Visitors don’t so much step into Dale and Di Townsans’ Mukilteo home as dive in.

The house is awash with color, from the Caribbean blues and greens in the bedroom to the sunny orchid hues in the foyer.

When the couple bought this home it was plain, dull, puritanical.

“This is not how I am used to living,” Dale Townsan, a dentist, remembered. “It didn’t fit my personality.”

They got busy putting their own stamp on the place: replacing windows and cabinetry and adding color and contemporary art and funky track lighting.

One of the showcase pieces greets visitors right away. Stained glass inset doors are as aesthetically pleasing as they are functional.

The Townsans are avid scuba divers and have dipped their flippers in waters as far flung as Grenada and Papua, New Guinea.

They wanted to replace the home’s entryway steel doors with something that would let light in but not leave them living in, well, a fishbowl.

They had Stan Price, an owner of Covenant Art Glass in Everett, create an abstract design that captures the turmoil of a wave crashing and churning.

Di Townsan, a forensic nurse, said she wanted to see water when she looked at the windows but she didn’t want a literal design, which would be “boring, boring, boring.”

She wanted people to see whatever they want to see when they look at the images.

The two inset windows and a separate round window nearby, took about 90 hours to design and create, Price said.

He used a variety of glasses: architectural and hand-blown antique glass; glass with clear textures and beveled textures; hand-rolled glass with flecks of green and pink; and iridescent glass as slick and shiny as the scales of a fish.

The light plays through the window, casting rainbow marks on walls and adding an element of underwater elegance to the home.

Reporter Debra Smith:

425-339-3197 or dsmith@heraldnet.com.

3232 Broadway, Everett

www.covenantartglass.com

425-252-4232