MADE TO WORK
A Queen Anne rambler fits family and office life
 

	THERE IS EASY ACCESS from the dining room to a patio, with fan-fold doors where a picture window used to be. It is a simple matter to shift chairs and table outdoors for meals when the weather is nice. The kitchen is in the background, a few steps away.

ARCHITECT LANE Williams glanced at his teen-age son, Cooper, who had conked out on their living-room sofa, and questioned why living rooms passed from vogue.

"You have to wonder why. Why not live in the living room? I find it useful to ask my clients, 'How do you want to interact with your family? Where do your kids want to be?' "

Williams and his wife, Midge, knew how they wanted that last question answered. That's why several years ago they moved down Queen Anne Hill from a large house, which he designed and built in 1988, to a three-bedroom, bay-view rambler constructed in 1950. They happily traded some modernity and square footage for better home-office space for Lane Williams Architects, the firm Williams started in 1992. That way, Williams could run his expanding business and be nearby for his son and daughter, Sydney.

As Williams planned his rambler remodel, he decided not to create a separate family room, "though sometimes our kids and their friends come and kind of take over the living room and we're pushed out. But, that's OK. This is a creative space for us. We all make good use of it."

He reconstructed the 1970s-style kitchen so it, too, serves as a gathering place. And with interior walls eliminated as much as was practicable, the kitchen, dining room and living room now work as complementary spaces.

THIS VIEW, photographed from the patio off the dining room, underscores the clean horizontal lines of the rambler. The Wilkinson stone facing on the house is as fresh-appearing today as it was when it was installed 52 years ago.

ARCHITECT LANE WILLIAMS and his daughter, Sydney, converse over the combination cooktop/breakfast bar. Pans are within easy reach, right where you need them to be. Hanging nautical lamps serve as attractive task lights.

Williams also opened up the basement stairway by eliminating a claustrophobic hallway. The family shares about 2,200 square feet on the main floor and finds that's more than adequate. One bathroom has been updated; the master bath was left original, complete with vintage turquoise tiles.

The house was in near-original condition when they bought it, and because it was built with good lumber and reliable construction techniques, it was a pleasure to update. The selling point for Williams was the large basement. Besides, the rambler's graceful proportions are seductive, in their way.

The double-size lot is generous for the neighborhood. Their view, south across Elliott Bay to downtown, is wide open, but most important to Williams the house is positioned for optimum southern exposure to natural light.
 

	WIDE ENTRIES off the front-door hall lead to the living room, at right, or, left, to the dining room. Simple, uncluttered lines, light-colored walls and a good deal of glazing make the most of natural light.

"The important thing to note about our house is that it is not about the grand design gesture, it is about what makes us comfortable as a family," he says, a theme he has thought through many times before. Williams' firm focuses on custom, single-family residential projects, and about 40 percent of his clients want to remodel postwar homes. Williams, a University of Washington graduate, has received more than a dozen awards for home design since 1986.

His stated goal in architecture is to create a seamless environment that works together for practical living. Personally and professionally, he says, he leans to the strongly linear, ordered style of Japanese country homes. Generally, if the pieces don't mesh into a coherent whole, the project needs to be scaled down or re-examined. Time for reflection should be factored into the planning process.

In this spirit, Williams agreed with Midge when she suggested they live in the rambler for a year before they made major changes to it. Williams says they used the calm to rethink how they live and to confirm what they were planning.

Though he designed a second-floor addition, they haven't built it. "We have all the space we need and we have a good view. How many windows does one need?"

The basement-office conversion began about six years ago. Because equipment access is extremely limited, and the south side of their lot is steep, they were just able to squeeze a Bobcat into position to excavate for the new basement entry. A crane lifted dirt over the house to a truck in the back alley. With earth removed, a doorway was sawed through the concrete walls and an area was leveled for a small patio.
 

INTERN SHIH-HAO KUO studies plans in Williams' basement-level office. When the time comes to move the home-based business elsewhere, storage cupboards and the rest of the office furnishings will quickly make way to reveal a refurbished guest suite.

Today, Williams' office is a cheerful place. A conference room occupies what had been a laundry area; tables, computers, scale models of projects, photographs, drafting tables and blueprints pinned on the walls furnish what had been a guest suite and recreation room. When he needs an extra surface to spread plans, he puts a cover over the pool table that came with the house.

Sound-cushioning cork tiles and wool carpeting, coupled with new noise-dampening insulation and ceiling space overhead, keep dual functions compatible under the same roof, Williams says. "It's been a tremendous luxury to have an office at home," Williams says somewhat wistfully, because he knows his work has outgrown the space, and soon he'll need to move to a larger office.
 

A Home Fair, lectures and tour

The firm's Web-site shot of Williams shows him bent over plans, a mechanical pencil between his fingers. True to life, as it turns out. He thinks, sketches and designs at his drafting table. Cooper now handles Web management for his dad, and Sydney is at the age where "she comes and goes." Lately, what had been adequate living space is, if anything, starting to feel a bit too roomy.

"We've not stayed in a home for more than about eight years," Williams says. When circumstances change, the family moves to the next challenge. "We're flexible, we're adaptable." But for now, this is a good place to live. It's home.

« Previous • Next »