Anne and Richard De Wolf were about to secure permits for the home they intended to build on 12 densely forested acres of land near Willapa Bay, off the southwest coast of Washington. As the co-owners of ARCIFORM, a Portland, Oregon, design-build firm that specializes in structures built before 1970, they’d renovated Dutch Colonials, Tudors, and Queen Anne Victorians. But they’d rarely created something from scratch before.
“My design was for an American farmhouse with white cladding and a black roof and windows,” says Anne. “I had it all ready for permitting, and then we went around the corner on a road trip and I saw a feeding barn that gave me the chills. It was love at first sight. I said to Richard, ‘We are scratching this original design.’”
The De Wolfs would spend the next eight years bringing Anne’s new and improved vision—inspired by the barn’s arched roof with deep overhangs—to life. To start, they felled the trees on the property, then they let the wood dry for a year. They used rough-sawn timber for the floors, ceilings, and beams, but the trim, paneling, and cabinetry wood needed to be milled, so they rigged up a flatbed trailer to transport it back and forth to Portland.
They did the framing themselves, alongside five of their employees. “I hung siding, I did the decking, I did the flooring, all while I was working very hard doing all of Arciform’s marketing, a lot of designing, and all the residential client-facing work,” says Anne. “We were very, very busy, but it was also super fun. We had parties with everyone camping out there, and big bonfires with the cutoffs from all the wood we milled. It was such an adventure.”
That hands-on ethos extended to the home’s architectural elements, many of which Anne salvaged. “I like things that feel like they’re one of a kind, and I like to have an adventure in the process of finding it. Of course it’s sustainable, but I have an emotional attachment to anything that’s vintage or antique. I had one new car in my entire life, and I had to sell it,” she says.
Digging through the warehouse of Bloomsbury, a Portland antiques store, Anne unearthed stained-glass windows that would ultimately be modernized in order to stand up to wind gusts of up to 80 miles per hour. She also sourced a large, arched stained-glass door that would eventually serve as the entry to the primary bathroom. The two gothic chandeliers that now hang in the great room were Richard’s contribution. “I did all the design work and all the hardcore sourcing and dug through all these antique stores, and Richard was like, ‘Let me check on eBay,’ and within an hour he finds these chandeliers to hang from the 18-foot ceilings, and they were just perfect,” says Anne. Many of the home’s light fixtures come from old ships.
In addition to the barn, Morrocco was another inspiration. “My absolute favorite architectural aesthetic is Moroccan,” says Anne. “A long time ago, I saw zellige tile online, and I’d hankered for it ever since. I did all kinds of research, and freight from Morocco was $5,000. Then I learned that Ann Sacks was bringing the tile I was looking for to the United States, and there was no question.”
The terra cotta field tile, Ann Sacks' Idris by Ait Manos, is handmade, hand-glazed, and hand-cut. “I wanted the space to feel quiet and beachy,” says Anne, who used the Idris tile in three ways: for the kitchen backsplash, fireplace surround, and on the walls of the shower in the primary bathroom.
Now Anne and Richard try to spend nine days at a time in their Portland home followed by five in their Washington getaway. And they love to have visitors out there, who can either sleep in the bunk beds in the guest room or camp outside. “I like cooking there much more than anywhere else,” says Anne. “We have huge 4th of July parties where people camp out and we have big feasts. The guest bathroom has a door to the outside, so people can come in and out. It’s kind of inside-outside living. It was meant to be uncomplicated.”
Anne has no regrets about pivoting to a bold design choice. “My husband always wanted to live in an old church, and I always wanted to live in an old movie theater. It’s a bit overscaled for sure, but we like that,” she says. “We have aerial-acrobat friends who can hang from the ceilings.” And she believes the house keeps getting better the longer they live in it. “The tile is holding up really well. It’s still my favorite thing.”
September 4th, 2024
