A long, narrow great room set off by a crescent-shaped fireplace and windows that look out on a rocky, wooded view is at the heart of this home in the foothills.
The angular fireplace and forest setting inspired most of the remodeling choices owners Chris and Laura Jacobsen made for their living room and adjoining dining room. With assistance from friends in the design business, last year the couple set out to update what was a
lodgy, dark-wood look.
Now, an arched, nubby taupe sofa sits
opposite the fireplace, and a trio of bent metal
paintings hangs above it. The dining room chairs and a silky banquette tucked under the table all sport the same contemporary curves.
But the eye stops at the table.
It demands a closer look.
It has an odd shape of its own, like a truncated circle with one flat side that scoots up to the windows. There are waves of blond in the wood, and a lustrous finish as shiny as freshly washed glass. Both details hint at the fact that this is more than a table.
This is a story.
“The whole thing stems from our trip to New Zealand,” says Laura Jacobsen, a businesswoman with several start-up operations under her belt. “It was the best thing we ever did.”
Rewind four years, and the story takes on deeper meaning. Back then, Laura Jacobsen was so ill that carrying on her life seemed an improbability. Jacobsen, now 47, had been sick off and on for years with a mysterious, debilitating disease. She spent about a year in the hospital with seizures, constant pain and fatigue before doctor’s finally arrived at a prognosis.
Just as Laura and Chris began planning for her possible passing, physicians determined that she had been suffering from Lyme disease. They prescribed an antibiotic regimen, and her symptoms ceased almost immediately. “I was a brand new girl,” she says.
That “girl” had once been to the other side of the globe. With a new lease on life, she wanted to share that experience with her husband.
“We took a three month trip to New Zealand, Australia and Fiji,” Chris Jacobsen recalls. The tales from their trek are full of adventure and beauty, like the week the couple chartered their own sailboat to explore the predominantly uninhabited Whitsunday Islands. But it was on New Zealand’s North Island where they made an extra special discovery.
“There is a place there called the Ancient Kauri Kingdom,” Chris Jacobsen says of the store and gallery dedicated to the world’s oldest workable timber. “We never forgot it.”
Kauri is an ancient, sacred and extremely expensive wood found only in the Pacific Rim. Massive Kauri trees, which still grow today but are protected from poaching, thrive for around 2,000 years, according to the Wisconsin exotic wood importer Ancientwood, Ltd.
Kauri lumber comes from prehistoric forests that were knocked down during cataclysmic events and then preserved underground. Today, experts painstakingly extract the old wood from the earth for woodworking. The Jacobsens’ Kauri is radiocarbon dated at 45,910 years old.
“This wood has been underground for centuries but has not petrified or rotted,” says Tom Diess, co-owner of Walnut Street Woodworks, the Denver custom furnituremaker enlisted to transform the Jacobsens’ Kauri into a place to nibble toast and thumb through the Sunday paper.
“It is super hard, yet easy to work, and it glows when it is sanded and finished,” Diess says of the rare wood. Kauri devotees also laud its intense gold and cognac hues, and its artful, often fiery grains.
Diess collaborated with interior designers Trina Martinez and Wendy Chuckran, and carpenter Jeff Carmean to conceive the distinctive shape of the Jacobsens’ table. “The arch of the fireplace inspired our whole quest,” Martinez says of the renovated great room.
Carmean came to this job building furniture after 20 years as a cabinetmaker. He describes the way the Kauri arrived in Denver after being milled in Wisconsin by Ancientwood Ltd., the only American company the Jacobsens found that imports blocks of Kauri wood.
“(Considering) the size of these gigantic trees, it came in a very regular dimension,” Carmean says. “It was pretty nondescript, but I’d never seen anything like it. It didn’t look like anything special … Then I started sanding it.”
Kauri is so hard that it is sanded with a drastically finer grit paper than other wood. Cut Kauri has an exotic scent that Carmean could liken only to sandalwood. He loved it, but other people at the wood shop found it so pungent that it stung their noses.
Designer Wendy Chuckran says the Jacobsens’ finished great room, with its cool,
subtle sheen picked up in the paint and upholstery, and eye-catching artwork, all work in conjunction with the one-of-a-kind Kauri table. The room now reflects a healthy Laura Jacobsen’s zest for life.
“She has great energy and enthusiasm,” the designer says. “She wanted (the table) to stand out. She didn’t want it to look like anything else.”
That is exactly what she got.
Staff writer Elana Ashanti Jefferson can be reached at 303-954-1957 or ejefferson@denverpost.com.
