Berner Primary Suite Remodel

The second floor of this timber frame home, originally built for our clients 20 years earlier, was feeling dated and no longer fit their lifestyle. The clients wanted to update the finish materials, casework, and color palette, expand the guest room/office space, make the bathroom more accessible for guests and add more privacy between the primary suite and guest room. The clients also wanted the remodel to be as sustainable as possible and stay within a tight budget.

We swapped the bathroom and walk-in closet locations placing the bathroom between primary and guest rooms. To make the timber frame feel more contemporary, we created a modern Asian look that worked with the heavy beam work but gave the home a more refined, contemporary feel. We used reclaimed bleacher seats from the Cuthbert Amphitheater for cabinet faces, a cedar beam from an old Portland warehouse for a hip board and old cedar fence posts became Japanese Shoji doors. A salvaged log that was felled in 1875 near Mendocino, California, was used for cabinet drawers and face frames.

We expanded the guest/office space into a first floor vaulted area, adding a layout table in the space below existing skylights. We also added a bookcase and base cabinets along one wall of the room with a built-in window seat below a low window.

This project won the Oregon Remodelers Association Outstanding Remodeling Achievement Award for Residential Interior under $100k in 2010. It was also featured in the Register-Guard newspaper.