HOMES
Living room The Portmans built a bigger version of a house they loved BY ASHLEY LODATO
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liff and Debbie Portman loved the small vacation home they bought in Winthrop North Village in 2014. The “Bench House,” located on one of the neighborhood’s shrub-steppe benches, was within walking distance of town, had high ceilings and plenty of natural light, and was a convenient launching pad for the Portman’s many outdoor adventures. The only problem was, as the Portmans began to divide their time equally between Seattle and the Methow Valley, they felt like they were outgrowing the Bench House. “We were ready for a bit more elbow room,” says Debbie. “And a garage for our gear,” adds Cliff. The Portmans began looking at houses on the market, but couldn’t quite find one that met their needs as effectively as the Bench House. So they took a leap and settled on what has turned out to be the perfect solution: buying another lot in Winthrop North Village and building an expanded version of the Bench House on it. “Our Realtor, Delene Monetta, helped us figure out that we’d get our needs met best by building,”
the Portmans say, “despite the fact that even the thought of building was so daunting.” But the architect and builder that Monetta recommended the Portmans work with shepherded them through the process so smoothly that both Portmans laugh when they think of how intimidated they initially were by the building process. “It was so much fun,” they agree. Their architect, Howard Cherrington of Integrated Design Concepts, points to the Portmans’ clear ideas of what they wanted in a house as the primary factor in the ease of the design process. “They already had a house they liked,” Cherrington says, “but it was just too small.” Cherrington took the basic concept of the Bench House — a small vaulted
PHOTO COURTESY OF CLIFF & DEBBIE PORTMAN
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