Island Timber Frame Guesthouse

The first timber frame home built on Bainbridge, our 900 sq. ft. guesthouse is a sustainably built retreat. Come live the simple life, with gardens, pond, fire pit, hen house, barred owls, and an ancient forest. Enjoy Brazilian cherrywood floors, a sundeck, full kitchen/dining/living room open floor plan, with tall rafters in the bedroom that is the entire second floor, and fresh eggs from the hens when they’re laying. Enjoy the miles of trails proximal to our humble abode.

The space
The private cottage is built from recycled first-growth timbers from Seattle’s old Pier 90 and the original Tacoma Brewery. It’s cozy and warm with a wood stove and baseboard heating in the winter and sun-filled windows in the summer. The sun deck is a lovely place to enjoy the sunsets, with peekaboo views to Puget Sound. We have a grill on the back deck for your use and a kitchen fully stocked with cookware for the chef who likes to cook away from home. Our Tesla charger is available for those who need to top up overnight, if you let us know in advance. The pond has a sitting area for meditation, and a back yard for playing croquet/badminton or for your daily yoga practice. We are filmmakers/explorers and have outfitted the space with treasures from our Himalayan expeditions, and also from furnishings given through our social experiment, The Buy Nothing Project. Liesl is the co-founder of the project and our property is a testimony to creatively sharing and living with a low impact on the environment. Take a book from our little free library. The ethic here on Bainbridge Island is to tread lightly on the Earth and share our bounty. If you’re interested in learning more about the property and how we’ve forged a life here, visit our blog at pioneeringthesimplelife.org.

Guest access
We have a pond with outdoor spaces near it for sitting and enjoying the outdoors. The flat lawn by the pond is perfect for croquet and we have a set ready for you in the laundry room. We also have a chicken coop near the guesthouse as well as our vegetable garden and raspberry patch. Feel free to explore the gardens, sitting areas, and fruit trees by the guest house. When we’re traveling, the gardens might not be as abundant as usual, but there’s always something to be harvested.

Other things to note
The hens make their usual noises in the morning, vying for the best nest boxes to lay in. Owls can be heard most nights and the coyotes occasionally come and howl nearby. We have plenty of deer and bald eagles, too.