While helping their friends move to Ellensburg, Washington, Scott and Emily Faulkner fell in love with a midcentury home there. Designed by architect James Cowan at 1957, the home nodded to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian design, using its L-shaped plan, native materials, flat roof, clerestory windows, and large cantilevered overhang for passive solar heating and cooling. Before leaving their friends and heading back home to Seattle, the Faulkners vowed to relocate Ellensburg if the home ever went up available. One year after it did.
The Faulkners purchased the home, moving from Seattle across the hills and settling into their new rural town. Scott, an architect and furniture maker, constructed the majority of the plywood furniture. And though the previous owners had renovated in 2006, much of the home’s original character stays. The couple was fortunate to get an entire set of the original drawings of the home, and they intend to honor and reflect Cowan’s design.
Who lives here: Scott and Emily Faulkner, cats Pearl and Tiger, and puppy Domino
Location: Craig Hill neighborhood of Ellensburg, Washington
Size: 3,200 square feet; 5 bedrooms, 3 baths
Kimberley Bryan
Many substances transfer between the indoors and outside. A bed of river rock inside near the entryway goes outside, as does the concrete masonry unit wall.
A large, unadorned entry window washes the entry with natural light, while offering a clear perspective of the exterior vertical weathered siding.
Kimberley Bryan
After the Faulkners, revealed here, entered the home for the first time after purchasing it, Scott introduced Emily using a midcentury design clock that hangs on the transparent, vertical-grain Douglas fir paneling in the living room.
“I was hoping it would look like one of those built-in clocks often seen in midcentury homes. And it will,” says Scott.
Hitter: Chiasso
Kimberley Bryan
The two-bedroom home blends timber, cement and glass. A large wall of glass lets light flood into the living room and also connects the distance into the outdoors, but a wood-screened courtyard facing it from feeling exposed into the street.
The home was constructed in 1957 for the Devney family. It stayed in its original condition until it was offered to its next owner in 2006.
The Faulkners have met both James Cowan’s daughter and one of those Devney sons. “Speaking together has added into the home and our desire to preserve it as a historic object of architecture,” says Scott.
Kimberley Bryan
Front entry is a study in textures: fir wood siding, cement pavers and cubes, glass, river stones and playful shadows created by open roofing.
The homeowners created their own version of a screen door a 3/4-inch board of fir plywood painted and sprinkled with circular cutouts.
Kimberley Bryan
The circular cutouts bring breezes indoors but also create an artistic light element.
Kimberley Bryan
Both enchanted with and motivated by the home’s rich design background, Scott constructed over half of the home’s furniture, including this entry console made from cherry and plywood, with cutout slots designed to make sorting incoming mail easy.
The slate flooring is unique to the home.
Kimberley Bryan
Scott also constructed the long, low-slung console, coffee table and armchair in this living room. “At this time the seat and coffee table are raw plywood,” he says. “They will be finished such as the console, and a few cushions will be added to the seat. However, like the home, I enjoy the furniture to be great in its own details: nicely made, with multiple, surprising functions and with tidy, surprising elements, such as the cherry and heavily striated plywood”
The couch and 2 orange vases were gifts from Scott’s family.
Tall orange vase: Mort’s Cabin; table lamp: vintage, Vintage Vine
Kimberley Bryan
Eames-style rockers add curves into an otherwise straight-lined composition.
Scott constructed the door propped against the wall along with a composite substance left over from one of his own architectural endeavors.
Kimberley Bryan
The bamboo flooring, installed by the home’s second owners, represent the abundant light that pours through paned windows.
Little groupings of furniture anchored by no-frills carpets in dark browns and gray keep the eye on the home’s lines and the play of shadow and light.
Rugs: Morning Coffee, Espresso, Flor
Kimberley Bryan
Scott constructed the storage cabinets to echo the scale and form of the rectangular opening that leads to the dining room. “I enjoy things Upgraded, but also usable and functional,” he says. “I appreciate architecture and furniture that’s adaptive and will transform itself for multiple applications.”
The tufted vintage Mort’s Chair, made by George Mulhauser, was a present from Scott’s mom.
Floor lamp: vintage, from a secondhand store (now closed)
Kimberley Bryan
Bamboo flooring continue into the dining room, bathed in light. High windows create an open atmosphere but block the view of the carport on the other side.
Kimberley Bryan
A classic teak and glass light fixture hangs over a desk and seat that Scott constructed.
The low-slung round table and console are both vintage.
Kimberley Bryan
One of many original pocket doors at the home connects the dining room to the kitchen, which retains its original layout and birch cabinets.
The previous homeowners had installed new flooring, a tile backsplash and updated appliances. “It really is amazing just how much of the home stayed intact,” Scott says. “And we’ve got that fantastic original spec book, which we can look at to find the items that are missing. Gradually we will try to re-create them”
Kimberley Bryan
The homeowners admit that other individuals might prefer to completely revamp the kitchen but they’re happy the cabinets and sliding glass doors stay. “It’s so interesting to observe how intelligently a few of the facets of the home were designed,” Scott says. “The glass sliders can be opened from either side, so that if you wish, you can get the light from the family room windows pouring into the kitchen. Where the dog bed has become, there used to be a swing-out desk that you could put up against the [image] wall, to operate at. I’d like to reconstruct that one of these days”
Hitter: made by George Nelson
Kimberley Bryan
The kitchen connects to a living room, making an open concept that is common now, “but if this home was designed, this was forward thinking,” Scott says.
The original fireplace was not drafting correctly, therefore the homeowners installed a woodstove in its own place.
Woodstove: Lopi Republic 1750, Armstrong’s Stove & Spa
Kimberley Bryan
Sliding doors off the family room conceal a large storage and utility room with floor-to-ceiling closets.
Scott constructed the sawhorse table, coffee table and sofa; the latter turns right into a guest bed. “Together with five bedrooms in the home, we actually haven’t needed to use it,” Scott says. “But I enjoy that it’s that second purpose.”
Kimberley Bryan
A staircase results in the bedrooms and baths, which can be “all about function,” Scott says. “They’re small, and regardless of what you do, you have to leave the bedroom to get into the toilet. A good deal of individuals who seemed in the home when on the marketplace were turned off with that. But it works for us”
Kimberley Bryan
Clerestory windows are the hallmark of the upstairs bedrooms. “You can tell their positioning was carefully picked,” says Scott. “The light that comes through the windows entirely changes throughout the day.”
In this home office, a vibrant shaft of afternoon light seems to point straight to one of Scott’s multiuse layouts: a Murphy bed that folds down to reveal a complete shelves and headboard.
Kimberley Bryan
After the bed is closed, the distance becomes a home office at both function and appearance.
Kimberley Bryan
Lined with sliding doors, the hallway includes ample storage created even more functional through another creative initial element: slide-out cabinets.
Kimberley Bryan
Even though a bathroom renovation by the last owners veered from midcentury design, the Faulkners still like the interplay of light through the windows that are original. “We will return the baths to their midcentury roots one day,” Scott says.
Faucet, sink: Grohe
Kimberley Bryan
The bathroom area is set by A enclosure with three dimensional windows that are rectilinear apart from the bathroom.
Kimberley Bryan
Though another bedroom has larger windows, the Faulkners created this their principal bedroom because they love the way light pours in through the clerestory windows.
Scott constructed the platform bed with underbed storage.
Kimberley Bryan
The only other furniture in the room besides the bed and a shelving is a vintage desk. “I saw it in an auction and thought it might be a George Nelson bit,” Scott says. “It was not, but we enjoy it.”
Kimberley Bryan
Living in the home for the past five years has shown the carefulness of this design into the Faulkners. “Cowan took into account all the organic elements we have here in Ellensburg: our famous winds, the need to capture the sun in sunlight through glass walls but shield from the sun at the summertime with large overhangs,” Scott says. “The home does not have air conditioning, but it does not require it. The home was not just designed to be pretty, but to be somewhat livable.”
Kimberley Bryan
Among the couple’s greatest challenges was enlarging storage at the carport for their bikes while still staying true to the home’s design.
The few of increased a storage area by 6 feet, constructed doors to match the home’s front “display” doorway and repurposed the home’s siding to create a wall.
Kimberley Bryan
For this couple, the architectural background of the home helps them enjoy the home itself. “It is like unraveling a mystery,” Scott says. “We are lucky that we’ve got the original spec book for the home, together with all the blueprints. Whenever we wonder what the house had that’s gone, we can always reference those. It is unusual and astonishing to have all the materials”
See more photographs of this home