Wabi-Sabi Ranch

An old barn on the west side of the Tetons becomes a spacious home that celebrates the design process and the imperfections that make things beautiful. 

Warm winter sun streams through the tall, narrow windows of a remodeled barn in Teton Valley, Idaho, sending shafts of light across the kitchen’s hickory floor, bamboo cabinetry, and blue Macaubas quartzite island. High ceilings—which follow the barn’s original gambrel roof—carry the gaze through a charred-cedar hallway to the tops of floor-to-ceiling windows that look north from the bedroom and master bath.

The Japanese notion of wabi-sabi became a guiding principle in this barn’s 2023 renovation. And while the interior design draws on elements from the East—like Noguchi lanterns, tatami mats, and shoji screens—wabi-sabi is more the art of finding beauty in the process and the imperfection.

“Wood is not always perfectly straight; edges of stone get chipped. It’s about being perfectly imperfect,” says Allegra Parisi, owner of Mountain Town Building Company, which served as both general contractor and interior designer for the project. Parisi and her partner, Miller Resor, also happen to be the homeowners.

Parisi and Resor worked with architect Alison Price, principal of Price West Architecture, to turn what they call a “funky old barn,” first built in 1997 and remodeled in 2007, into a breathtaking 3-bedroom, 3-bathroom, 3,684-square-foot living space.

“Ali was incredible,” Parisi says. “She thought of things we hadn’t even considered and was responsive to all our ideas.”

The couple wanted the home’s spaces to be built around rituals like taking baths, listening to records, cooking together, and stretching in the morning.

Price suggested moving the existing stairs to create more space for the open floor plan envisioned for the third story. This led to a decision to create a second-floor dormer, which stretches the length of the barn on the east side, to house a bunk room, bathroom, and office—and simultaneously bring in morning light and mountain views.

“The deliberate placement and design of the new staircase fosters a natural rhythm that seamlessly connects all three levels,” Price says. “The unexpected beauty of the circulation spaces that emerged took us all by surprise.”

Price designed an asymmetrical configuration of windows of differing widths and heights on the top floor. “Miller wanted it to feel like you were in an aspen grove with slots of light coming through the trees,” Price says. “It was such a beautiful, poetic concept to respond to in design.”

The unexpected beauty of the circulation spaces that emerged took us all by surprise.
— Architect Alison Price

On the ground floor, a bar, an indoor-outdoor shower, and a “flex room” with a glass garage bay followed. With that, the basic footprint was in place.

Parisi and Resor chose gray reclaimed deer fencing from an Amish mill in Pennsylvania for the exterior siding. “The intention was that the exterior read as a barn to fit in with the vernacular of the existing agricultural landscape,” Price says. “We wrapped the base with a corrugated steel wainscotting. Eventually, the steel will tarnish, the wood will fade, and the weathering will enrich the character, leaving it blemished and beautiful.”

While the exterior celebrates the surrounding farmlands, the interior is designed to surprise and delight. “Once you open the door, you’re enamored by the exuberance of space,” Price says. The bamboo millwork in the ceilings, walls, and built-ins and solid-hickory flooring serve as a counterpoint to dark granite and black shou-sugi-ban paneling featured in the bath, primary bedroom, hallways, and stairwell.

“Our design methodology was intentional,” Parisi says. “We honed our palette, created a strategy that informed our decisions, and then had fun with it. We were open to imperfections and unexpected diversions, which happened naturally by being playful and cultivating a wabi-sabi state of mind.”