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Right and opposite bottom left: The main kitchen, on the first floor, has classic school-house lights over the granite covered island, providing a perfect workspace.
Yet, when the five Traub children and their collected 10 grandchildren come to visit, there is space for everyone in the 4,900-square-foot home, which features four bedrooms and a den. Parker says many elements of the home were created in close partnership with the Traubs, and with Janet in particular, as she’s a painter and has a great design sense. “I was told that she may be a very challenging client, and I thought, ‘Bring it on,’” says Parker. “If she really cares about every single drawer and what’s in it — awesome.” In addition to a shared vision for the classic mountain home, Parker and Janet also hold a mutual reverence for mountain life. “It’s a different lifestyle. There is a larger focus on our recreational time,” Janet says, adding she and Leonard wanted the house to reflect that focus by keeping a casual feel. They also wanted a space where people would be comfortable, but without tipping into a clichéd mountain design esthetic. “We didn’t want horses and bears and twigs and things.” What the couple did want was something completely tailored to their needs. Parker, who approaches her work with the clients’ lifestyles in mind, says she often hears people say they like to cook. However, she began to understand that this was a little more involved than usual when she discovered that Janet ran the Bee-Bell Health Bakery in Edmonton until she sold it in 2006. “This is a woman who cooks,” says Parker. “This is a woman who spent six days a week, 10 hours a day, building a bakery in Edmonton.” To that end, the house has two kitchens. A spacious, modern kitchen, overlooking what Parker describes as one of the best views in the valley, is fitted with a central island set beneath simple school house lights, Bianco Antico granite counters and the creamy quarter-sawn oak used throughout the house, in everything from the 60
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“I was told that she may be a very challenging client, and I thought, ‘Bring it on.’ If she really cares about every single drawer and what’s in it — awesome.” —Lori Parker, designer flooring to the cabinetry. A separate bakery, one floor down, has a maple table where Janet makes, among other things, breads and pizzas. “The lower kitchen is kind of a dream,” says Janet. “It’s nice to have work areas where you can be a bit carefree.” And she doesn’t confine her culinary magic to the indoors; the patio outside features a Le Panyol oven, imported from France and made of clay terre blanche bricks. “You have to heat it with wood to 800 or 900 degrees, and then let it decrease to whatever temperature you need.”
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