Materials
The materials we return to.
Chosen for Minnesota winters, daily use, and how they look in twenty years.
A short list, on purpose
Fewer materials, better used.
A house with fewer materials reads as calm. It also ages better, because every material was chosen for its job rather than for a photograph. These are the ones we come back to, with the reasons, and the places where we would not use them.
Wood
Warmth that lasts.
White oak
Floors, stair treads, cabinet faces, ceilings on a porch. Tight grain, takes a natural finish well, and moves less than most hardwoods in a dry Minnesota winter. We rift- or quarter-saw it where the floor is wide and the heat is forced air. Not for the bathroom floor.
Cedar
Siding, soffits, and the underside of a lake porch. Naturally resistant to rot and insects; left to silver on a north-woods house, or finished when the house is meant to stay dark. Not where a mower or a dock cart will hit it every week.
Timber
Heavy posts and beams in a great room or porch, Douglas fir or white oak. The structure is the finish. Sized for snow load, joined so the seasonal check in the wood is part of the design, not a defect.
Stone
Weight in the right places.
Fieldstone
Chimneys, the base of a house on a slope, a retaining wall at the shore. It belongs to the Brainerd Lakes; it was already here. Laid dry-look with a hidden mortar bed so it drains and does not spall in a freeze.
Limestone
Thresholds, hearths, countertops in a quiet kitchen, Edina front steps. Honed, never polished, so it does not show every glass ring. Sealed, and chosen in a dense grade that takes the salt of a Minnesota entry.
Quartzite & soapstone
The working surfaces. Quartzite where you want light stone that takes heat and a knife; soapstone where a dark, soft, forgiving surface suits the room. We do not specify marble for a family kitchen.
Metal, glass and the rest
The details you touch every day.
Hardware
Unlacquered brass or oil-rubbed bronze on doors and cabinets, solid, with a weight you feel. It wears where hands go, which is the point. Stainless at the lake door, where the sunscreen and the wet dog live.
Windows
Triple-glazed on the north and lake sides, with real wood interiors and clad exteriors. Sized to the view, with a sill height that lets you see the water from a chair. Flashed and sealed for forty below and driving rain from the west.
Lighting
Three layers in every room, warm color temperature throughout, and dimmers on everything. Fixtures that can be rewired in twenty years, not thrown away. Low and indirect on the lake side, so the house does not glare across the water at night.
Start where you are.
Tell us about the place you keep coming back to in your mind. The one you already love. Or the one that doesn’t exist yet. We’ll tell you what we see, what we don’t, and what only you can decide next.