Some people wear labradorite necklaces, pendants or rings.
But Julia and Mark Lucich have used the beautiful gemstone to top their kitchen island, and the result is spectacular — as if the Northern Lights were putting on a display in the middle of the room.
The stone’s name comes from Labrador, where it was first found in 1770, and it has since been discovered in Finland, Norway and Madagascar.
A kind of feldspar, it is famous for an optical effect called labradorescence, in which flashes of iridescent blue, gold or pale green shimmer like a peacock’s tail.
Some people say the stone holds magical powers and deepens clairvoyance, but the Lucichs seem a little too practical for all that. They just like the gleaming interplay of colour.
“We first saw a big slab of it long before we started building, at a warehouse in Burnaby, framed and hanging on a wall,” said Mark. It stopped them in their tracks.
“We fell in love with it,” said Julia, a painter known for her Party Animal series, which features animals in psychedelic colours. No wonder she wanted labradorite in her kitchen.
She and Mark also wanted a variety of counter heights, “because my husband is six-foot-three and I’m lucky to be five-foot-one.”
Cabinet Works in Sidney fulfilled their requirements, which also included creating many open shelves for artwork, books and “negative space.” The owners were inspired in this by renowned British kitchen designer and architect Johnny Grey’s books on kitchen culture: “We didn’t want your typical bank, on bank, on bank of cabinetry,” said Julia.
Their planning included taking detailed measurements of cupboard and appliance doors so there is enough room to comfortably walk around the island even when every appliance, drawer and cupboard is wide open. No need to shimmy sideways.
They also made room in the island for a metal trolley that slides out and rolls around the kitchen as a mobile workstation or carving station at the dining table.
The east-facing house was built in 2012 and is set amid eight wilderness hectares on a Salt Spring hilltop. On a clear night it has views of Grouse Mountain — “which looks like an airplane that never takes off,” said Mark — and during the day they gaze upon Mount Baker.
The Lucichs first hired an architect to do their plans and explained they wanted a one-level house. When he returned with plans showing a master suite upstairs they parted company and switched to designer Jeff Savin, “who was helpful, a good listener and able to think outside the box,” said Mark.
“He challenged many of our notions … made us rethink what a home is. It really isn’t as much about the building itself, as the comfort you feel within it.
“We’ve had decks before and didn’t like them. They were just a pain in the butt because we don’t spend a lot of time outside,” but Savin gave them a small one anyway.
“It turned out to be a nice surprise. It’s actually warm out there in the morning sun,” said Mark, who added their first concern was to build a comfortable, easy-care home. To that end they used Hardie board siding and put on a metal roof.
Their previous home on Salt Spring was like a rabbit warren of different sized room and this time they wanted more open space, but they didn’t want ultra high ceilings again as the last home, “felt like a blimp hanger,” said Julia.
It is the first and last home they hope to build, said Mark, who did all the finishing work including all the tiling, which made it affordable.
“Slab prices for labradorite are huge (about $85 a square foot) and then you have the added expense of cutting and polishing,” so they decided to use tiles instead (about $17.50 a square foot).
Positioning the labradorite on the island was tricky because they wanted it to show off to best advantage, which meant Julia used her artist’s eye to choose the best location for every single piece. They used black granite tiles on the other counters.
Their flooring choice turned out to be an unwelcome surprise.
“We bought it at an auction and bid on something called honey maple, which we assumed was true maple, but that turned out to be the finish. The wood is actually birch, which is soft.”
Mike said it was unfortunate as they wanted a low maintenance, character floor, and they plan to stay there as long as they can. But they are living with it.
Another difficulty was the fact that Julia, while an artist, freely admits she is “spatially” challenged: “I can appreciate a footprint, but when it comes to volume or three dimensions. No.”
Knowing she had trouble envisioning the spaces, Mark used cardboard to create mockups in the kitchen, showing precisely where each cabinet, appliance, island and more would go and how it would fill the space.
Julia chose a warm brick red shade for several feature walls in the kitchen, and all the others are painted in a complex neutral called brown alpaca, which tends to look different on every surface and is a great backdrop for art.
What made the two Americans decide to settle on the island? A sneeze.
They couple moved here 15 years ago from Oregon because of Julia’s hay fever. It turned out the Willamette Valley where they were living for some time, had gradually become the world’s major producer of turf grass seed and cool season forage, which means it is now notoriously uncomfortable for allergy sufferers.
They wanted to stay in the Pacific Northwest — “It’s so different from everywhere else in Canada and the U.S., it could be its own country,” she said — and started looking north of the border.
They first visited Williams Lake in the Cariboo, but after digging their realtor out of a snow bank they turned south and toured the sunshine coast, then Gabriola, Denman and Quadra islands.
One day, they were staying at a B and B in Cobble Hill and someone chanced to ask if they had seen Salt Spring. They located a realtor who guided them round the island and were impressed with the landscape as well as the number of artists living there.
“I don’t like the heat, and Mark doesn’t like the cold, so that automatically made us comfortable closer to the water. And Salt Spring has a high school, which meant our children would not have to commute by boat to get an education.”
