In his search for a new home, the client looked for clean, modern elements–but ultimately fell for the charm of the classic gabled roof and historic vernacular of this home in the Greenlake neighborhood of Seattle. The home offered higher ceilings than usual, and thus the potential to open it up to more natural light; the challenge was in the limited space. The father and his young son wanted a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom house– neither of which the original home offered. That’s when he connected with Seattle-based, women-owned architecture firm Allied8, to open up the home while maintaining its identity and relationship to the neighboring homes.
The client’s program included an apartment for extended family and friends to use, which Allied8 fit into the existing basement, plus an office, storage, powder and family room on the main floor, two bedrooms and a bath on the second floor, and a better connection to the front and back gardens. The client’s program wishes led him to feel that a more spacious second story was paramount–where else would we fit all that? However, the team was able to find a solution within the existing envelope. In utilizing the attic space, the team was able to upcycle roughly 75% of the existing framing of the home and 90% of the foundation, which saved the client hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The architects came up with a restructuring of the floorplan through a clever rearrangement of the location of the stair and a stretching of the program included on the second story. Furthermore, given that the client was willing to reconfigure all the windows, the architects were able to rewrite the style experience on the interior of the house from traditional to modern, even if the existing, classic roof pitch and overhangs were kept.
