Two Dreams, One Home

Richard Lane and Tracey Yonick are looking to expand their art collection, and the 27-foot gallery just inside the front door gives them plenty of space to do so. When you have a modern house, you really need a great neutral color (a beige in this case) as a base for everything else, Baker says of her color choice for this heart of the house. The neutral takes your eye where its supposed to go. Its your anchor. (Benjamin Benschneider | The Seattle Times)

RICHARD LANE couldn't wait to build a starkly industrial contemporary home, one of steel and glass and concrete, and one that matched the quality of downtown office buildings.

Tracey Yonick couldn't wait to build a cozy, comfortable home, one of color and sumptuousness and warmth, and one that reminded her of the rich hills of Tuscany.

He's a neatnik. She likes color.

Trouble is, Lane, an entrepreneur, and Yonick, a speech pathologist, are married. And the house in each of their dreams had to be the same house.

So they turned to architect Rex Bond of ARC and interior designer Amy Baker for a match made in Magnolia.

"I had Rex promise we'd still be married at the end of it," Yonick says. "Especially since my husband and I wanted such very different things."

They are both married and happy, cemented by a home cast in stone.

Bond designed a water-view home that would fit right into a Tuscan hillside, with grand windows, bowed terraces and soaring ceilings — as well as blackened-metal panels and a Kasota-limestone exterior, the same stone used for Benaroya Hall. On the inside, Baker used reds and browns and rich textures to add warmth to concrete floors and steel-framed windows.

"ARC primarily does commercial construction. We needed that expertise," Lane says, from his perspective.

And from Yonick's, "We were after warm and sensual.

The 4,400-square-foot house, built by Krekow Jennings, was completed in November 2004. The space accommodates three bedroom suites, a private den for Lane, a media room and a commanding 27-foot gallery for art. While Lane was very involved in the design, each says the modern interpretation of a Tuscan hill home is just what they envisioned.

The Venetian plaster wall (by David Bryant) is hers. The blackened-steel posts and beams are his. The concrete floors (by Paul West of CSM) are his. The fireplace is hers, but the honed metal around it is his.

Blackout blinds in the media room surround the fireplace. Push a button and the back yard is revealed beyond the flames. That was Lane.

A toasty-friendly coral wall carries visitors upstairs with a warm hug. That was Yonick.

But more often than not, the cry is "That was Amy!" for Baker's interiors. The drape of a rich curtain, a fine turn of metal or the hue of a room, "That was Amy." The couple says it over and over in total agreement.

Take the white glass mantel in the media room that turns the whole wall into an art piece. "We call it 'Fire and Ice,' " says Yonick. "The idea was fire on one side of the house and the water on the other," says Lane. That was Amy Baker.

The counter in the kitchen, a Northwest granite called Uba Tuba, sparkles with glints of brown, gray, steel. But this Uba Tuba is honed. That was Amy Baker.

As for the 12-foot-tall tile wall in navy that stands outside a walk-in shower, that was Nick, Yonick and Lane's 13-year-old son.

There is only one piece of art in his bathroom, a black-and-white photo of James Dean. The kid is bound to be cool. This whole Tuscan-contemporary melting-pot thing doesn't much concern him. The gallery down the center of the house, however, does.

"Nick wants to put a basketball hoop in here," Lane says. "And the concrete floor is a great surface for bouncing a basketball."

Rebecca Teagarden is assistant editor of Pacific-Northwest magazine. She can be reached at bteagarden@seattletimes.com. Benjamin Benschneider is a magazine staff photographer.

The home has an open flow, subtly altered by lighting from room to room. Blackened-steel doors on sliders eventually will close the media room from the kitchen. In general, says interior designer Amy Baker, we used the approach of lighting wall surfaces for two reasons: 1) because itll draw you from one space to another, and 2) this is a couple that will spend their life collecting great art. (Benjamin Benschneider | The Seattle Times)
The white glass mantel in the media room was made by glass artist Peter David to resemble a block of ice. The couple call the fireplace Fire and Ice. (Benjamin Benschneider | The Seattle Times)
The 16-foot living-room ceiling with a soaring maple fireplace framed in blackened steel is softened by the warm directed lighting, rich red hue of the walls and built-in bookcases. (Benjamin Benschneider | The Seattle Times)
This is the classic layout of the modern home, where one space bleeds into another, Baker says. Todays homeowner is going to have a surround-sound system. But you have concrete floors, lots of glass, walls, all these hard surfaces, and youve got Independence Day in surround sound! So we decided to get theatrical and create this huge curtain to separate the family room from the private part of the house up the stairs. (Benjamin Benschneider | The Seattle Times)
The votives on the living-room mantel are from glassybaby, a Seattle company started by the couples friend, Lee Rhodes. (Benjamin Benschneider | The Seattle Times)
Getting on the same page


Differences of opinion and what becomes of them are often the very foundation of a new home. Architect Rex Bond gathers those opinions, sorts through them and finds the commonalities hidden therein:

"You really have to know how to listen to people and to completely, 100 percent respect their intuition," he says.

Bond begins the hunt for the commonalities by trying to find out what the couple is trying to express: "There may be something in the middle that they can both gravitate to." It's not a compromise, really; Bond doesn't like that word: "It means you're settling for less. This is about finding that piece that resonates with both of them."

In addition, "the architect tries to limit the big ideas to a manageable number, not to get confused in the minutia."

But, most of all, Bond says, "The more you talk, the more you find commonality."