Nature Takes Stages in an Eastern Oregon Home
This month’s blog post comes to us from the folks over at Houzz. It’s a profile of a couple that built an eco-minded cabin on a pine-covered mountainside in eastern Oregon.
As the articles describes:
In the late 1970s, Forest Gregory left his home in downtown Denver in search of a simpler life and some acreage. He landed in the wilds of eastern Oregon in 1977 and set about building his own home from the ground up. “I have always felt the call of the natural world, and feel most alive in nature,” Gregory says. “I felt caged and out of place in the city, so it was an easy choice to make.”
The construction is a bit unconventional; it started as a single-story ten-sided decagon of 450 square feet, built with the help of friends and family. Over the years, Forest added an entryway, second story master bedroom, and an open air tower on the third floor, all without formal building plans. Says Forest:
“Building this house was like putting together a puzzle without knowing what it is supposed to look like.”
Other features include:
- Circular living room, centered around a massive hub of beams created from logs found on the property
- Knotty pine walls
- Wood burning stove
- Large south-facing windows supply warmth during the cold winters
- Rustic staircase with railing made from fallen branches found on the property
- Observation tower access via trapdoor and ladder
- Twelve total acres of varying landscapes, including hills, creek bottom, forest, brush, and clearings
- Orchard with sixty fruit or nut bearing trees
- Greenhouse
- Homemade hammock strung up between the trees in warmer months
- Certified Wildlife Habitat
Check out the slideshow below or head on over to Houzz for the full article: