Dream Home on the River

It's been said that the looming pueblo-style home on a jetty at Fisher's Landing is a one-bedroom, one-story house. While it's actually a three-bedroom, two-bath, multi-level house, its unique floor plan spawned the unusual description.

Homeowner Lori Signs, a multi-media artist who designed the 6,500-square-foot house, modeled it after Southwestern American Indian pueblos, which were historically built in open, multiple levels.

Built into a hillside that jets out into the marina, the home boasts five levels. The highest level is a private rooftop sundeck, accessible only from the home's interior. And the lowest level is a separate guest house, located at the water's edge near the homeowner's private boat dock.

In between the rooftop and guest house is the main house - a one-story wonder, where rooms flow seamlessly around partial walls, up one staircase to a bedroom at the back of the house, and down another to a bedroom at the front of the house. Though the two bedrooms are built on different levels, they are essentially located on "one story" within the main house.

Similarly, the "one-bedroom" metaphor came about because the main house has no interior doors (except for one guest bathroom). Yet the strategically zigzagged walls define spaces and offer privacy. The master bedroom at the back of the house is not visible from the great room at the front of the house, for example.

But reflections of sunlit water dancing in the marina below are reflected up through the great room's windows, over a partial wall and onto the ceiling and walls of the master bedroom. Signs awakens each morning to the shimmering play of lights, a pleasant surprise she discovered quite by accident.

Designed with intention

Everything else in the home was intentionally designed, however, from the overhead pine log vigas, to the 11 boulders incorporated into the interior. "My goal was to bring the outside in," Signs said. She drew up the plans, and her husband, Bill Signs (now deceased), engineered them to accommodate special considerations such as the cantilevered sundecks supported by I-beams.

The colossal home, which was the first stucco home built amid smaller, wood-frame houses and mobile homes, drew a lot of attention as it was being built. People speculated that it was either a casino, a Corona beer factory, a hotel, or a restaurant/bar, Signs said, laughing.

Even the color was subject to speculation, said Ron Knowlton, owner of Yuma River Tours, whose business is based out of Fisher's Landing. Signs had the exterior stucco matched to a sample of rust-colored clay from Sedona. Upon seeing the bright hue, which was uncommon at the time, some people thought it was just paint primer and not the actual color of the house, Knowlton said.

People thought Signs was crazy to build such an extravagant home on property that was considered "a fish camp" at the time, he said. But as time wore on, she began to garner people's respect as they watched her work on the building project while wearing a bikini, he said.

What a woman!

Though the tan, blonde former Las Vegas show girl looks like a Barbie doll, she wasn't afraid to get her art deco nails dirty. She lifted small boulders from the marina and carried them into the master bedroom, where she used them to create a rock waterfall in the shower. She operated a crane, and she ran a backhoe. "I put in the septic system myself," she said.

She used her brains as well as her brawn. She created an energy-efficient home by designing 18-inch-thick exterior walls, which insulate the home and help maintain an interior temperature of about 80 degrees most months out of the year.

She also made the most of the north-facing home's location. To capture the panoramic views of the mountains to the east, Fisher's Landing and marina to the north, and the Colorado River to the west, she installed huge windows on those sides of the home. The upper sundeck juts out from the great room, so she can enjoy the spectacular views from either inside or outside the home.

A sculptress, potter and painter, Signs employed her creative muse to give the home its artsy touch. A buffalo motif begins at the home's main entrance, where buffalo shapes the size of a large dog have been stamped into the concrete walkway and onto the exterior stucco. Signs made the metal buffalo stamps, which she later had cleaned and hung on the opposite side of the house to create a metal art scene of running buffalo.

She carried the motif into the garage, where she painted a mural of an American Indian hunting buffalo that dominates an entire wall like a movie on a theater screen. A bright red speed boat, a hot pink Jeep and an all-terrain vehicle occupy the garage, an important part of the home, considering that Signs chose the home's location because of its access to the river and surrounding desert. When she's not rock crawling in her Jeep, she's either boating or fishing in her spare time.

Using natural elements

The garage floor is done in sleek Saltillo tile, just as the interior floors are. Signs hand-picked the adobe clay tiles at the factory in Saltillo, Mexico, where they are typically set out in to bake in the sunshine. While the tiles are still wet, animals and small children sometimes walk across them, and the tiles with prints are discarded by workers, she said. Recognizing the character the naturally imprinted tiles would give the house, she salvaged them from the factory trash bin and had them strategically laid in her home to appear as if the children or animals had walked across her floor.

Hand-picked pine logs and boojum cactus skeletons also give the home its rustic character. She discovered the skeletons in Mexico during a time when she was employed as Paul McCartney's road manager. Although she cut pieces of the skeletons to build cabinetry throughout the house, she designed her kitchen island to be built around an entire skeleton. Likewise, she used pine logs as vigas but created a point of interest in the guest house using an entire pine tree (log) that protrudes into the main house as well.

Original artwork abounds

Signs made her own bathroom and kitchen tiles. "Except for the floors, I did all the tile in the house," she said. "I hand-rolled, cut, painted and fired it in a kiln. Each color requires a separate firing, so it was very time-consuming."

The base tiles are mauve whereas the accent tiles are turquoise with multicolored geometric designs. But she also painted several tile murals in the home, including a desert scene on the backsplash of the wet bar and two others depicting Hopi gods in the master bathroom.

Although the white interior walls provide a neutral backdrop for her artwork, they are far from ordinary. It took workers six months to finish the walls in diamond dust plaster, which requires hand polishing with plastic trowels to bring ground glass in the plaster mix to the surface to give it a sparkling satin sheen.

Stepped-back, bull-nosed walls, rounded Kiva fireplaces with bancos, and built-in nichos not only provide the home with pueblo revival elements, they also provide the perfect setting for Signs' award-winning southwestern art as well as her Old West and American Indian Artifacts.

In keeping with the home's open, airy design, she avoids clutter by displaying her fine art and collectibles in groupings. Some are illuminated in lighted, recessed niches while others are spotlighted from overhead. Dimmers are located in every room of the house, to match the lights with any desired mood.
Inspiration comes calling

While building the house, Signs worked as Madonna's road manager and was in charge of all the stage lighting, she said. She came off the tour highly inspired and promptly set to work designing the lighting for the home.

"Everybody says to me that if I ever turned on all these lights, I would dim Martinez (Lake community) because I have these lights going in, up, spotlighting, hard lighting .... The whole house reflects on the water at night when you come in on a boat."

Signs' favorite place to be is on the upper level sundeck, where she sits astraddle the north wall, her legs dangling at the sides as she leans back against a pine log beam. She watches her pet ducks swim in the marina below, watches boats come in off the river and watches the sunset paint the sky and water red.
There on the wall overlooking the marina, at the house she conceived and brought to life, her muse comes to inspire other sculptures, other paintings and other houses.

After completing the pueblo style house, she built another home in San Diego, where she was raised. But she spends more than half her time at Fisher's Landing. "I've been here since I was a little kid. I just always loved the river. My dad was a fishing-aholic, so every weekend, we'd come down here fishing. The appeal here is being on the water, taking my boat right to my home. There are fewer people, there's no traffic. It's peaceful."