Payette Lake Cliff House
This waterfront vacation retreat is a rejuvenating reprieve from the troubles of city life. Head over to to Idaho and see this quaint, wood-clad home from McCall Design and Planning. You’ll love the fact that it sits on a rocky cliff that overlooks Payette Lake.
The exterior features mostly teak over a rainscreen system. But you also have thermally broken steel windows and natural zinc aged prior to installation. The designers wanted to keep the ruggedness of the home as much as possible. They wanted it to remain as congruous to its surroundings as possible.
Everything, right from the entrance — a warm wood front door on the middle level that loosens into a an open vestibule, which leads to the dining area on one side and the living room on the other — to the wrap-around picture windows that allow the main social areas to peek outward into expansive landscape vistas, has been meticulously implemented to have as deep a connection to the outside as possible. Which is why the house itself features a zig-zag plan, for all the rooms to have views of the wooded scenery and make the people inside them feel “as though you’re outside,” according to the designers.
Inside, you’ll find plaster-finished walls that create a soft, mottled finish. This serves up a sharp and welcome contrast to the space’s sharp steel lines and wooden elements. The centerpiece is a circular staircase made from bent I-beams and wood.
The Payette Lake Cliff House is one of the finest examples of architecture that integrates the outside into the inside instead of putting barriers between human living spaces and nature.
Photos courtesy of McCall Design and Planning