Southern Oregon’s Hip House construction company puts art on par with craftsmanship and collaboration.
Photography by Robert Frost
For Tyler Groover, owner of Hip House LLC, art comes in many forms, especially the remodeling of a home. It weaves its way throughout the process via the decisions made along the way and presents itself in the finished product.
“We strive to make every aspect of what we do about the quality and our own integrity,” says Groover, who, with wife Amanda, owns the Southern Oregon construction company founded in 2017. The company focuses on cultivating strong relationships with clients, and building trust is an important foundation. Based in Medford, Hip House’s has clients spanning the entire Rogue Valley. Along with emphasizing customer service, it has a reputation for craftsmanship, old-school work ethic and the highest quality down to the tiniest details.
Groover is a fourth-generation construction expert, and he looks at construction the way an artist would look at a sculpture. “Every single step matters,” Groover says.
Hip House had a challenge on its hands with recent clients Katy Colson and Jeff Hailand, who wanted to transform what Groover called a “funky” one-bedroom property, wedged into a steep hillside in Ashland, into a 2500-square-foot three-bedroom, two-story vacation escape that includes eye-catching exterior landscape, a tranquil pool and sweeping views of the surrounding mountains.
“The homeowners wanted their house to blend in with the hill, and not diminish the surrounding natural landscape,” Groover explains of the whole-house renovation and addition overlooking Ashland’s nearly 6,000-foot Grizzly Peak. “We designed the home to harmonize with the hillside.”
Hip House’s 10-month project started with working through, in and around insulated concrete forms (ICF), a robust material popular in homes in the early 2000s. Groover says the 1-foot concrete-filled blocks that stack uniformly provide great insulation but are difficult to alter and limit redesign flexibility.
The company worked alongside architect Carlos Delgado and KenCairn Landscape Architecture, both based in Ashland, in addition to other subcontractors to problem solve and bring the clients’ vision to life. The presence of the ICF required collaborating on plumbing, HVAC, wiring, window replacements, stability issues and more.
During the majority of the project, the clients remained at their primary home in St. Louis but stayed in constant contact with Groover, remotely overseeing their dream vacation residence with an eye to its artfulness.
Hip House sited and developed the garage at the property’s height to serve as both entrance and exit, installed heated floors throughout the California-modern house and had a deer fence erected whose patina matches the hillside’s rustic ochre tone.
Groover is particularly proud of two of the home’s features: an interior redwood staircase salvaged from a football stadium, whose eco-friendly stain the client sourced from an Australian company; and a visually stunning tongue-and-groove door to the pool-equipment room made of reclaimed, patinated redwood.
“Everything about this project was done mindfully with visual appeal considered, and with resourcing what we could in a meaningful way,” Groover says. “The whole project was really a work of art in motion.”
