NORTHWEST LIVING
By Rebecca Teagarden | Photographed by Benjamin Benschneider
Health and happiness
A rambler goes green to clear the air and open up
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 BENJAMIN BENSCHNEIDER / THE SEATTLE TIMES The kitchen counter is Fireslate, much like old high-school chemistry-lab counters. The floor is Marmoleum and the cabinets fir. "I love fir," architect Jim Burton says. "I love the look of it and that it’s our local wood of choice."
BENJAMIN BENSCHNEIDER / THE SEATTLE TIMES "I love our house. It has a nice modern style that fits in with the neighborhood," says Stacey Crawshaw-Lewis. "It's less daring than we would have done if we lived in the middle of nowhere, but it fits in with the neighborhood." The new second story has two bedrooms and one bathroom.
BENJAMIN BENSCHNEIDER / THE SEATTLE TIMES The fireplace is 18-inch slate with a solid reclaimed-fir mantel designed by Jim Burton. The architect also fabricated the metal supports underneath. "I like to do any custom metalwork in a project," he says. He also made the metal posts on the stairs.
BENJAMIN BENSCHNEIDER / THE SEATTLE TIMES Lewis’ parents collected modern furniture after they married in the 1960s. Lewis and his siblings now benefit from their passion: The two leather-and-wood chairs are from Denmark. The coffee table is Eames from Herman Miller.
BENJAMIN BENSCHNEIDER / THE SEATTLE TIMES The view just inside the front door carries the eye to the kitchen and up the stairs. At the top, a piece of plate steel adds another modern detail. The green wall and use of similar stonework throughout helps ground the open plan and form connections, Burton says. The antique sideboard is from Lewis' family.
BENJAMIN BENSCHNEIDER / THE SEATTLE TIMES Shadow the cat enjoys the airy master bedroom. Stick framing gave the couple an "expressive roof," Burton says. Sitting on the fir floor and a kilim is an Eames lounger handed down from Lewis' parents. |
JEFF LEWIS AND Stacey Crawshaw-Lewis loved their Hawthorne Hills neighborhood in Seattle, but that house of theirs just made them sick. Really, sick.
The couple, both vegetarians, try to keep their lifestyle as clean and healthy as possible. But they could only do so much with their old two-bedroom, one-bath rambler. With 1,200 square feet of boxy space, there wasn't too much room to ramble. And when the house was built in the 1940s, leaded paint, dust-filled air, asbestos insulation and toxic off-gassing practically came with every package, no extra charge.
So they decided to stay and send the poisons packing with a "green" remodel.
"I very much notice the new-house smell you encounter when you walk into most new homes. And if I'm in one of those homes for any length of time I get the headache," says Crawshaw-Lewis.
"I really didn't want to end up in a house I didn't want to walk into at the end of the day."
The couple moved out, and in came architect Jim Burton, the face behind the eco-friendly firm blip design.
"We wanted to stay in the Northwest style to fit in with the neighborhood, but we wanted more modern," Lewis says. "Basically we turned it over to Jim."
His plan called for keeping only a few of the original walls, pushing the house out six feet in back, raising the ceilings, adding a porch and entryway, and creating a second story with two bedrooms and a bathroom. The new place, a Craftsman with a modern edge, sits high over the neighborhood at 2,900 square feet with four bedrooms, three baths.
Architect Jim Burton of blip design (www.blipdesign.com) is a modern guy who doesn't stand on tradition. But he says you don't have to mow it down, either. Sometimes it just takes an eye for the clean line to make an old house contemporary:
"You clean up the details. To me that's what modern design is, getting rid of the ornamentation. I think a lot of people have an image of modern design as something kind of stark and cold. But I don't think it has to be that way at all. By using natural materials and rich colors, you can get the same warmth in modern design you're looking for in traditional design.
"In terms of Craftsman design, for instance, it's the knee braces on the exterior that from a distance look like the traditional eave brackets. The open plan is a more modern take. And metal-and-cable railings, the wood-and-metal mantel, those are the kind of areas that lend themselves to modern details among a more traditional palette."
All products used in the remodel are nontoxic, Lewis says. They got many of their supplies through the Environmental Home Center and Best Paints. The house has an air-filter system. Radiant heat means no air to blow dust around. The front-porch posts and beams are from reclaimed timber.
The front of the house is dramatically Northwest, with polish. Small touches, such as the metal brackets connecting those front-porch posts and beams, hint at the couple's modern sensibilities. The concrete porch slab travels into the entryway, where it is heated. And inside, the home is wide-open contemporary. Out back it's Northwest with accents of South Africa, Crawshaw-Lewis' birthplace. John Nielsen of Healthy Gardens in Edmonds worked South African plants into the family's otherwise Northwest garden.
Old walls were removed to open rooms. Burton used common materials and details, along with the open plan, to tie the spaces together. Each room has its own character, defined by strong elements, such as the slate fireplace in the living room, the steel-and-wood open stairway, the leafy-green wall in the kitchen.
Burton made all the custom steel elements.
"The spaces just really work for our family," says Lewis. That family now includes two more people, sons Samuel, 3, and Jonah, 1.
Besides those open interior spaces, and the big-but-cozy master suite with Needle, nature and neighborhood views, the couple especially enjoy their updated kitchen.
"Stacey and I both love to cook. We had a rinky-dink '50s stove before," he says, admiring the stainless gas Thermador that replaced it.
In the end, the couple got both a new home and a new friend. Burton and Lewis got along so well that Lewis has now taken a break from his software-developing business to work alongside Burton. They bought a Phinney Ridge bungalow together and gave that house an urban reincarnation, too.
Rebecca Teagarden is assistant editor of Pacific Northwest magazine. She can be reached at bteagarden@seattletimes.com. Benjamin Benschneider is a magazine staff photographer.
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