WRITTEN BY SALLY MACDONALD PHOTOGRAPHED BY BARRY WONG

	An open peninsula replaced a pass-through to the dining room that was too small to be useful. In the background, a ladder leads to a loft used as an office.

"It just never was mine," she says of the small bungalow in the old Queen Anne neighborhood that her husband bought long before their 1990 wedding.

A dozen things about the house shouted to Flora, "This isn't you!" Uninspired oak cabinets clung to walls painted (horrors!) Cookie Monster-blue. A foot-square pass-through failed in its duty to open the tiny box of a kitchen to the dining room with its faux Craftsman woodwork. The bath was tiled in little black squares grouted in white, a dizzy landscape that could cross your eyes if you looked too long. A ho-hum brick fireplace was the focal point of the living room. The kitchen was dark, despite a cathedral ceiling and skylights that had been added as an afterthought. And — as if all those incongruous touches weren't enough to give Flora fits — much of the workmanship of previous remodels was far from code.

"I wanted a house that was small and simple and well-designed," Flora says a bit wistfully. After all, she's a graphic designer with an eye for color and character. "And I wanted it to say something about our Asian background."
 

Maple handrails and pewter accents on the ladder leading to the loft repeat the woods and decorative touches in the kitchen beside it. Architect Betty Torrell kept a skylight and dropped a square metal frame holding lights from the cathedral ceiling to give the small space an airy feel.

"But it was just right for me when I moved in," back in 1984, Wayne reminds her. "I didn't have to do anything to it. It felt kind of like a bungalow with a Craftsman style, which I really liked. Basically, I just wanted it to be easy to maintain and be close to the city."

Making the house say "ours" rather than "Wayne's" took about two years. But the result was given a first-place award in 2003 for residential kitchen design for the Wongs' architect and interior designer, Betty Torrell. The award is one of 35 presented last year by the Seattle Design Center and the state chapter of the American Society of Interior Designers.

Wayne travels frequently to Hawaii, where he grew up and now produces a theatrical show featuring traditional island music at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel on Maui. His absences and Flora's desire to put her own creative stamp onto the house made her the brains behind the remodel.

She began by attending a seminar on how to choose an architect, sponsored monthly by the Seattle chapter of the American Institute of Architects. It was there that she first saw Torrell's work.
 

	The plan was to keep the handcrafted character of the house while adding touches of uncluttered Asian style to honor Flora and Wayne Wong's ethnic background.

"They were showing drawings of Betty's work instead of photographs, and I think that's what drew me to it, because of my (graphic arts) background," Flora says.

She'd been squirreling away clippings of home designs that appealed to her for years and showed them to Torrell. By the time they were ready to start work on the house, Torrell had a good idea what the couple wanted it to become.

Flora knew the partnership was a good one the day she and Torrell went out separately to find tiles for the bathroom and came back with the same Brazilian samples.

Torrell's plan was to keep the original character of the house and bring it up to date without mimicking either full-blown handcrafted style or unadorned Asian style. The artisans who developed the original Craftsman movement looked to Asia for inspiration, she points out, so a blend of the two seemed appropriate.

The Wongs never wanted to expand the house. "I really wanted to keep the living space small and intimate," Flora says, "and we were limited by the size of the lot. And our budget."

Thanks to the remodel, the kitchen seems much larger than it is — just under 100 square feet. Torrell kept the skylights and dropped a square frame holding lights from the cathedral ceiling to illuminate warm maple cabinets on three sides of the room.

The little pass-through grew into an open, free-form peninsula with rounded edges that can be used as a buffet or eating area for two. Backsplashes of clear amber and turquoise glass tiles set in a diamond pattern provide a glowing foil to slate-gray plastic-laminate counters. Large linoleum tiles mimic the diamond shape and create a low-maintenance — and budget-conscious — floor.

"Usually we'd try to use small floor tiles because of the small scale of the room," Torrell says, "but here we wanted to create a sort of different effect with the big tiles."

Floor-based cabinets are raised on sleek pewter legs similar to the legs on the Viking stove. It's a look that's repeated in maple cupboards placed throughout the house for storage, including on both sides of the updated fireplace.

At the far end of the kitchen is a steep staircase to a loft area the Wongs use as an office. Its railings and supports are another repeat of the maple-and-pewter theme.

Asian accents are used throughout the house. Ribbed-glass panels in triplicate grace a door leading from the dining room to the bedroom and bath area. Windows frame the bed — sides and top — in the Wongs' master bedroom. Rich bamboo flooring flows through most of the house.

The Wongs' kitchen was judged on the basis of problem-solving, creativity, quality of design and beauty. But Torrell says there's another, more abstract quality that made this kitchen not only work but also be a cut above.

"Part of this success was that our ideas clicked with each other. Clients don't have to have the same thinking as the architect, and I always try to listen carefully to what they want at the front end. But at some point the clients have to begin to trust the process. The client who starts to micromanage at the end, well, you just know the project isn't going to be successful."

But the best outcome for this remodel wasn't the award. It's the happy sigh Flora and Wayne both breathe when asked if the house turned out the way they'd hoped.

"It did," Flora says. "Now it's our house."