Welcome to Kate from the Pacific Northwest; a blogger trying out for a place on the Apartment Therapy editorial team as a House Tour Contributor. Enjoy her work!
Name: Jennifer
Location: Rio Dell, California
Size: 1850 square feet
Years lived in: 28
Fondly referred to as Masion Un (which means House One in French), this home seems almost hidden among the lush, overgrown plants, orchard, pond and alluring views all vying for attention over the five acre sprawl. Owner and designer Jennifer has the pleasure of calling this magnetic place home.
Although the house feels as if it has always been there, nestled in amongst the redwoods this region is so well known for, this is far from the truth. Off an old logging road, in the middle of a clearing left over from the days of clear cutting, the house was built from scratch where almost no original top soil remained. In the first 10 years, Jen didn’t even see snails, but loads of soil, mulch, and manure changed all that. The beautiful grounds are a witness to just how much work and love have gone into the place.
The house itself is octagonal in shape. The two-story circular design allows for a maximum number of views of the redwoods and residing hills. The extremely high ceilings and numerous windows lend a greater sense of space to the small layout. Boasting a generous entry way, three bedrooms, two baths, a kitchen, dining and living area, a music/library room, a tower loft, and a cabin there is ample room to move about and get lost in. Throughout the years, Jen has mostly filled the space with hand me downs and second hand treasures, taking her time to make it a place she and others feel comfortable in. Jen herself is a talented artist and owner of Chia Jen Studios, and a majority of the artwork and textiles come from her hand.
Among the home’s most interesting elements is an ancient wooden butcher block that serves as both a kitchen island and a conversation piece. Adjacent to the main house resides a rustic cabin complete with two old horse troughs ready to be scrubbed and soaked in whilst enjoying the sunset. Climb the 20 narrow and steeps steps through the main bathroom and you’ll reach the tower room. A large loft bed and eight windows greet you, allowing a view in every direction from the highest point within the house. An outdoor shower below deck on the sub-level provides views of the hillside and pond. The marriage of fun and function, nature and need are apparent everywhere you look.
Apartment Therapy Survey:
My Style: Creative, untraditional, less is more, color as accent, contemporary and eclectic.
Inspiration: The beautiful redwood scenery surrounding the property.
Favorite Element: The high ceilings and decking that wraps the full south and southeast sides. I designed these elements in order to make the most of the hillside and surrounding natural scenery. It’s a feast for the eyes!
Biggest Challenge: Finding a way to create a handicap access that did not draw away from the initial building. The master bath and shower is handicap accessible as is the beautiful ramp entry on the north eastern approach to the exterior deck.
What Friends Say: Some of the words friends use to describe my home are magical, artistic and cozy.
Biggest Embarrassment: The house sits on a five acre parcel, complete with an orchard and a plethora of plants and vegetation—I simply can’t keep up on yard maintenance!
Proudest DIY: It is almost entirely DIY.... Perhaps the brick patio that was put together from bricks left at the city dump when a big earthquake struck about 12 years ago.
Biggest Indulgence: The custom wood and glass library shelves built by a local craftsman in the music/library room downstairs.
Best Advice: Let the space speak to you before you fill it with furniture and art. Notice the light at different times of day. Live in the spaces before deciding what mood each area is really best for.
Dream Sources: The Mediterranean and travels abroad.
Resources of Note:
This is minimal because so many of the pieces found in the home are hand me downs, from second hand stores and antique shops found mainly in the local area. A majority of the textiles, including furniture upholstery, rugs, and artwork were created by Jennifer herself, along with a few pieces from local artists. The few pieces that are recently store bought, such as the lime green leather couch, are from Crate & Barrel.
Thanks, Jennifer!
Images: Kate Stockman
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I'm just about to embark on the house tour, but I must say: Kate, that opening photograph is stunning!
I absolutely love the home and the setting is off the charts. What a wonderfully enchanting location.
There is one small detail my eyes could not avert, and that is the track lighting rail in the kitchen.
I suggest taping off the inside rail and either paint the black rail in the matching wall color, or get rid of the entire system. It just doesn't seem right for your house to have such a lighting set up - there's got to be a better way.
Other than that small item - you are one very fortunate person!
"allows for a maximum number of views"
This phrase sounds very awkward, and not just because 'maximum' is a noun (the adjective is maximal btw)
I'm so happy to see someone from my neck of the woods!! I too reside in beautiful Humboldt County. Great job!
Looks beautiful! The side by side outdoor bathtubs remind me of the Cialis commercial. Awesome.
The initial image completely drew me in. Beautiful photos, but I would have liked more information. Did the owner design and build the house herself (DIY?--or did she hire contractors to do the building? Not clear.). Does she use a wheelchair--you mention access issues, but don't explain why. Perhaps because this is the home she plans to grow older in? If so, that's good forethought/planning. Also, very basic information is helpful: how large (sq ft), how many bedrooms, bathrooms?
Also, under Resources of Note, you should definitely add the names of local antique shops and the names of local artists. This specific information not only gives credit where credit is due, but is really helpful for those in the region.
I'm a bit of a fan of rustic design and I really love what you've done in the kitchen and the spare bedrooms. The views are stunning and its always been a dream of mine to own some land and to have that privacy. Needless to say I loved your place!
Wow! When I built an A-frame in my youth, I thought it looked like this glorious house. ..... it didn't.
Your house looks like the vision I had in 1970, and I'm glad to see it exists in the world. I'm still smiling at the memory of every single picture. Can't single out any of them. The design, the furniture, the carpets, the wood burning stove, and especially the well used wooden table in the kitchen...yummy!
I love this and could live there. What a special place.
"Masion Un" should be Maison Une.
The house is really great, but this isn't my idea of good writing--the description is working way too hard to be like a shelter magazine piece. I'd rather hear more from the homeowner and less from the blogger.
The decorating is not to my taste, but it doesn't matter at all. If I lived there, I would never, ever leave. It's a good thing she's a writer and can work from home :)
FantasticMrFaux, I kind of love you.
FantasticMrFaux nailed it. If you're going to use a foreign language phrase, you really ought to spell it correctly.
This is the home I imagine when I see the words "artist colony." <3
Ah yes. California. The Pacific Northwest.
crazy eclectic house! Not a place I could live in, but it truly is a magnificent setting.
That first picture is amazing! This is a great article. We can always use more Pacific Northwest people on the website!
Fun! Yes, the 1st pic drew me in, too. I also love FantasticMrFaux and his comments were spot on.
The house is truly stunning. It's clear that the owner is individualistic and not overly responsive to trends in decorating. I share FantasticMrFaux's shuddering with the blogger's lack of accuracy.
Sooooooo nice... FML!
This house is fantastic. It looks a little to full, dark and colourful to be somewhere *I* could actually live, but like the kind of place I would visit and want to spend hours exploring.
About the writing: to me it reads like something in between an undergraduate's first descriptive writing piece and one of those gushing full-page spreads in the real estate section of the newspaper. I'm sorry to have to say this Kate, because it must be hard to write a piece for AT that you want to get noticed for and at the same time give centre-stage to the house itself. But there are just too many extraneous gushy terms ("fondly referred to," "magnetic"), too many unnecessary literary devices ("Although x and y, this is far from the truth," and furniture "greeting" you when you walk into a room). The writing just tries to draw too much attention to itself, and in the process sounds a bit too laboured.
Also, if I read that something is an interesting conversation piece, I want to know what is actually said in those "conversations"! Is the butcher block a family heirloom? Scavenged find? What? And why does the house need wheelchair access? This is just dropped in in the survey at the end without any sort of background in the actual description.
@see: you are certainly not suggesting that "maximal number of views" sounds better, are you?
@RosieGreenie: i find adjectives and 'literary devices' central to the beauty of the prose, and beauty is just as important as hard info. The value of knowing why there is wheelchair access or of having AT code-words like 'scavenged' and 'heirloom' is questionable to me.
Good job, Kate, and lovely house. Now I gotta get back to grading 20 undergrad papers that unfortunately read nothing like your post but certainly evoke the word scavenged...
"Ah yes. California. The Pacific Northwest."
This.
nice house, but if you pick a person from california to be a "pacific northwest" editor i hope you keep the title in quotes. that's pretty laughable.
Carrefour_ny, I wanted to know the circumstances around the butcher block thing because the writer introduced it as "both a kitchen island and a conversation piece", and then said not a word more. It just read like absentminded box-ticking of things-that-need-to-be-mentioned-in-this-description, rather than an actual desire to tell us about the details of things. Saying something is interesting means nothing unless we're allowed to know *why*.
The conversation it seems to suggest goes something like "So... That's a nice butcher block." "Yep. I also use it as a kitchen island." "Yep." ... "Yep."
I so would live there! The shape of the rooms, the decor, the history of the pieces (even not knowing the details, I can see that they have had a life, a story). The garden/land is gorgeous, if ever there was a need to see more of the outside of the house, this is one of them.
http://the-upside-down-tree.blogspot.com/
Straight up Pacific Northwest. Straight up artist's colony. Yes!
Just one small, technical point: The house tour page calls this "Michelle's Maison Un," while the blog entry identifies it as "Jennifer's." A little confusing for readers - please fix the title on the house tour page.
I thought Pacific NW was Oregon, BC, Vancouver, etc. What do I know, I'm from the NE. Will there be photos of the cabin and the interior of the room at the peak? I saw the description but no photos, or did I miss something?
Hi All,
Kate here.
Thanks for all the feedback. It's a learning experience! My new motto is proofread, proofread, proofread! :)
I live in Northern California--about 2 hours from the Oregon Border, which is why they probably chose "Pacific Northwest". I can imagine the eye rolling b/c that's what I do when people refer to San Fran as "Northern California".
About the house itself...Jennifer's son, Ian, had muscular dystrophy, which is why the house had to be wheel chair accessible.
@ carrefour_ny : no, I am not suggesting that, that's why my comment reads "and not just because"; I find the phrase awkward, it should have been tossed and rewritten in a different way.
I love this place. So peaceful! A bit cluttered for my taste, but awesome nonetheless!
Kate- San Francisco is part of Northern California, you must be rolling your eyes at a lot of people-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_California
lovely. Breathtaking! I love all of the color in the home. The tile through out is not something you see in Michigan. So peacful. This is the kind of home that dreams are made of!
http://burningbridgesbnb.blogspot.com/
those horse troughs look alot like old bathtubs to me.
Love the pictures . . . and glad someone pointed out the French error.
I grew up in Humboldt County and have lived both elsewhere in CA (currently SF) and the pacific northwest. Those of you who are up in arms over the regional designation of this post may be right on a technicality, however it's worth noting that in almost every aspect, from climate to attitude, Humboldt has far more in common with the pacific northwest than it does with the rest of CA. The designation may not be factually accurate, but there's a good deal of truth to it nonetheless.
That being said, the eye rolling Kate's referring to is certainly not unique to her. It's born out of a sense of regional pride and the perception, from that far-northern vantage point, that folks in the Bay Area seem to think the useful part of the state ends somewhere around Napa. (To which our response is something along the lines of "if you think that's north, you have NO idea!")
Humboldt is sort of it's own whole world and no matter what the conventional definitions may say, from up there, both distance and dissimilarity can make it seem pretty absurd that San Francisco is supposedly part of the same region.
Interesting and homey. I would have liked to see a floor plan for this one.
Wonderful, wonderful home. Picking at the writing seemed way over the top, however, I thought the writing was appropriately descriptive and rather suited the house. Overall, the slides told the story.
Sorry, I know this is annoying: it's not "Masion Un", nor it is "Maison Une", the correct way to write it is "Maison un" (no capital letters in titles in French except for the first letter, and the number in this case is "invariable").
Beautiful home. Really, really lovely.
And while I understand why some might find the writing overly worked, I think it suits the house quite well. From my perspective, an artist's home in Rio Dell with a tower room calls for creative and expressive writing in the same way that a 350-sq ft San Francisco studio calls for writing that is straightforward and clean.
All in all, great tour. Nice work, Kate.
We roll our eyes that SF is "Northern California" because we live 6 hours NORTH of there...
I agree that it's the Northern part of California, but growing up in Humboldt County, we call trips to SF "going down South" hehe
edit, edit, edit
Oh I hope I hope I hope we can have a post-er from the Pacific NW! I'd love for it to be Kate. I thought her photos were lovely, and her writing descriptive and tasteful.
Well done! We all seem to be in an edit-y spirit today, so I'll just add that some of the paragraphs could be split. Lazy people like me love white space! :)
But seriously, I love the choice of house here. So far, this is my favorite of the "try-outs." The homeowner's use of antiques feels so natural and fitting to the house. The kitchen's panoramic view is enviable.
Gorgeous photos. I love the green dresser.
The writing needs work.
Owner and designer Jennifer has the pleasure of calling this magnetic place home.
I have a bad feeling magnetic was erroneously substituted for enigmatic. "Has the pleasure" is unnecessary filler.
Although the house feels as if it has always been there, nestled in amongst the redwoods this region is so well known for, this is far from the truth.
Of course the house hasn't always been there. This is pointless. Just say the house complements its surroundings.
The word whilst has no place in American English.
Amateur style mistakes repeated:
The house itself is octagonal in shape.
Jen herself is a talented artist...
A majority of the textiles, including furniture upholstery, rugs, and artwork were created by Jennifer herself...
Ow.
It's not MCM! Yay!
LOVE!
I thought this was in the French countryside and thought 'sure with bones like that and access to fabrics and furniture like that...' but lo! you're in CA! (I'm in NY) Wow! What fabulous finds and combinations. What a great eye and sense of design you have. I really love the richness, quirkiness, yet cleanliness of this space! I have a couple of french friends whose interiors are much like this. Rich in color, playful with textiles and textures, unconventional use of materials but smart and practical - wish I had your talents! I'm moving to CA just as soon as I can!
This house is a treasure.
I really liked the photos as well. So many of them capture the unique lighting in the space, and the color is so saturated that it looks hyperrealistic. And several of them are at awkward angles, but I kinda feel like that complements the quirkiness of the house itself.
@rayma
Come on, don't be such a whiney little baby, she's trying out; she's not the editor here nor are you. If you're so upset with the writing then you try out. 'Although the house feels like it's always been here' is a good scentence. No, of course it wasn't always there but when you read it you get a sense of an old 'antique' house.. she's bringing across a feeling which writing is supposed to do.
Photos were great, I liked the new compositions. Normally a cabinet is always photographed from the front (and I mean always) but you took the picture from the side. Also the stairs and the first shot were very pretty. Complements the house.
Also, as one of the biggest blogs worldwide; where is the editor.And why does every applicant needs to be put on the spotlight? It's an invitation for people to make hatefull comments on the article. I could do without.