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Universal Design · Residential
Buckskin Lane
Residence
Bainbridge Island, Washington
Bainbridge Island, Washington
The Buckskin Lane project began with a structural problem and a very specific brief: our client, recently wheelchair-bound, needed a ground-floor living arrangement. The primary suite sat on the second floor of the family home. The space that could become a ground-floor suite — a former garage that had been converted to a game room — presented two immediate obstacles: a 12-inch step-down from the rest of the house, and a ceiling profile shaped by structural beams that couldn't be moved.
We solved both. We raised the entire floor 12 inches and reconfigured the ceiling profile to work with the existing structure — eliminating the wheelchair threshold entirely and creating a room that reads flush with the rest of the home. Within that resolved shell, we designed a complete living environment: entry and closet zone, living room, sleeping area, and a fully wheelchair-accessible bathroom. The result reads as a luxury residential suite, not a converted garage or a medical accommodation.
The project is one of the most technically and spatially demanding in our portfolio — and one of the most meaningful.
The entry — the first zone in the suite's four-part sequence. A custom walnut wardrobe anchors the closet zone; a Japanese botanical painting establishes the room's material warmth from the moment of arrival.
The defining design move in the suite is a custom-built demising wall clad in walnut veneer that divides the space into its four zones — entry, living, sleeping, and bathing — without closing any of them off. In a tight footprint with structural ceiling beams that constrained the layout, the wall does what a series of rooms would do in a larger space: it creates sequence, gives each zone its own identity, and provides the visual anchor the room needed.
The wall features a double-sided electric fireplace — providing ambiance and heat for both the living room and the bedroom simultaneously — and a rotating television mechanism. The center section of the wall pivots, allowing the TV to face the living room or the bedroom simply by spinning it around. All electrical components for the television are housed inside the wall, leaving no visible cables or equipment on either face. The mechanism is completely hidden; the effect is simply that the TV appears on whichever side you need it.
The walnut veneer was selected for its warmth, its grain variation, and its ability to read as a residential material at every scale — from across the room, where it reads as architecture, to up close, where it reveals the quality of the craft.
Photography Coming
Rotating TV Detail
Left: The living zone — smart-touch reclining sofa, walnut demising wall with double-sided fireplace, bench at foot of the space. Right: The rotating TV mechanism (professional photography arriving next week).
The bedroom zone sits beyond the demising wall — private without being closed off, quiet without being isolated. The fireplace on this face of the wall provides warmth and the quality of ambient light that makes a sleeping space feel genuinely restful. The television, when pivoted to the bedroom side, sits flush with the wall surface and disappears entirely when not in use.
The lighting plan was one of the most carefully considered elements of the project. Wayfinding path lighting — motion-activated, at baseboard height — runs continuously from the bedside to the bathroom zone, so that nighttime navigation is safe and fully illuminated without requiring overhead lights to be switched on. A bedside grab bar provides assistance for transfers to and from the wheelchair. Dimmable task lighting throughout the space allows a caretaker to provide bedside assistance at a lighting level appropriate for the task without disturbing the room's quality of rest.
Photography Coming
Bedroom + Fireplace View
Photography Coming
Bedside + Wayfinding Lighting
Professional bedroom photography arriving next week — showing the fireplace view from the sleeping zone and the wayfinding lighting path to the bathroom.
The bathroom was the most demanding design problem in the project. A tight footprint — shaped by the structural constraints of the converted space — had to accommodate full wheelchair accessibility without any of the compromises that typically accompany that brief. We optimised for every inch.
The roll-in shower features a folding wall-mounted teak seat, dual shower wands on either side for versatile use, a recessed niche, and safety grab bars positioned for approach, transfer, and use. The floor is curbless — a linear drain handles water management without any threshold. The green tile chosen for the shower walls is a design decision, not a background choice; the color and texture give the room its character and make the safety hardware feel at home rather than clinical.
A custom walnut feature wall behind the toilet houses floor-to-ceiling cabinetry and a hamper — providing storage that reads as designed furniture rather than medical equipment. The vanity is wall-mounted with full wheelchair knee clearance below; a tilting mirror serves both seated and standing users. All grab bars are anchored into structural blocking installed during rough framing, allowing them to be placed exactly where function requires rather than where studs happened to fall.
The roll-in shower — forest green handmade tile, teak fold-down bench, dual shower wands, recessed niche, and bronze grab bars anchored into structural blocking throughout. Curbless entry with linear drain.
Photography Coming
Wheelchair-Accessible Vanity + Tilting Mirror
Photography Coming
Walnut Storage Wall + Toilet Zone
Professional photography arriving next week — vanity with wheelchair knee clearance and tilting mirror; walnut feature wall with integrated storage behind the toilet zone.
This project incorporates full universal design principles.
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