John and Terri Bomgardner knew they didn’t have a typical bathroom.
That’s what they were going for, actually, when they commissioned a custom home on Camano Island.
Recently, however, that feeling became fact when their architectural firm, Pelletier + Schaar of Stanwood, won a second place award for the bathroom’s design in the Seattle Design Center’s 2006 Northwest Design Awards Competition.
What’s so special about their bathroom?
Let’s start with the bathtub. First off, it fills from the ceiling.
That’s right. Thanks to the magic of modern plumbing, crystal clear water pours from a hole directly over the two-person tub.
If that weren’t interesting enough, that vertical column of water, which echoes the lines of the tall conifers outside, lands in an infinity-style tub from Kohler.
Fill it to its lovely white brim and any extra water will cascade into a surrounding collection channel, which filters the water back into the tub at a constant temperature.
You are warm, surrounded by water, as you gaze through large, fir-trimmed windows at Saratoga Passage in the distance.
Sigh.
There are some drawbacks. The Bomgardners, who have lived in the house three years now, have a limited supply of hot water. They try to keep their energy consumption low, so there isn’t always enough hot water to fill the giant tub.
“It is really cool when it works,” Terri Bomgardner said. “It is a trick to get it all the way full. It maintains the heat of the water as you draw the bath.”
When it does work, ‘it’s just fabulous,” she said. “It’s like a mini vacation.”
That said, Bomgardner is more a “shower and coffee” woman, than a “bath at tea” type of gal, which makes their large glass shower all the more enjoyable.
It, too, features a view of the water and an open line of sight to their bedroom, making this design not just intimate but decidedly rebellious. Glass panes appear to be coming right out of the radiant-heat floor thanks to inset troughs in the concrete.
Pearl Schaar, who works in tandem with business partner Dave Pelletier, said the Bomgardners were open to anything, especially when it came to the master suite, which takes up the entire top floor.
“It was probably the highlight of the entire home design,” Schaar said of the suite, accessible by an elevator and then a short walk across an interior bridge.
“Typically when you’re working with clients, there are conventions everyone is used to, so you just sort of assume how it’s going to be,” Schaar said. “Once you step outside that box, you’re able to come up with really, really wonderful environments.”
Bomgardner is impressed and honored that their architects beat out big-shot Seattle-area firms for the design award using their project.
“It was a really good partnership,” Bomgardner said. “Dave could really think very technically, very quickly. Pearl was always backing it up with lifestyle, asking ‘Is it livable?’ The more we live here, the more I feel we’ve succeeded.”
Reporter Sarah Jackson: 425-339-3037 or sjackson@heraldnet.com.
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