13 minute read

20 Shadow and light

from Methow Home 2022

by Methow Valley Publishing

from Methow Home 2022, page 14

14 Meant to be

HOMES Shadow and light

Pine Forest cabin combines comfort and practicality

BY ASHLEY LODATO

As you approach the Shadow House, you’re drawn in five stages from the entrance porch, through the mudroom area and wide hallway, to the living space, and out onto the outdoor seating area — increasingly wider spaces leading you through the dwelling to the clearing encircling the house, bounded by the edge of the forest.

The vacation home of part-time Methow Valley residents DL Byron and Pam Massey, the Shadow House is nestled in the woods at the top of Pine Forest, with peekaboo views of the surrounding hills beyond the pines.

For Byron, this five-step flow supports aesthetic he and Massey sought for the house. “You can see from the porch through the house to the lanai,” he said. “We are so drawn to the natural areas of the Methow Valley, and this house makes us feel like we’re surrounded by the outdoors.”

For their Methow Valley home, Byron, a creative professional, and Massey, who is in business operations for a large Seattle non-government organization, were looking for a “modern mountain retreat with a minimalist, Scandinavian-cozy feel,” Massey said.

“We initially thought we’d buy a modest cabin here,” she said. “We did our homework, looking at all the areas of the valley. We wanted something small, with sun but not too much sun, close to recreation. We did the home tours with a Realtor.”

But when the time came to make an offer, Massey said, there was nothing on the market that was quite right for their needs and budget. “So we did a reboot, and started thinking about building,” she said.

A study of the valley’s micro-climates and the Multiple Listing Service database led Byron and Massey to a lot in Pine Forest that was “massively overgrown,” she said. “But we really liked Pine Forest, with its community aspect, neighbors dispersed throughout the development, and services like water and garbage. The ski and bike trails would be right out our door. The problem was we just couldn’t envision ourselves on this densely wooded lot.”

The owner of a neighboring piece of property, however, suggested that the couple view the lot from his land, giving them an elevated overview of the parcel. “We immediately saw the potential,” Massey said. “We saw what forest management could do. We hung out on that lot for a while and it felt awesome. We embraced the idea of being in the trees and not looking into anyone else’s windows.”

Bryon and Massey bought the lot in 2018 and began camping on it as they thought through their next steps. “We knew we would do something small and modest, on a tight budget,” Massey said. “We will eventually age out of our activities — and we might age out of this Pine Forest location — but for now and the foreseeable future it really suits us. When we come to the Methow we drive for four hours. We want that drive to pay off in an opportunity to retreat, to be a bit secluded.”

THE NEXT PHASE

To envision a future in the Methow Valley, Bryon and Massey had to first backtrack to what motivated them to create a home here in the first place. Passionate road cyclists, the couple “started coming here years ago to ride the roads in a different climate,” said Massey. “We really resonated with the culture here, we met people, we loved the Methow vibe. But we got busy with kids and life,” she said.

Later, though, Massey said, “we had a few incidents in life that made us realize that we don’t want to wait forever. We started looking at what we wanted to do in our next phase of life.”

Once they committed to establishing a home in the valley, Byron and Massey sought a builder who “knew this climate and who would embrace our aesthetic, our goals and our budget,” Massey said. “We clicked with Jeremy [Newman, Intrinsic Designs] and Jim [Salter, Blackcap Builders Collective] because they had a like-minded approach. We had written up a creative brief of what we had in mind — an affordable, Scandinavian-cozy minimalist house — and both Jeremy and Jim were realistic about the goals, budget and timeline.”

“We wanted it cozy with a lot of light,” Massey said. “We wanted it

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efficient for the climate, we wanted enough storage that we could keep recreational gear here, and while we didn’t want to replicate our west side home, we knew certain things that we loved, like cork floors.”

Several iterations of the design were required to reach mutual agreement, Massey said, but ultimately the couple is thrilled that they prioritized the features they knew they wanted to retain, and that they kept open minds about others.

For example, Massey said, “We didn’t agree on the woodstove. Bryon liked the smell of a woodstove, but I wanted to keep it simple with propane. We ultimately did a ductless system, and put in a highly efficient Canadian Pacific Energy stove with a blackened steel hearth. It really adds to the Scandinavian-cozy feel, and we’re able to burn wood from trees trimmed from the lot.”

“I like splitting wood when I’m here,” added Byron, who created a firewood management location to the side of a small freestanding gear storage building. “We thought

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the wood stove might just provide supplemental heat, but it turns out we both like having a fire going while we’re here.”

Other concessions the couple has been happy about include bedroom size. “Initially the rooms looked so tiny,” said Massey of the 90-square-foot bedrooms. “I was really skeptical, but we trusted Jeremy. He told us ‘You only sleep in your bedrooms. You come here to play. Sometimes you read a book on the bed. The bedrooms are big enough.’”

And indeed they are. With space for queen-size beds and closets, the rooms are adequate but not overly spacious. Newman said he put emphasis on the living space of the house, saving square footage on bedrooms and dedicating it to creating an expansive atmosphere in the relatively small kitchen/living room.

Newman addressed the benefits of having the majority of the home’s square footage dedicated to a kitchen and living space that are integrated into one contiguous area that interfaces with the outdoors. “There are a lot of doors and window that face into the forest,” he said. “The living space looks into the gorgeous forest that falls away from the hillside.”

“It was just serendipitous,” Massey said, “but we trusted Jeremy on some of these decisions and we’re so happy about that.

MEETING NEEDS

Newman, too, is happy about connecting with Byron and Massey and tailoring the cabin to meet their needs. “The Shadow House is a retreat meant to immerse them in the beauty of the surrounding forest and provide comfort in all seasons,” he said.

Newman conceived the Shadow House “with a dark exterior and a compact form to blend into the surrounding forest. The approach of the house gives the impression of complexity as the form steps away from you in several broken planes, but the majority of the house is an easy-to-build rectangle meant for efficiency.”

“It’s an 1,100-square-foot, energy-efficient, two-bedroom, fire-resistant cabin that was built on a realistic budget,” added Newman, who is also designing the new Methow Trails campus on Horizon Flats and Room One’s new building in Twisp.

The Shadow House incorporates design features that accommodate Bryon and Massey’s active lifestyle, Newman said. “It’s easy for them to come home dirty from cycling activities, take off muddy shoes and clothes, and either rinse off in the outdoor shower or come into the entry space that leads directly into a mudroom/half bath with a utility sink and laundry facilities on one side and the full bathroom directly opposite,” he said. “The entry has a heated tile floor, so wet shoes and gear dry quickly and the area is easy to keep clean.”

Salter, too, finds the practicality of the Shadow House satisfying. “The house is a great mix of efficiency and cost with very little wasted space, which I love,” he said. “It really helps to have a designer that spent so many years building houses when it comes to flow and efficiency of the process. We were able to do some innovative systems to come up with an efficient building that suits the needs of the clients and without additional cost.”

And echoing Newman’s sentiments about the collaboration among designer, builder, and homeowner, Salter added, “Pam and Byron [were] fantastic folks to work with.” FUNCTIONAL SPACE

Since Bryon and Massey have been largely working from home throughout the pandemic, they find themselves seeking opportunities to find moments of solitude at the Shadow House, frequently visiting for weekend retreats one at a time, while the other remains on the west side. Although the Shadow House doesn’t feature a dedicated home office, the farmhouse table in the middle of the kitchen serves as an ad hoc work space.

To some extent the couple designed the kitchen around the concept of the farm table instead of an island. “It brings people into the cooking area,” Massey said. “It’s a gathering place, a work space when we need it, a food prep counter. It functions quite well for us.”

Appliances and furnishings throughout the house were selected based on the limited selection afforded by COVID-era supply chain issues. “For things like a stove and refrigerator, we didn’t have a lot of choices,” Bryon said. “We wanted quality items, but not over-the-top. We prioritized appliances that are a hassle to replace — like dishwashers — and were more selective making those decisions. So far we’re happy with everything we chose.”

Byron and Massey entertain at the Shadow House, although the home hasn’t had its full social capacity tested yet due to COVID. “We’re looking forward to doing that more,” Massey said. But their young adult son and daughter visit, sometimes bringing friends, giving Byron and Massey a hint of what their home might host in the future.

BLENDING ART, SCIENCE

Newman addressed the five-step aesthetic that guides one through the house. “Architecture is a blending of art and science that is used to define space for people to use,” he said. “The way a building receives you, the way you enter, the feel you get as you move into a main living space, the views that are offered to the outside, and the spaces you use to find comfort and retreat all have the ability to be shaped to nurture that

Photo by DL Byron and Pam Massey

experience.”

The five-step approach is “just the way the Shadow House took form and a way of thinking about how people use space and how people move through it,” Newman said.

Newman juxtaposes his years as a nationally-recognized glassblower and sculptor with his architectural design concepts. “I spent years creating glass and mixed-media sculpture that had to capture the viewer’s eye, hold that gaze, convey a story and evoke emotion. Houses like the Shadow House are an opportunity for me to use my years as a fine art sculptor to create a form that has more life than a conventional home design. It’s an opportunity to use a house to create an evolving experience.”

The Shadow House’s name is derived from its exterior aesthetic — the fiber cement siding boards from James Hardie’s Aspyre Collection are a dark charcoal — as well as from the way the sunlight moves across the home throughout the day.

Newman spent an entire day on the lot before beginning the initial design of the home and said “there’s this neat procession of how the sun moves shadows across the north slope of the property, with these long drawn shadows all day. In conjunction with FireWise considerations, watching the sun helped us decide which trees to take out and which ones to leave; which trees would interact with the house and provide shading and shadow after the house was built. We left the big trees off the southwest corner of the house, to block the mid-day heat of summer; they drop this huge shadow across the building.”

FIREWISE-CONSCIOUS

Byron and Massey said that many of the FireWise efforts on their property were accomplished with the help of Department of Natural Resources funding, which provides support for homeowners to create defensible space around their structures. For Byron and Massey, that included limbing, tree removal and chipping.

Other FireWise measures are the home’s non-flammable siding, the metal roof and metal on the back wall facing the forest, and the metal soffit. An adjacent gear storage shed is similarly FireWise-conscious.

Only the entry porch and the steps on the outdoor seating area out back are wood, as a moderating influence on the dark exterior.

“The entry is Port Orford cedar,” Newman said. “It’s this beautiful gold wood. The warm wood tones of the front entry porch guide you to the door with a welcoming embrace. It then guides you into the light and spacious interior of the home.”

COVID CONSEQUENCES

Byron and Massey selected Newman as their designer in early 2019; by the fall plans were drawn up and Salter broke ground on the property. The couple’s Shadow House retreat was well underway in the spring of 2020 when COVID swept the globe, temporarily halting construction and dashing plans for Byron and Massey to occupy the house by June.

Needing a refuge more than ever, however, Bryon and Massey purchased a canvas wall tent and spent the summer on the job site. “We called it our ‘glamping zone,’” Massey said. “It really connected us to the land. We’d wake up and hear the animals in the night, the birds in the morning. We got to know the sounds of our home site.”

In fact, Bryon and Massey enjoyed the glamping experience so much that they put up the tent the following summer as well, occasionally sleeping in it or hosting overnight guests.

But for the most part, the couple has been relishing the quiet space the Shadow House offers: the convenient access to the recreation they love, the blurred lines of the indoor and outdoor areas, the tacit permission the house gives them to watch the play of light and shade.

For Byron and Massey, their time at the Shadow House is not so much a retreat from the labor and noise of everyday life as it is an advancement toward intentional periods of solitude, reflection and serenity.