One of our hand-carved bears guards the main entry door. I designed a custom door with a “speak-easy” opening and arch top frame for architectural interest. The door and trims are made out of reclaimed wood from a 100-year-old water tower from Ketchikan, Alaska. We added interest into the entry floor by inlaying a tile “rug” pattern made out of mosaic stone and glass tiles.
This Stickely clock is over 8 feet tall, adding visual “weight” to this 23 foot vaulted ceiling in the living room. In the ceilings we used reclaimed Jara wood that is popular for boat building. The dark wood used in such a tall room brings the ceiling height down to a more human scale, creating warmth and coziness to an otherwise towering room. We had a fish carving artist create a larger than life fish to add even more height and interest to this room. Notice the upright columns to the right of the photo, where we created twig art over the “shrinkage joint” allowing the log walls to come down 6 inches around the window and door areas.
Gas fireplaces tend to not have much “wow” factor as we may initially intend, so I had one of the iron smiths add some drama to our “fishy” theme. The hammer marks on layers of metal complements the rough texture of the stone.
In most of our design/built homes we have bears that best suits the architecture or our homeowner’s personality. Over the years we have had bears fishing off the docks, climbing over the deck rails, sitting at the picnic table, looking in the window, sleeping up in the log trusses, and sitting on a two-hole outhouse—kindly holding the toilet paper for anyone that visits. Our bears are creative, just like our log homes!