Luxury lodge look a winner for Snohomish interior designer

Snohomish-based interior designer Tanna Barnecut won a national award last month for her work turning an empty basement at a home in the Eastern Washington city of Selah in into a cozy, cabin-like living space.

The homeowners made several requests for the basement of their home. The children wanted a place to play their games. The husband wanted an attractive yet casual space for entertaining, while the wife wanted room for working out.

And they wanted it have to have a rustic feel.

“They wanted it to look like an old lodge,” Barnecut said. “The most unique thing about it was the wall treatment. We did an entire wall of old reclaimed barn wood. We just left it in its natural state.”

Barnecut personalized the decor for the owners by incorporating some of the husband’s fruit box art work on the rough walls.

Dark brown furniture and layered rugs added to the feel. A custom shuffleboard table was built to fit the space with a one-time licensing fee contract to use the logo from their alma mater, Washington State University.

The makeover won Barnecut a 2013 Interior Design Society’s designer of the year award in the category for specialty areas — media rooms, game rooms and home offices. Designers from Tennessee and Texas took second and third places in that category.

Barnecut’s winning design was titled, “Lux Lodge.” It’s the second consecutive year that Barnecut, whose business is Tanna By Design, has placed first in a category of the competition that is open to 3,000 Interior Design Society members across the nation. Barnecut rounded out the first-place win by placing third in the Living Spaces $30,000 and under category for 2013. Her 2012 first-place win was in the kitchens category.

Project entries are accepted for the Interior Design Society awards from May through September each year. There are potential 17 categories although the judges reserve the right not to present an award.

Barnecut has been an interior designer for more than 20 years. She opened her own studio, Tanna By Design, in 2006.

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