Fire Work With Me
Four Seattle architects heat up home design with custom hearths for every look and lifestyle.
Deck and Dine
Materials Steel mantel, marble
hearth, lava rocks
Architect Jim Castanes, Castanes Architects
JUTTING OUT INTO Ann Wesche’s expansive deck from the adjacent family room is a glass-walled fireplace that spreads light and warmth to both spaces, delivering a two-for-one payoff. “We light it every night,” Wesche says. “And when we entertain, it looks really neat from out on the deck.”
“We wanted to create a nice ambient light at night, and to make it possible to use that dining area even when it’s cool,” says architect Jim Castanes, who designed the unusual three-and-a-half-foot-high fireplace. Outside, a glass-paneled trellis system keeps the rain away. Along with the fireplace, it adds just enough indoor comfort to make the deck usable in early spring as well as in fall.
On the inside, Wesche wanted a modern fireplace to go with the contemporary style of the house, so Castanes created a surround and mantel of steel with visible rivets, dressed up with a polished marble hearth. Gas pipe fittings attach to a custom steel lava rock tray; the rocks can be rearranged to vary the flame spread.
While she likes to turn it on for dinner parties on the deck, Wesche’s favorite aspect of the fireplace is the view through to the Sound from her seat in the family room. “The water is just a stone’s throw away, so you see freighters going by, the mountains if they’re out, and ferries pulling into Eagle Harbor,” she says. “You see the light of the fire, and the light of the ships going by. It’s a view you never tire of.”
Castanes Architects, 1932 First Ave, Ste 928, Downtown, 206-441-0200
www.castanes.com
Cozy Nook
Materials Stone, basalt slab
Architect Tom Bosworth and Steve Hoedemaker, Bosworth Hoedemaker Architects
“THE SCANDINAVIANS had it right,” says Lynn Grant, the owner of a supremely inviting stone fireplace nook, the snug sanctum of a weekend house on Decatur Island. “They live in a drippy, wet, cold atmosphere, and they figured out hundreds of years ago that inglenooks are perfect.”
An inglenook—a small recess next to a fireplace—is indeed perfect: for curling up with a novel, for taking a midwinter nap, and for gazing out over meadows and evergreens. “The Grants both like to read a lot, so it’s a place for getting away and building a nice fire and picking up a book,” says Steve Hoedemaker of Bosworth Hoedemaker Architects. Built of intermingled Montana ledgestone and fieldstone, with huckleberry basalt slab benches and steps, the nook incorporates wall niches to set a glass of wine or mug of cocoa and outlets to plug in laptops. And since it’s visible from the dining room, its warm ambience casts a glow over dinner parties. “When we have guests we tend to gravitate toward the fire, and everyone snuggles up in there,” says Grant.
In winter, once the fire heats up the stone, it becomes a kind of enchanted cocoon that no one is eager to leave. “Sometimes the kids don’t go to their bunkhouse, they just stay in the inglenook all night,” Grant says. “We find my teenage son and his friends in the morning, tucked up in there sleeping.” Because it’s entirely lined with stone, the nook stays cool all summer long, making for an attractive impromptu bedroom in the hot months as well.
Bosworth Hoedemaker Architects, 1408 N 45th St, Wallingford, 206-545-8434
www.bosworthhoedemaker.com
Published: January 2009
