Luxury Lodge Inspired Timber Frame Home

Timber -frame and log houses often conjure notions of remote rustic outposts located in solitary surroundings of open grasslands or mature woodlands. It’s not very often one thinks of upscale suburbs. So when developer Fred Austin approached MossCreek to create a timber-framed home on less than an acre in the densely populated Pronghorn development — a gated golf course community just outside Bend, Oregon — the principle of the firm, Allen Halcomb, was intrigued.

“One of the greatest challenges in designing a house in this type of community is that neighbors sit close so you want to be cognizant of privacy when it comes to the placement of rooms, windows and doors,” says Halcomb.

To play up that feeling of seclusion, Halcomb chose to orient the living spaces to the back of the house, which faces east and offers expansive views of the golf course. Halcomb designed the public, or street, side of the house to create drama and a high-desert architectural theme.

High-Desert Design

MossCreek approached the house’s front facade with a nod toward Tuscan villas with its staircase tower. The house is otherwise built with horizontal massing, which follows more traditional designs in the area. Except for the fanciful tower and stucco walls, the home speaks to its Oregon surroundings: locally quarried stone, massive 20-inch western red cedar log and vertical board and batten on the upper level.

Open Interiors

Halcomb introduces visual divides in the open floor plan — which includes the great room, kitchen and dining room — through structural elements. The ceiling treatment changes between the spaces. For instance, the dining room, although open to the kitchen, has a vaulted ceiling, as opposed to the flat ceiling in the living room and kitchen. The exposed log rafters found throughout create cohesion in the design. A teak bar imported from South Africa becomes the visual divide between the kitchen and great room.

Another design divide is a jumped stacked stone wall with a see-through fireplace that separates a parlor from the great room. The stone echoes the exterior stone pillars. The dining area is walled with glass windows on three sides to further the experience of wide, open spaces.

Rustic Exteriors

Halcomb also designed the exterior spaces with entertaining in mind. Off the kitchen, a stone terrace offers ample space for outdoor grilling. While the home’s public front plays on its Italian influence, the back of the house, which is viewed from the golf course, plays up its rustic lodge appeal — all porch posts, roof rafters, trusses and support beams are log, while an upper-level balcony railing is mortise-and-tenon construction. The getaway lodge offers luxury fit for its Western setting.

TIMBER HOME DETAILS:
Square footage: 4,000
Designer: MossCreek Designs

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