Ways to Design with Pine

Inside the main living area, tongue-and-grooved white pine covers the walls and vaulted ceilings, and a red closet door, built of salvaged pine from the original house, slides open and closed on barn track hardware.

Niels and Jens hang out in the dining area. Like the wall behind it, the table was crafted from the felled trees. The floor is soap-treated pine found offsite. Brask bought the chairs at a flea market; the galvanized-steel pendant lamps are from AART Architects in Denmark. The doors at right open to the deck, which leads to a studio that the boys frequent on their stays.

Howard and Shumate in the living room, where Commune designer Steven Johanknecht introduced custom built-in daybeds with storage beneath. The carpet-fragment pillows are from Commune, as is the table, designed by Joshua Tree–based sculptor Alma Allen. The poster is by Mike Mills.

The home's upper floor features copious amounts of untreated pine. Five large cross-braces keep the timber frame rigid. The royal blue Ikea kitchen, Noguchi Cyclone dining table for Knoll, and Karim Rashid Oh chairs for Umbra all made the trip from the mainland in a twenty-foot-long shipping container. Above the wall-mounted credenza, a colorful painting of the Puma moonrise is by local artist Arthur Johnson.

"We didn't want to diminish the openness and height and feeling of a great expanse of space," said the owner of this resurrected 19th-century barn house in Pine Plains, New York. Fortunately, the barn frame's horizontal beams perform a domestic function by creating the illusion of a lower ceiling. An abundance of furnishings in rich materials fills out the space. Photo by Raimund Koch.

The outside deck, made of local celery-top pine, welcomes both humans and the natural landscape further into the house.

The kitchen is built from hoop pine plywood, including the countertops and front of the refrigerator. The leather drawer-pulls will patina over time.