An Artist's Oasis -- He Sculpted The House Like A Piece Of Clay

IT'S A 10-MINUTE WALK FROM the Southworth ferry terminal to Douglas and Kit Granum's Kitsap Peninsula home. As you stroll the stone-tossed beach, the sounds of civilization give way to the rhythmic splash of the tides. Seagulls soar overhead, and time seems to stand still.

The Granums' house hugs the base of a tree-lined hill, in a secluded inlet bordered by high, wooded banks. With its weathered shingle walls and craggy shake roof, the house looks as comfortable in its setting as a tide-washed log. "I wanted this house to be part of the landscape," explains Douglas, an artist.

Though small, the house seems as big as all outdoors. The airy interior opens up to views stretching from the Tacoma Narrows to the Cascade Range. Decks extend from the house on three sides, and doors are left open from spring to autumn.

"In the summer, our living room is really Puget Sound," Douglas says.

The artist discovered the property 19 years ago after a creative block sent him fleeing his Seattle studio in search of some quiet. Returning to the Southworth beach he frequented as a child, he found himself so drawn to the setting that he asked a neighboring property owner if she knew of any land for sale. A year later, the 800-foot-long stretch of shoreline was his.

The first thing Douglas did when he acquired the site was build a "banya" - the Russian term for an outdoor steam bath. "I figured I needed that to survive," he says.

Only later did he start to work on the existing house, a much-remodeled cottage whose original structure dated to the end of the last century.

Douglas basded the design on the image of an oyster. Working without a set of plans, he sculpted the house the way one might mold a piece of clay, pushing out some walls and tearing down others until he got the look he wanted. As the building took shape, he sketched out revisions on pieces of wallboard or scraps of wood and handed them to his builder, Brian Laird, who would return the next day with engineered drawings.

The remodeling picked up speed after Douglas married Kit in 1982. Also an artist, Kit now divides her time between a career in property management and mothering Kya, 5, and Nevis, 1. "I was real comfortable with building a house," says Kit, whose parents were architects. "I can't imagine living in a house that somebody else built. We need to design what we're going to live in for the way we live."

A two-story window frames the vista from the front entry, while windows wrap around the angled face of the living room. The octagonal master bedroom perches above the kitchen like a crow's nest, taking in scenery from every direction and affording a front-row view of eagles, whales, seals and land otters.

The bedroom has a cedar ceiling surrounded by narrow clerestory windows. At first, their presence is puzzling, since the eaves outside prevent sunlight from entering directly through the panes. Then Douglas explains that the clerestories were designed to capture light reflecting off the water. At dawn, the ceiling is flooded with sunshine; at night, it's awash with moonlight.

The decor is decidedly casual. The rooms feature sisal flooring and durable vertical-grain fir cabinetry and trim. The kitchen was designed to be the social center of the house, with a light-filled eating nook and a generous island where guests can gather 'round and kibitz with the cook. Tall windows slide open, dissolving divisions between the breakfast area and deck, while the window over the sink frames a view of the garden.

The hallway behind the kitchen is lined with cupboard doors - two of which open to reveal Kya's Hobbit-sized bedroom. Children of all ages seem drawn to this space, a former walk-in closet that Douglas and Kit painted pastel blue and fitted with an operable skylight ideal for stargazing.

Down the hall there's a cedar-lined bathing room furnished with a double shower and a Japanese soaking tub modeled after one the Granums admired on a trip to Japan. A window alongside the tub overlooks the garden beyond.

The grounds are dotted with the artist's creations, many of which are destined for private and public collections throughout the world. A stone figure watches over the reflecting pool in front, while a fountain flanks the path to the studio above. Carvings rest in a Zen garden at the top of the hill, and a face peers out from the trunk of a nearby maple.

Although the home is exposed to wind and waves, the Granums say they enjoy that sense of kinship with the elements, and have made the seasonal changes a central part of their lives. In spring, Kit cultivates roses and plants cress and lettuce for summer salads.

In the summer, friends drop by regularly for a session in the banya, followed by a meal on the deck. Autumn is a time for making cider in the apple press and curing salmon in the smokehouse. Douglas rows out to the fishing boats anchored offshore and - as he likes to put it - catches fish with his wallet. "I've gone out in the morning, filled the bottom of my boat with salmon and had it in the smokehouse by that evening," he says.

When Douglas originally bought the property, the widow who owned it told him the site was so remote, she and her husband didn't learn about the outbreak of World War II until a week after it happened.

Although progress has caught up with this waterfront oasis since then, the basic charms of sun, scenery and tides still endure.

"Someone once said, `Your house is the stage that you play your life out on,' " says Douglas. "This has really proven to be a very wonderful stage for all of us."

Seattle writer Fred Albert reports regularly on home design for Pacific, and is co-author of "American Design: The Northwest," published by Bantam. Mike Siegel is a Seattle Times staff photographer.