Interior designer Susan Marinello suffused this lakefront home with clean, simple lines, then added the diversion of a twig- and bird-based table. “I wanted to weave in a lighter touch, for balance,” she says. The table’s treelike silhouette nods to the verdant setting just steps beyond the window; a glass bowl catches sunlight and casts its own ripples.
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A Fresh Start
A bachelor relaxes in style by Lake Sammamish


Solo simplicity: While the main room was planned solely around owner Jerry Razwick’s need to relax and recharge from his busy professional life, the home is at the ready for entertaining. The Juin Ho table behind the sofa pulls out and expands to dining size for several guests.


The kitchen counter is one of several seating areas in the same great room, but each niche has its own persona, its own view.


Wood sculptures around the rock fireplace emit rustic sophistication.


A lush leather Michael Berman coffee table is designed with a movable tray that slides forward for table use or back to provide additional seating.


Little adornment is needed in the master suite, where the owner has a front-row seat to the lake. Silk drapes emulate falling water, and the Donghia chair is comfortably taut as a sail. The home has three decks, all with enviable views.
Susan Marinello was intrigued.

“I have nothing,” said the voice on the phone. A friend had recommended Marinello’s interior design firm, the man continued, and he needed the works—from the floor up.

“It’s not often a client comes to you with nothing to work around, like favorite pieces or a collection,” she says. So Marinello met Jerry Razwick to discuss his project. He had just bought a sleek new condominium steps from Lake Sammamish—and, yes, the place was empty. He had nothing.

Finding himself a bachelor again after many years, Razwick wanted this next home to be upscale, modern, masculine. When he’s not traveling on business as president of Technical Glass Products, he’s off fly-fishing in New Zealand. So when he lands at home he wants comfort, serenity and simplicity, “a place to smoke a cigar and have a martini on the deck,” he says. A showplace, but one that flexes to Razwick’s lifestyle.

“Bachelor pad” comes to mind, but this sophisticated and design-savvy home transcends cliché. Yet Marinello points out the bachelor mind-set behind every design decision. A guy-sized sectional sofa for afternoon catnaps dominates the great room. The table and chairs in one corner catch morning sun—ideal for having coffee and reading the newspaper. Another seating area begs for playing cards or sipping fine wine as lights shimmer across the lake. The only concession: no mammoth television in the main room. Built-ins here display books and accessories. Mariners games are watched in a separate media room.

Razwick entertains in small groups, rarely more than six people at once. So rather than creating a dining room, Marinello commissioned a handsome console table that fits behind one end of the sectional and unfolds to dining size when needed. “I wasn’t going to give away prime square footage for a dining room he’d rarely use,” she says.

“This great room is all about flexibility,” she emphasizes. “It’s really four rooms within a room. I created zones so Jerry could move about and use this room in different ways. If he wants a dining table, he has one; when he has a crowd, the leather coffee table doubles as additional seating.”

If the great room is the entertaining zone, the master suite is the anti-jetlag zone. Spare and simple in line, neutral in palette, the décor is relaxing and void of mental noise. From here it seems you can reach out and touch the lake. Even the curvaceous Donghia wing chair and rich, Italian silk drapes can’t rival the view.

Scenes of water, birch groves and the boats, piers and floatplanes of lakefront living are captured from three decks and every window. “We wanted inside to feel continuous with this outdoor beauty,” Marinello says. She accessorized with natural textures, woven fabrics and wood sculptures. One table has an iron base shaped like a branch. Sculptures made from twigs hang on the main wall in lieu of paintings. “They create dimension and shadow without competing with the view,” she says.

The home borrows its tone from nature but grounds its style with a dash of metallic accessories. A gold-fronted bar chest at the entry, a brass-caged lamp and a bronze sundial sculpture by Gerard Tsutakawa offer sensual design surprises—understated but poignant.

Naturally, Razwick also raves about the finished garage, the plethora of storage designed for golf clubs and fishing gear, the massive master bath and closet that could trigger envy in any female. The sum of all these parts is that a year after that first phone call, his home is exactly what he wants it to be.

Now he has everything.

Design Details

INTERIOR DESIGNER
Susan Marinello, Susan Marinello Interiors
119 S. Main St., Ste. 300, (206) 344-5551

Bellevue-based Kathryn Renner writes about life and lifestyles for regional and national magazines.