feel that helps ground the volume,” she says. “We really like the crude, honest beams, which help define the [space] and add warmth and intimacy.” The wood came from Manomin Resawn Timbers.
To create a sense of intimacy in the cavernous space, the 12-foot-long walnut parsons table “is beefy enough to anchor the volume,” Engler says, while the gray-lacquered buffets slipped into alcoves draw the room down. The tops of the buffets are a honed, matte granite “with an earthy feel that helps ground the volume,” she says. “We really like the crude, honest beams, which help define the [space] and add warmth and intimacy.” The wood came from Manomin Resawn Timbers.
The dining room opens to another vaulted space, the great room. “Here we put in furniture that’s beefy in scale and comfortable,” Engler says. The two large sofas are upholstered in a muted color palette; the large coffee table helps anchor the room. The window casings and baseboard are stained dark to contrast with the cream walls and rough beams.
The fireplace uses the same stone as the outdoor fireplace (which also appears on the house’s exterior), with a little more gray mixed in, Engler says. The firebox is located to the right, and the TV is to the left. “To have these two coexist, you need a lot of width, which we had,” Engler says. A metal surround powder-coated matte black and a limestone mantel finish off the large feature.
In this room — which does triple duty as an office, music room and library — the color palette changes to rich, deep tones of gold and claret. An antler chandelier hangs from the ceiling; the millwork and bookcases are walnut.
The cast stone fireplace is surrounded by custom-designed walnut cabinetry, which also houses the TV. “Here we keep the tension between refined and rustic by juxtaposing the fine millwork with the crude timbers,” Engler says.
In the kitchen, marble covers the range wall to the ceiling, which is coffered and lower than in the vaulted dining and great rooms, to provide a sense of intimacy. “We also continued the marble around the door jambs and into the pantry,” Engler says. “It’s such a gorgeous, dramatic and natural material, which also provides vertical volume and makes for a clean elevation.”
The same marble was used on the kitchen island. The Italian pendants look like copper but are actually resin with copper coloring “to bring warmth into the space,” Engler says. White-painted cabinets above add further light in the space, while dark wood cabinets below provide an anchoring effect.
“[The wife] wanted it moody,” says Engler of the master bedroom. White-painted millwork pops against the inky-blue walls, lampshade and bedding. “She’s also light sensitive, so we installed motorized Roman shades on the windows. That way, the room can really be transformed into a cocoon.”
In the master bathroom, the floor tile is a large, 14-by-28 inch format. The shower is lined with simple white porcelain tile, with an inset area of glass in a herringbone pattern. The white-lacquered custom cabinetry with dark-charcoal reveal floats, “giving the space a modern feel,” Engler says. “To keep the room from feeling too bland, we created walnut walls that surround the vanity, and set the mirror within the walnut framework.”
Bold and dramatic, cozy and spacious, relaxed yet sophisticated. The home brilliantly blends opposites, even more so in its juxtaposition of the refined and the rustic. “The house was the first time I’ve really explored reclaimed timbers,” Engler says. “I love working with them. I love their organic quality. When paired with more refined woodwork and clean architecture, the tension is divine.”
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Houzz at a Glance
Who lives here: A couple with three children
Size: Five bedrooms, five bathrooms
Location: Edina, Minnesota
Designers: Architect Sharratt Design & Company and Linda Engler of Engler Studio Interior Design
Builder: John Kraemer & Sons
“This family is always on the go,” Engler says. “They’re in nonstop motion.” Moreover, they entertain a lot: the hockey team, charity organizations, school groups and friends and family. “It’s very rare that a week goes by that something is not going on at the house,” Engler says. “We needed spaces that could entertain various sized groups easily. This house does it in spades.” In the dining room, which occupies one arm of the L-shaped house, a long table with buffets on either side and a dramatic pitched roof with a skylight provide a dramatic setting for daily family dinners and entertaining alike.