This Treehouse Home In The Clouds Is A Total Dream: Let's Take A Tour

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September 8, 2022 — 12:52 PM

The house magically found us—my 15-year-old son, Auden, 11-year-old daughter, Flora, and I—in the summer of 2020. I sold our original home right before the pandemic hit and thought it would be a piece of cake to find another home on the island. Wrong! With the onslaught of newcomers seeking refuge on the island, we spent weeks growing uncomfortably distraught and short on options before the property found us.

The home was built in the 1990’s and everything about it said so. I wasn’t working during the lockdown and the demands of at-home schooling, so I had no budget in the sense there was no coffer for remodeling. Our renovation was more a process of excavation and subtraction than lavish finishes.

These walls are infused with our hopes, dreams, and intentions.

NeuroSpatial Linguistics is fancy-talk for the language of home. It’s the relationship between our living environment and our minds and how the two interconnect, communicate, and impact one another. I believe that every element of our home speaks a silent message to our subconscious, influencing how we think, feel, and behave.

I considered this lens of NeuroSpatial Linguistics throughout the design process—from the window placement and color selections to the art and furniture arrangement. For example, I removed 8 doors during the renovation because I think that doors carry their own message: a closed door says, “stay out”, while an open door speaks, “come in”. I replaced three of the doors with open archways, which really invite the experience of transition.

(Editor’s note: To connect with Kimberly to learn more about her design work, visit her Instagram or website.)

We’re manifesting creatures, whether we realize it or not. The problem is we don’t like calling it manifesting unless we’re creating something we actually want. The trick is to know how we’re doing this thing called manifesting. Once we understand the fundamentals, we may apply them to any area of our lives. For my approach, the Life+Design Method™, we begin by identifying what we want. Everything starts with our desire and the values we hold dear. When thinking about our home, we want to consider our space as if it’s our living vision board…because it is!

In my life, I knew I wanted a greater sense of play, ease, and connection, so everything in our home communicates those values. For example, I painted the subfloor kelly green for a few reasons: Green is my favorite color and also speaks to growth, possibility, renewal, and play, and offers a seamless connection to the outdoors…and it was also just so much fun giving myself permission to be bold! A hammock hangs in the living room, which reflects more of that laidback ease I wanted to infuse throughout. Every space in our little home holds some symbolic reflection of our aspirations and values; reminders of what we love about our life and ourselves.

Music constantly plays in the background or on full blast, grooving with our moods between waking and slumber. We’re surrounded by forest, so the sounds change from morning to night, season to season. I hear the wind roar through the trees in winter. In the spring, the frogs go nuts from dusk to dawn…so much so, I often wear earplugs. The owls call to each other in the evenings and the ravens during the day. The foxes are very chatty. A couple of nights ago, one woke me up in the middle of the night. (I had to have fun with it and call out, “Foxy! I’m trying to sleep. Please be quiet.”) Then there’s the ever-presence of our ten clucking hens, two goats, and dog, Georgia.

During the summer months, the windows are open all day and night, so the scents of grasses and warm earth move throughout the space. During the winter, the house smells of fir and cedar as wood is our primary source of heat. With the dark mornings, my day always begins with journaling by candlelight, so I don’t wake the kids. I love to light candles in winter and choose scents depending on my mood.

I treasure the purity of children and young people… They don’t necessarily watch design trends, yet they’re spot on when it comes to how a space feels, whether they realize it or not. I love it when parents share how much their children love our home and how they want their home to be like ours.

I think there’s freedom and ease in the imperfection of the space that speaks to people. There’s no implied behavior when you walk in (and if there is, it says something to the effect of “come on in, take off your shoes, enjoy yourself…we color outside the lines here.”) I think it catches people off guard in the best of ways. Nothing is precious yet at the same time, everything holds meaning and significance.

The house is very much unfinished, just like us. We’re a work in progress, ever-evolving, and always under construction. Our home broadcasts the same. I think there’s something about the ease of it that offers a feeling of belonging and home.

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