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PrintCraftsman Built
Custom features add beauty and value to this family’s home
Photography by Cameron R. Neilson
By Jackson Hole standards, Kim and Maura Harrower’s house could be considered rather modest—as it looks on the exterior, at least. But, like a pirate’s chest chock-full of gold doubloons, abundant treasures are hidden inside the home. At roughly five thousand square feet, it’s also roomier than it appears from the highway.
Everything about the place, from its hardwood floors to its granite countertops, is extremely practical and user-friendly, suiting the ultra-busy family of four that lives there. Influenced by Victorian style and guided by her godmother, a Connecticut interior designer, Maura has filled the home with color-rich rugs, refurbished antique heirlooms, and richly upholstered new furnishings.
Other noteworthy touches suggest the Harrowers’ love of nature: hand-hewn log trusses from Montana’s Bitterroot Valley, ceiling wood recycled from a National Elk Refuge outbuilding, and seven separate pieces of wooden trim on each window.
Two specific elements, however, transform the interior into a truly inspired living space: woodwork by Andy and Betsy Olerud of Dovetail Design in Driggs, and ironwork by Gilbert “Gib” Roberts of Jackson. Works by these artisans dominate the open space of the central living room and kitchen.
“I love to cook, and this is my room,” Maura says.
Maura’s input in the creative process was critical, her craftspeople note, since many of the design concepts came directly from her.
This cook-designer is actually a physician who often works eighty-hour weeks and is better known to area residents by her professional name of Maura Lofaro, M.D. She says that she and Kim rented in Jackson for years while they saved, so they could ultimately build the home of their dreams on their seven-acre property in Little Horse Thief Canyon.
Foremost, the Harrowers wanted top-notch craftspeople involved in each phase of the project. They also knew they could help keep costs down by planning what they wanted before commissioning the work. Having a clear vision meant the artists could, in Maura’s words, “take it and run.”
She came to the Oleruds with an “inch-thick folder of photos she’d been collecting,” says master woodworker Andy Olerud of Dovetail Design. “Maura pretty much knew what she wanted—the wood, the colors, the style. From her pictures, I did a rough plan, then a full-size mockup cabinet door to show her. And that’s pretty close to what they ended up with in the kitchen.”
Maura also supplied Roberts, an ironworker employed by Jeff Morris at Heart Four Ironworks of Jackson, with photographs of two specific items she’d seen in a couple of high-end catalogs—a range hood and an entryway chandelier. “I asked Gib, ‘Can you make something like this?’ and he did,” Maura says.
Roberts took on the Harrower project in his spare time, as his company was already solidly booked with work.
“Jeff [Morris] asked me if I wanted to do it on my own. He couldn’t get it done, and she needed it. ... I did it because Maura’s a friend of mine,” says Roberts, whose wife Shannon is a partner of Maura’s in Jackson Hole Ob-Gyn.
To achieve the look Maura envisioned, Roberts undertook a multi-step process with each iron piece: He would heat it up until it was red-hot, beat it with a hammer, run it through a mill, and make it “look old and ratty, just ruin it.”
Consequently, Roberts explains, “Maura’s work has a true old-time texture, not one just painted on to make it look like it’s old-time.”
The main ironwork pieces—along with a pair of matched wall sconces, a round mirror frame, and refrigerator-door handles—feature an antique twig-and-leaf motif with a wood-grain surface. Because the iron leaves, which were purchased commercially, all had the same shape, Roberts hammered each one, reshaping it to make it unique, before using them on most of the larger pieces. He created each “twig” individually, including an oversized pair for the two doors of the refrigerator.
A series of six branches running like spokes toward the edge grace the four-foot wide chandelier. In the end, its shape was similar to that of the one Maura had seen in the catalog, Roberts notes, but it had “different leaves, different colors. We did it with mica, put a different border on it, and hung it by a chain.”
“He is truly an incredible artist,” Maura says.
The massive size of the range hood fashioned by Roberts is balanced by the enormity of the island below, created by the Oleruds. Like the rest of the kitchen woodwork, it features quarter-sawn white oak, traditional in the crafts style. Newel posts provide the large piece with a surprising sense of elegance.
An L-shaped series of cabinets begins with what looks like a hutch but is actually a freestanding Victorian kitchen dresser. An under-window Vermont soapstone sink is custom-fitted into the cabinetry, which culminates in a wood-covered, oversized refrigerator. Just beyond a door, an eight-foot-tall, H-shaped entertainment center completes the visual line.
A close inspection of the woodwork reveals the Oleruds’ mastery of their craft. Initially, they sorted the rough-sawn wood by grain and color, then ran it through a flat planer before beginning the laborious chore of hand-planing. Andy modified a round-bottomed steel plane specifically to use on the wood for the Harrower kitchen. The crown moldings were hand-gouged and the edges of each cabinet panel painstakingly hand-hewn on the top and bottom.
All joints are dovetailed; square pegs indicate the panel fastenings of mortise-and-tenon joining. The three-coat finish, done with an environmentally friendly German product called Livos, means that repairs—even damage from scratches—can be easily made.
“My wife Betsy does most of the real subtle texture,” Andy says. While she usually puts in only about one-third of the total time devoted to a Dovetail project, the hand working required to complete the Harrower project meant the ratio was closer to fifty-fifty, her husband says.
“Doing machine work, you manipulate the wood; when you’re working with a hand plane, you’re interacting with it every second,” he explains, noting that the texture of the grain can change several times within a span of just two inches.
The Oleruds ascribe to some of the philosophies expounded by the late master woodworker David Pye in such books as The Nature and Art of Workmanship—such as, things done well have even more beauty as they age and develop patina, which are signs of use and everyday life.
“We ultimately want stuff we build to last forever,” Andy says. “In fifty years, that kitchen will be as good as it is now and in some ways even better.”
Dovetail’s woodwork also appears in other parts of the Harrower home. The master bath repeats the kitchen’s motif, but the cabinets feature subtle differences and are made of cherrry, with matching oval mirror frames. The laundry room cabinets, and a storage hallway consisting of extra-large cubbyholes—one for each family member—are made of alder and boast a velvet-smooth, Shaker-influenced look.
Alder was also the wood of choice in the upstairs office, which includes a full L-shaped bookshelf-and-file-drawers combination. Nestled below a window offering a splendid view is a wall-wide, two-person desk, well detailed for everyday use with built-in pencil drawers and keyboard pullouts.
“Look at the details on this,” Maura raves.
Ultimately, the Harrowers balanced high-quality craftsmanship with practicality. They believe this will pay off both in daily satisfaction and resale potential. Since they moved into the house in September 2005, its value has already grown to the point where if it were put on the market today, it would sell for “about four to four and a half times what we put into it,” Maura estimates. That could increase even more as they landscape and complete other finishing touches on the exterior.
Who could ask for anything more, even from a pirate’s treasure chest brimming with booty?
This story originally ran in the Fall/Winter 2006–07 edition of Teton Home and Living.
