Ironwood Ranch

The clients came out of the corporate world and asked for symmetry. Everything else followed from that: a long barn form with a wing at each end, a covered patio at the front and another at the back, and low connectors between them that read as glass hyphens rather than hallways.

The house sits on family land. The old house comes down, the shop stays, and the new plan steps back from the road so the drive can turn and open into a circle wide enough for guests to arrive and leave without parking in front of the door.

The garage doors face away from the approach. From the front you get windows, stone and vertical boards, and nothing that announces a garage.

Board and batten carries most of the house and stone does the rest, and the two never compete. Stone wraps the chimneys and the piers along the covered patio, then stops. The rest is vertical boards in a color closer to deep moss than to black, dark enough to sit quietly in the field and warm enough to hold the evening light.

Standing seam metal on the low pitches. Inside, the beams are wood and the brackets are steel, left visible on purpose, because the joint is the detail.

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The connector between the wings is where the house shows its hand. One wall is a run of fluted millwork in the same dark tone as the boards outside, floor to ceiling, with the doors hidden inside it.

Glass on the other side, so you cross from wing to wing in daylight and the wall reads as texture instead of storage.

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The great room runs in one line: kitchen, then dining, then living. Ten foot ceilings through the rest of the house, and here the ceiling opens up to the trusses.

One pale plank runs the whole floor, from the entry through the kitchen and on into the bedrooms, so nothing marks where one room ends. A mirror at the entry catches the fireplace at the far end, so the first thing the door gives you is the fire.

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The fireplace burns wood. A surround of cream rubble stone, a wood mantle carried on the same line as the beams, and a niche beside it for the wood itself.

The television sits to the side rather than above the fire, and a bench runs under the hearth for the people who end up there anyway.

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The primary bath is the bright room of the house. One matte tile runs the entire room, floor to wall to ceiling, so there is no line anywhere for the eye to catch.

The shower is a steam room with two heads, a bench and a full wall of glass instead of a cage. One long mirror over the vanity, a built-in tub sized for one, and a stone ledge in place of a rack.

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Two people work from home, so there are two offices at opposite ends of the plan. Hers is deep green: plaster on the walls and the ceiling, closed millwork so nothing sits out, and a steel and glass desk against a full height window.

His is at the far end of the guest wing, dark plaster under an open wood vault, far enough away that two calls can run at the same time.

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