Cowboys & Indians Magazine

Northwest Naturals

 

 

 

From the Balcony of their home in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, Jeff and Diane Koznick take in the view - from the meadows to the mountains to the shores of beautiful Lake Coeur d'Alene. Their home within The Club at Black Rock community stands amid tall grasses and mature trees and is surrounded by the flora and fauna that nature planted there.

 

Or did it?

 

To the passerby, the Koznick home seems as if it were seeded in the middle of the meadow to grow from a sapling into a towering tree. In reality, the landscape was painstakingly designed and executed by Las Vegas, Nevada, landscape architect Jay Pleggenkuhle. The quaking aspen at the home's corner and the pines rising above the roofline were shipped to the Northern Idaho property and planted. It is nearly impossible to discern the planned elements of the home's landscape from the Pacific Northwest's indigenous tress and plants. And that is exactly how the Koznicks want it.

 

"It was critical to us for this house to look like it belonged here and was worthy of the land. It needed to be nestled in," Diane Koznick says. Raised on a farm in North Dakota, Diane says she grew up with a respect for the land. "I wanted nothing here that was offensive to the outside environment."

 

That was the couple's plan with the Idaho property. And so it is:  The house looks like something out of the old Bonanza series, adorned with dainty white daisies and surrounded by tall meadow grasses. "We can look out our window and see a 2-year-old brown bear cub or watch a fawn being born," Diane says. "We have this sense of watching the world go on around us but still not feeling isolated."

 

Diane, retail executive for Levi Strauss, and, Jeff, an investor, lived a temporary retired life in Nevada for a couple of years with dreams of buying horses and playing golf. One day, the couple's longtime friend Jan Luchini, a retired developer, called Diane to tell her of a recent trip to Northern Idaho. "She said it was one of the most beautiful places in the world and that I had to go," Diane says. A trip to Idaho a couple months later left her thinking, "I had just seen God’s country. It took my breath away."

 

The Koznicks had dreamed of a place that evoked a sense of history and wanted a sanctuary to enjoy their horses and golf. The couple took a tour of The Club at Black Rock with its framed Jim Engh-designed golf course and the Black Rock Ranch with its world-class horse breeding and training facilities. Located 20 minutes down the lake by boat, in Harrison, Idaho, Black Rock Ranch provides one of the finest stables in the country and is open to community members.

 

The Club at Black Rock quickly drew in the Koznicks with its amenities, beautiful views, and wide-open spaces. As they toured the area, they turned a corner that opened into a meadow overlooking a lake, "I felt like I was home. We bought it that day, which I thought we would never do," Diane says. "You know when it is right. You can feel it in your soul."

 

The couple considered how to best blend indoor and outdoor elements with open yet sturdy architecture and Northwest architectural style. They wanted, wherever possible, every part of the home to be made of natural elements. The home needed to be authentic, comfortable, and organic.

 

Calling on her developer background, Luchini kicked into architect and interior designer mode and set off with the Koznicks to design the couple's dream home. "We started with the lay of the land and spent a lot of time feeling where we needed to build," Luchini says. The choice to create a landscape that interacted with the native foliage settled the house and was the "the key to pulling it all together," she says.

 

The trio planned to create a home that was different and stylized with a distinctive scale. They chose 12-foot-tall lodge pole posts to hold up the home's exterior and frame the interior. "This home was expensive to build because of the heavy timbers and materials," Luchini says. "The quality of the materials and layering created strength."

 

The Koznicks were careful to choose natural materials that were true to an organic nature. "Organic materials live and get better as they evolve," Luchini says. "The Koznicks were not going to sell out and put in cheaper materials or cookie cutter looks but stuck with the distinctive and real — never did they settle based on cost."

 

The result is a home that reveals itself in layers. Ponderosa pine, Montana quarry rock, fossil stone, soapstone, and cedar are just a few of the materials that blend together to form the home. Themes running throughout the home are seen in the stonework, woodwork, windows, and furnishings. A local stone designer company, Stone Dimensions, created an exterior and interior fireplace from handpicked stone. All of the interior woodwork is hand-hewn and crafted with intricate detail. Luchini sketched the cabinets' details, and Robinette Cabinet & Carving Shop carved the art into scaled European cabinets. "Very seldom do you find an artist who can execute cabinets that way." Luchini says.

 

Cedar hardwood floors that run throughout the house required extra steps to install. The wood was acclimated and then hand-pegged with square nails. The attention to detail, such as the pegged square nails, lends to the authentic quality of the home - even the doorbell was rewired and retrofitted with an old servant's bell. "We didn’t want to overwhelm the home with stuff but chose to pay attention to the details," Luchini says.

 

Interior furnishings were selected for their history. For example, a buffalo hide above the fossil stone bar was passed from a chief of the area's Nez Perce tribe. A gun was originally traded for it, and today the Koznicks are the third owners. An iron whiskey distillery from the Prohibition era, 100-year-old spurs, and richly colored antique Navajo rugs are among the other interior accents. Some furnishings were reinvented from the couple's belongings. A luxurious fur throw over the edge of the master bed was made from the first fur coat that Jeff gave Diane. The lining of the coat was used to cover the small decorating pillows on the bed and embroidered with the couple's initials.

 

Commissioned art by Nevada artist Holly Alba, including paintings and sketches, makes up the bulk of the Koznick’s original art collection. Alba created a charcoal sketch of a pair of horses that adorns the wall over the couple's headboard. The sketch is raw and subtle, but Diane says it is one of the best parts of the master bedroom. The home's overall color scheme mixes serene palettes with infusions of red. Luchini says the colors were chosen to blend with the organic colors of the outside view. Bathrooms were given special treatment with details like purple faucets from France, a copper tub in the master bath, an original artwork behind the tub, and antique chests in the powder room.

 

The designing and building process was fun and memorable, Diane says - especially working hand-in-hand with her close friend Luchini on the project. "I can honestly say there is nothing we would do differently." Today, the Koznicks say they spend as much time as possible in Idaho relaxing, riding their three horses, and playing golf at The Club at Black Rock. Diane says she is grateful. "Every day here we take a moment to thank God for our blessings."