Bill and DeNeice Worthington went the extra mile to get exactly the house they wanted. For starters, they hired an architect — Mike Corl of Portland, Oregon — to interpret their vision and put it in blueprint form. "We could have gone to a builder and picked out a stock plan, but we wanted a real custom house, not a cookie cutter," says DeNeice.

Without being overly specific about the style of the house, the Worthingtons told Corl they pictured something European in look and feel, "with great doors and great windows" and a floor plan that would allow anyone who opened the front doors to see through the house to the rear exterior. They also requested that the house not be too grand or formal. "We much prefer substance to flash," says DeNeice, "and we didn't want any room off-limits to Avery or Phin," the couple's two young children.

Using his clients' verbal sketchbook as a guide, Corl came up with an inspired 4,000-square-foot "butterfly" floor plan that features two one-room-deep wings projecting from a rounded, mosaic-tiled entrance hall. The wing to the right of the rotunda is one large room that serves as a combination kitchen-living room. DeNeice explains the all-in-one choice: "Most parties end up in the kitchen, so we thought we'd just make it the best room in the house — one that could accommodate any function, from a party that might feature cooking lessons as a theme to just large groups. Also, the children can play here while I cook. I don't have to wonder what they're up to." Anchored at one end by an imposing cast-concrete fireplace, the room is zoned by the placement of furniture, with back-to-back sofas and several table-and-chair areas to facilitate informal dining, game playing, and children's art projects.

The "body" of the butterfly plan is an octagonal-shaped dining room that can be accessed from either the kitchen or the rotunda. Two sets of doors, one leading to the garden, the other opening to the entry, allow a pleasing view of the wooded setting.

For the Worthingtons, getting the house they wanted involved more than hiring an architect. It also meant a hands-on approach to the actual building. Indeed, DeNeice, who didn't want to settle for "what was out there" in terms of building materials, fixtures, and certain decorative elements, decided to obtain her contractor's license and serve as general contractor for the project. "It was worth it, and it was money saved," says DeNeice, an indefatigable researcher and a terrific bargain-hunter. "Like those 'high/low' stories you see in magazines, I'm the kind of person who likes to get the forty-thousand-dollar look for four hundred," she quips.

Examples of her penny-pinching prowess abound. In the entry hall, rather than pay $90 a square foot for imported mosaic stones, she called on decorative-finishes expert Ron Wagner to come up with an alternative. His $12-per-square-foot solution was to make his own pebbles by pouring concrete on sheets of glass, scoring the concrete, then smoothing the pieces in a stone tumbler. Says DeNeice, "Bill and I helped lay the floor, and it looks just as good as the one we saw in a European magazine."

Gold velvet draperies in the kitchen-living room cost nothing at all. They once graced the windows of a local Portland restaurant, and when DeNeice got word that the restaurant was slated for a major remodeling, she quickly spoke up for them. The same draperies reappear in the dining room, only this time in the form of a tablecloth made by DeNeice. She also stitched together the dining room draperies, using panels of green and gold silk.

Forays to flea markets, junk shops, Goodwill, antiques shops, and places like Pottery Barn turned up the lion's share of furnishings and accessories for the house. "I believe in buying things you feel passionate about, not just to fill a space. A friend of mine said you can tell when a house has evolved with people, or when they've just gone out and bought it all to fill it up immediately," DeNeice says. "I like the hunt, and I like slowly finding pieces I'm drawn to, so that furnishing a house is more a creative involvement than a job."

There's nothing commonplace about the house; even the color schemes are special. In choosing hues for the color-integrated plaster walls, DeNeice ignored standard paint chips and used such things as a bar of soap or a favorite dish as her "swatches." When the green color in the master bathroom turned out too pastel for her liking, she asked Ron Wagner for help. His solution was to seal the walls with a pigmented wax, a technique, she says, "that gives them a chamois feel and a real marbled look."

Although the fir floors in all of the main living areas are new, they look old and mellowed by time, thanks to the Worthingtons' special aging process. "We wanted to create the look of wormholes, so we threw down bags of screws and nails and rolled over them with a two-hundred-pound linoleum roller," says DeNeice. "The stairs were installed before they were distressed, which is a mistake I wouldn't make again. We had to dance up and down the steps in golf shoes. Next time, I'd know better; I'd outfit everybody who came in the house with golf shoes and ask them to stomp around."

Credits

Text: Pamela J. Wilson

Photography: Jon Jensen

Architect: Mike Corl of Vallaster & Corl

Regional Editor: Barbara Mundal