We worked with a recent client who coined the term "lastle" to capture the blend of lodge and castle that can be found in such Lake Tahoe monuments as Thunderbird Lodge, Vikings Home and Al Tarina. Thunderbird Lodge and Vikings Home are both historic properties open to the public for tours. Al Tarina, built in 1989, is currently on the market for $40,000,000.

Our craftsmen at Artéfice have manufactured and installed fine architectural and structural millwork in Thunderbird Lodge (during a past renovation) and Al Tarina along with other multi-million-dollar estate homes at Lake Tahoe. Our work also appears in a clubhouse that is a shining example of the lastle concept. The Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course Clubhouse has an elegant blend of lodge and castle. The core of the building features four 20-foot-tall cedar timbers above which rises a glazed cupola. The cedar ceiling, a lodge basic, gets its castle ornamentation from sixteen triangular dormers framed in teak. Edgewood blends cedar, white ash and teak elegantly throughout.

The elegant Lake Tahoe client generally prefers to blend exotic woods, which gives our craftsmen a fair amount of joy. Recently, Artéfice crafted and installed a stairway of reddish kerri wood from Australia in a Sugar Bowl home. One of my favorite Lake Tahoe millwork package featured a cherry staircase, western red cedar timbers, white maple ceilings, and vertical grain hemlock walls. Cabinetry, walls and ceiling were cherry in the library, African mahogany in the home theater and lacewood in the master suite. For some, this sounds like madness, but with a talented designer, blending woods is rich and dramatic. It's lodge and castle. It's lastle.