Tucson Lifestyle Home and Garden July 2012 : Page 18

Steeling Home Unusual finds helped to create a unique Japanese-style abode. By GIllIAn DrummOnD | PhotograPhy By TIm FullEr on Fridlind has buried treasure. Deep in the desert ground of New Mexico, he has stashed several thou-sand dollars’ worth of stainless steel. Why? Good question. The guy is an architect and builder of custom high-end homes, an artist, and also a keen gath-erer. If he’s working on a construction project, he brings home “things that should go in the dumpster.” He loves metal, in particu-lar. He didn’t immediately find a use for all that stainless steel, and he’s not always at his home in New Mexico. And so he decided to bury it. Home for Ron the majority of the time is midtown Tucson, in a house tucked away from a busy street and one that’s a surprise in many ways. In the 28 years since he moved in, Ron has added to, adapted and refurbished the place in a remodeling and landscaping endeavor that is fantastic both in its duration and its detail. He had just one rule: he would not demolish anything that was already here. R It started off as just 440 square feet of home for Ron and his then-teenage daughter. The original 1936 house was fire damaged. Adjacent to it was a 300-square-foot apartment and three portable sheds. Ron combined them all, creating extra rooms and a master suite, screening in a patio so that it was a dining room, re-doing floors and cabinets, and using any salvaged materials he could get his hands on. The dwelling now covers 2,100 square feet, and there’s a separate 900-square-foot office. But that’s not all. He has used his home to pay homage to Japan, a country he and his wife Kathryn Riser adore. A trip there in the 1990s changed his life. Kathryn had visited before, and spoke some Japanese. They stayed six weeks and Ron was hooked. “I fell in love with the old Japan,” he says. He developed an interest in the architecture, gardens, the level of details and the natural elements behind so much of the design. And he brought all of those ideas back to his home and yard in Tucson. Natural stone and slate tile make up the floors of most of the OPPOSITE A set of Japanese-inspired Douglas fir and steel gates lead to large stepping stones suspended over a simulated pond. This room divider in the home of ron Fridlind and Kathryn riser is made from a recycled steel cattle tank. The ham-mered stainless steel sculpture was created on site from crushed tank parts. 18 T ucson Lifestyle HOME & GARDEN / JULY 2012 www .tucsonlifestyle.com

Steeling Home

Gillian Drummond

Unusual finds helped to create a unique Japanese-style abode. Ron Fridlind has buried treasure. Deep in the desert ground of New Mexico, he has stashed several thousand dollars’ worth of stainless steel. Why? Good question. The guy is an architect and builder of custom high-end homes, an artist, and also a keen gatherer. If he’s working on a construction project, he brings home “things that should go in the dumpster.” He loves metal, in particular. He didn’t immediately find a use for all that stainless steel, and he’s not always at his home in New Mexico. And so he decided to bury it. Home for Ron the majority of the time is midtown Tucson, in a house tucked away from a busy street and one that’s a surprise in many ways. It started off as just 440 square feet of home for Ron and his thenteenage daughter. The original 1936 house was fire damaged. Adjacent to it was a 300-square-foot apartment and three portable sheds. Ron combined them all, creating extra rooms and a master suite, screening in a patio so that it was a dining room, re-doing floors and cabinets, and using any salvaged materials he could get his hands on. The dwelling now covers 2,100 square feet, and there’s a separate 900-square-foot office. But that’s not all. He has used his home to pay homage to Japan, a country he and his wife Kathryn Riser adore. A trip there in the 1990s changed his life. Kathryn had visited before, and spoke some Japanese. They stayed six weeks and Ron was hooked. “I fell in love with the old Japan,” he says. He developed an interest in the architecture, gardens, the level of details and the natural elements behind so much of the design. And he brought all of those ideas back to his home and yard in Tucson. Natural stone and slate tile make up the floors of most of the house, and in the master bedroom — a strictly no-shoes-allowed space — the floors are fir. The vast master bedroom is practically an apartment, and it’s made even airier by the floor-to-ceiling windows that look onto the yard. The windows are uncovered, so when the couple has guests they close off their bed with raw silk curtains that hang from a circular stainless steel rod. Hand-crafted chairs and a tapered-leg drafting table, a rug from Uzbekistan, and wood-paneled walls and ceiling give the room a library feel. But the heart of the master suite is a sunken Japanese-style table made of birch and ebony and set into a foot space of recycled sandstone. This is where the couple has breakfast. The master bathroom is like one big artistic sculpture. Sheets of steel have been twisted and curved into the shape of a kimono, forming the backdrop of the shower. In another room there’s a sauna, and outside the bedroom on a small deck is a traditional Japanese soaking bath or ofuru. Sitting partly below floor level, the stainless steel and redwood tub has a wood fire stove submerged in it, aluminum stairs bought at a yard sale, and removable redwood panels salvaged from a carport. The water is emptied into a garden stream for irrigation. Ron’s love for metal is evident throughout the entire home, and the yard, too: sconces and cabinet handles are made from scrap steel; part of a military jet engine hangs above the guest bath shower and holds the shower head; 10 rusted steel fish, each made from the base of a cocktail table, stand on rods in the Japanese-style garden. What do visitors make of this dramatic statement? “People are frightened by it,” says Ron candidly. He won’t show his home to clients until he’s well into the project, in case they don’t agree with his own personal style. Ron calls Kathryn “a partner in the adventure” that is their home. Some years, given the choice between taking a trip abroad and adding on extra space, they would choose the latter. And while Ron is the builder (he runs Fridlind Group), Kathryn — an accountant and business manager for Buffalo Exchange — is a major player in the design. “She’s wonderful with colors. And we love to shop,” says Ron. Shopping for him usually means a salvage yard, although he says he’s down to just one that he frequents here: Tucson Iron & Metal on East 36th Street. That’s because most of the other places no longer sell to the public. “’The salvage yard used to be where you could go in at any time and buy things. They didn’t mind if you went out there as long as you had boots and a hard hat. That isn’t the case anymore.” He also collects pieces of metal, wood and furniture by other means: from the Tucson Botanical Gardens (they tell him if he can transport the stuff, he can keep it), as well as subdivisions he works on, commercial tenants he deals with, bankruptcy sales, and yard and estate sales. In particular, he seeks out yard sales of the belongings of war veterans who spent time in the Far East. That way he can add to his collection of dishes from Japan, China and Panama. Ron has transformed a three-quarter-acre property with scraps and made it classy. If he’s a human magpie, he does it with style, because this is a place where even the ordinary is extraordinary. BelOW The open-ended courtyard includes a floating sandstone pathway over a simulated pond composed of lichen-covered stone, asparagus fern, spider plants and ripple shaped stainless steel streamers, defining the water line. Rusted metal fish were fabricated from a salvaged table base. RIGHT The screened dining patio looks into the kitchen garden. The patio incorporates channel steel ceilings and painted steel panel walls. In the kitchen — its compact layout and design reminiscent of a railway car — the cabinets have sloped front open shelves, and the ceiling is made from saguaro ribs. The laundry room’s cabinets have doors of painted salvaged steel. The door handles of the master closets are cut from mesquite trees. And outside there’s a waterless “pond,” a space that fills up during the monsoon season but most of the year is poetically named the Leaping Ripple Wash. Squares of sandstone “float” over an area of lichencovered stones, ferns, those metal fish, and silver streamers cut into the shape of ripples and made out of — you guessed it — stainless steel. Source: ron Fridlind, Architect/Builder

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