Think Finnish. Think log home. Think outside the box. That’s what Tom Lippo and Kim Godley did when they built their Finnish log home along the Potomac River.
Having met eight years ago on the Internet, when such a venture was “scandalous”, they both say, the pair welcomes adventure and trying new things. But they don’t always agree. When it came time to decide where to live, they initially were on opposite ends of the earth.
Lippo wanted to move to New Zealand. Godley wanted to stay close to Dupont Circle. But they both knew they preferred to be near water, bordering a city, and on a private street. Godley, a business consultant and entrepreneur, and Lippo, a Fulbright scholar and Finnish-American lawyer, combined their creative and problem-solving skills and found acreage that had been on the market for nearly a decade with a seller willing to negotiate. It also happened to be on a bluff overlooking the Potomac River, 20 minutes from Georgetown, and nestled on a wooded, secluded lane in Potomac. After finding this location that met all their requirements, they embarked on a four-and-a-half-year journey to design, build, and now enjoy their dream home.
Entrepreneurial Spirit
Lippo, 52, an international lawyer who owns FACT Law Group with offices in DC and Helsinki, Finland, travels often. So while they were considering designs for their home, he would gather stacks of magazines from airports around the world. “We couldn’t read many of them, but we knew what designs we liked from the photographs,” says Godley, 50. They plastered what they did and didn’t like from floor to ceiling in the dining room of Godley’s 90-year-old Friendship Heights rowhouse where the couple lived after getting married. In the meantime, they sold Lippo’s rustic log cabin in Great Falls, VA, which was in the Harrison Ford movie Clear and Present Danger.
The pair looked to Finnish architects, such as Alvar Aalto, for design ideas as well as to their parents for inspiration. Lippo’s parents migrated in the 1950s from Finland to Western Pennsylvania where they raised their only son in a contemporary rambler they designed and built with their own hands. They also lived near Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, which was another source of creativity. Godley learned real estate development skills and construction from her father, an industrial real estate developer in Charlotte, NC, and design sensibilities from her mother, an interior designer. She also was taught if you can’t find what you want, then make it yourself. This applies to her home and her business, Constructive Options, a business consulting firm. She also designed and built a mobile office vehicle so she can work at her clients’ locations and remote sites.
Wonders of Innovation
Partly inspired by what they knew, the couple also found that what they didn’t know was key to their innovative home design. “Along with our lack of formal training came a lack of learned limitations,” Godley says. They took the ideas they liked the best from magazines and trips around the world and built eight different Styrofoam models. Then they sent their ideas to their architects, Mark Kung of Kung Architecture in Denver, CO, and Thomas F. Klose of Thomas F. Klose Architect in McLean, VA. “We said, ‘Here, you guys figure out how to make it look just like this, yet still stand up,’ ” Lippo says. “They made it happen exactly as we wanted it to be. That’s really an art form, an extraordinarily difficult job that they did masterfully.”
When not traveling, Lippo and Godley enjoy the 27’ glass walls, soaring 30’ ceilings, imported polar pine log walls, multilevel cantilevered lofts, and vanishing edge windows. Their great room on the main floor and owners’ suite upstairs feature folding-wall doors and retractable screens that make the rooms double as screened porches in warmer months.
A Model Life
Lippo and Godley like to travel, including camping in their four-wheel drive van. So when planning their home, they installed tall garage doors to accommodate their recreational vehicles and a workshop area for their projects, which include designing and building furniture found throughout the spaces. The log home features solar panel-ready design and construction, as well as European-style energy efficient water-based radiant floor heat. Italian slate porcelain covers two entire levels while the lower level features a genuine Finnish sauna and a guest suite with living area.
Even though the home is large – with more than 5,000 square feet of interior space, it feels warm and cozy with intimate gathering spots and miles of scenic views. National park easements surround the residence, which sits on a two-acre lot with 265 feet of river view frontage. “The front of the house faces civilization, the back wilderness,” Godley says. They were particular about making all sightlines look only to the woods and not to neighboring homes.
It’s the owners’ version of New Zealand near Dupont Circle. It’s their personal paradise on the water, close to the city, and in the woods.
