A mushroom house surrounded by nursery rhyme characters? This Tacoma couple lives there
Rod Collen and Shannon Garrett aren’t entirely sure how they came to live in a fungus-shaped house. Ask them about the home they’ve just completed building on the Key Peninsula and they’ll mention “a home set back in time”, “Hobbit house” and even “The Smurfs”.
“But, it kind of has taken on its own thing,” Collen said on a recent warm August afternoon.
That “thing” is Mushroom House — a completely round, 25-foot-tall toadstool-shaped house. The home, within a stone’s throw of Penrose State Park, is hidden in a forest populated with figures salvaged from Point Defiance Park’s gone but not forgotten Never Never Land.
Cookie-cutter suburbia this is not.
Embrace the imperfections
A dirt road leads down to the home on the Key Peninsula’s eastern shore. Madrone and Douglas fir trees provide a shady canopy.
The house’s circular roof slopes down to form eves over the building, giving it a decidedly mushroom appearance.
Step inside the home and you’ll find curving walls painted in an earthy ochre. While right angles are in short supply, all the necessities of modern life fill the interior.
It was Garrett who first suggested a fungus-shaped house.
“There are a lot of mushroom houses out there, but they are almost all houses that kind of accidentally looked like mushrooms after the fact,” Collen said. “Nothing that was really built from the ground up to look like a mushroom.”
Finishing touches — cabinets, lighting, counter tops — are all reclaimed. Little of it matches — a look the couple said they were aiming for.
“It’s fun to be able to pick out things that aren’t perfect,” Garrett said. “And just put them up.”
The lack of straight lines isn’t a hindrance, the couple said. They took advantage of the freedom it afforded.
A carpenter friend told the couple, “‘Just embrace the imperfections.’ And that’s exactly what we did,” Collen said. “As long as it’s structural, as long as it’s safe, that’s all that really mattered.”
A used brick fireplace and chimney climb 25 feet to the ceiling. The couple built it themselves.
“That was a nightmare,” Collen said, still a little shell-shocked.
A reclaimed cedar slab with live (unmilled) edges forms a kitchen island counter top. The couple seamlessly extended its width with stained concrete and epoxy.
A gigantic commercial bellows is attached to the chimney as a decoration. Collen bought it for $80 at a Tacoma antique store. It’s emblematic of the mix of old and unusual decoration in the home.
Up the spiral staircase
A climb up a metal, spiral staircase reveals a 200-square-foot loft. It holds a bed and little else. Near the stairs, a madrone tree trunk that had to be removed during construction is partially embedded in a wall, strictly for aesthetic purposes.
Sword ferns and cedar boughs have been epoxied into place on the fireplace’s hearth.
Outside the loft, a small balcony offers on overlook of the forested property.
Including the loft, the home is 930-square-feet.
Down below is the home’s only bathroom. Its walls follow the curve of the house and features a walk-in shower, lined with stones. Storage areas still need to be added, the couple said, all customized to fit the tight, curvaceous space.
Collen’s original house plans were adjusted by an engineer who beefed up the structure and added airplane-grade cables for support.
The house is partially built into a hillside. It’s foot-thick walls have four feet of earth behind them.
“It’s easy to cool and it’s easy to heat,” Collen said.
Working weekends
Collen co-owns a digital music storage service, and Garrett is a physical therapist. The couple, who live in Tacoma, spent weekends working on the house and grounds.
What they had intended to take one year is now at the 3-1/2-year mark.
“It has been ...,” Collen begins.
“Challenging,” Garrett finishes. “Everything’s fun when you first start ...”
“Like the brick,” Collen said. “Oh boy ... it just went on and on.”
Some of the work they did themselves out of necessity. They had three different drywall contractors look at the project. The curving walls drove up the bids, Collen said.
“One guy said he wouldn’t even touch it,” Garrett said.
Intended as a weekend getaway, the couple paid $20,000 for the 1.86-acre lot in 2019. Their $100,000 original building budget had ballooned to $150,000 by this summer.
The property uses a well for water and has its own septic and propane gas systems.
Never Never Land
Never Never Land opened in 1964 close to Fort Nisqually in Point Defiance Park. The stroll-through attraction featured 78 figures in nearly 30 scenes based on nursery rhymes and fairy tales.
The 10-acre park attracted 90,000 visitors in its first year. But interest waned over the years as new generations turned to other pursuits.
In the 1980s, the attraction was sold to Metro Parks Tacoma.
Metro Parks closed Never Never Land in the early 2000s after age and vandalism took their toll. The figures were put into storage, some in the basement of Point Defiance’s pagoda building. About half were destroyed in the arson fire that heavily damaged the pagoda in 2011.
Last September, the remaining figures were put up for auction, attracting Collen’s attention.
Never Never Land had loomed large in his childhood, as it does for many who grew up in Tacoma, but Garrett, a native of Eastern Washington, couldn’t quite understand the nostalgia for the figures.
“I went through, ‘Oh, I don’t need this. Oh, yeah, I gotta have this and no, I don’t need this. And oh, yeah, I gotta have it,’” Collen said. “And finally I said, ‘I gotta have them.,”
He bought three of the figures.
Garrett, still mystified over the slightly creepy figures, went to her job after the auction closed and told a few clients about Collen’s purchases.
“And she would have people in tears,” Collen said. “And so she came home and she’s like, OK, I get it.”
“I didn’t realize how influential it was for people,” Garrett said.
While the couple waited for permits and other pre-building necessities, they built a loop trail.
“Shannon and I basically walked through the woods with a chainsaw and the chipper, and we cut this trail,” Collen said.
Today, Little Miss Muffet now eats her curds and whey on a tuffet not far from mushroom house. A yard-wide metal spider looms behind her. That didn’t come with the figure. One of Collen’s family members saw it at a job site.
“The (owner) goes, ‘You want it?’ He’s like, ‘Actually, I know someone who needs a spider,’” Collen said.
Further down the trail, Three Men in a Tub now rub-a-dub-dub in the forest glade.
A third figure, Jack Horner, eats his Christmas pie next to Mushroom House’s entrance.
Future
When construction started the couple had plans to sell the house. They’ve since changed their minds.
“There’s just no way now because it’s become like a child of ours,” Collen said. “The fact they we’re three and a half years into this and we’re still together says something.”
Mushroom House, and its supporting cast of Never Never Land figures, inspired Collen and Garrett to write what they call a children’s book for adults.
Illustrated by Hillarie Isackson, “Never Never Now and Forever” tells the story of Mushroom House’s creation and how the butcher, baker and candlestick maker and their companions came to live in the nearby forest.
“It’s kind of a nostalgic, you know, little bit of a tear jerker,” Collen said.
Eventually, the couple will build Jack Horner’s house and relocate him along the trail with the other figures.
“I have vivid, vivid memories of him when I was like 8 years old,” Collen said. “Looking into his house, looking at that kitchen and it kind of creeped me out. And then now, to have them here ... it’s kind of weird.”
Until then, Jack waits patiently, his thumb in a plumb and a scar on his head — a lingering mark from the fire that almost wiped out the last memories of Never Never Land.
Collen and Garrett describe their home and surrounding forest as magical.
“I think just because it did take a long time,” Garrett said. “And every single thing was hard.”
But serendipitous, too.
“It just kind of built itself in some ways,” Collen said.
