Home On Derange Unconventional Design Creates Unique Residence
Not everyone likes the new home Steve and Cathy Thosath perched on a rocky outcrop north of Browne’s Mountain.
Some neighbors call it “weird,” and jurors for The Spokesman-Review’s 1995 Inland Northwest Home Awards program failed to single it out for citation.
Even its designer - architect Jon Sayler - hesitates to show slides of the Thosath house to prospective clients.
“I don’t want it to scare people off,” Sayler admits. “I don’t want them to think you have to do something outlandishly crazy like this to save money. You can build something quite conventional, and still keep costs reasonable.”
But the Thosaths didn’t want conventional - they wanted funky! They’d talked about it since college.
“What we had in mind was something whimsical,” Steve explains, “something fun to be inside, like a shack that’s been added to over the years, with mismatched windows.”
It seems odd to hear Thosath, a respected Spokane custom home builder, suggest his house bears any resemblance to a shack. After all, the three-bedroom residence boasts maple floors and a high-efficiency gas furnace.
But other elements cause visitors to scratch their heads in wonder - the skewed skylight in the living room … the crooked ceiling panel in the bedroom.
“We wanted something that forced people to stop and think a minute,” says Cathy, a second-grade teacher at Sheridan Elementary with a subtle streak of mischief.
Sayler calls the look he was after “home-builder industrial.”
“I used lots of bare, basic, cheap lumber-yard materials in kind of a tongue-in-cheek way,” he says. “Only one window has any trim, but that one’s framed with real wide boards and a big watertable (a ledge to throw off rainwater) on top, and a purple arched thing on top of that.”
Sayler describes the home’s front entry as a playful reference to the two-story brick porticoes popular with suburban mini-mansions. In this instance, though, the effect suggests a wild west influence.
“At one point,” Steve recalls, “Jon wanted to do a three-story, western-style false front. I told him, ‘I don’t want to be that obnoxious.”’
In truth, nothing about this house is obnoxious. A better description is charming. Tapered knee-braces support exaggerated eaves, and windows of all sizes punctuate the facade in unpredictable places.
Inside, angled stairways draw visitors toward living spaces, and drywalled niches provide display areas for Steve’s antique outboard motors and Cathy’s doll collection.
Even with so much going on both inside and out, the home’s cost was kept to $60 a square foot - about $20 per square foot below typical custom construction.
One way Sayler saved money was by keeping the home’s “footprint” small - the structure goes up, rather than spreading out. Thosath loaded the walls and ceiling with extra insulation to reduce energy costs.
Sayler called for inexpensive panelized siding on the exterior, “and we didn’t even try to hide the seams.” Nor did he box in the soffits to conceal rafter tails.
Inside, he designed the dining room to “grow” beyond its normal boundaries when dinner parties require extra space. And Sayler kept the living room cozy by not putting a patio door on the exterior wall.
“Clients typically demand living rooms that are 16-by-18, or 22-by-17, when in fact a furniture arrangement for a conversation area is almost never bigger than 14-by-14,” Sayler says.
For the same reason, he also kept deck space to a minimum. “Decks not only aren’t cheap,” Sayler points out, “they’re also a big maintenance item. They’re just a whole lot of lumber stacked out in the weather.”
Sayler may not push the Thosath plan to everyone who walks through his office door, but he can’t hide his pride at having conjured an unconventional, affordable solution for a challenging site - even if, like 31 other contest entries this year, it didn’t win an award.
“Steve and Cathy told me they always dreamed of someday building their funky little house.
“‘Funky’ is a word that’s a few years older than I am,” he says, “but I still think I sort of know what it means.
“This is my version of funky.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color Photo