Artist's Statement

Any project needs a philosophy, a design center. In this case, we want to consider how much renovation is enough, we want to sync with the Broadview neighborhood, and we want to project a more coherent and intentional design than other homes.

One guiding principle might be "Do no more than necessary." We are not building new, and I don't want to demolish everything only to rebuild it. The original house should be apparent when we're done--we're not erecting a modern screen in front of a postwar house.

Style

We want to stand out as a clearly architect-designed home in Broadview, which is mostly postwar ranch houses. Ballard, Phinney Ridge, and Greenwood are edgier--there's more crime and more experimentation. Builders have thrown up 3-story single-family condos in backyards. Here and there, modern designs, some built 20 years ago, punctuate the conventional. But in Broadview, far fewer moderns. Homes hide behind property line fences and under big hip roofs. Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt. Homes are unfriendly--there is zero street life.

Builder Jim Bristow's home
(7703 26th Ave NW)

Pacific Northwest architecture is wood, sometimes veering into heavy timber, stone foundations, and National Park lodge territory. Black steel braces the wood. Gables, trusses. Skylights. Honest structure. Rhythms in wood--double rafter tails repeating into the distance.

Wood can work with modern white, and the existing Trees House is very dark (north-facing, surrounded by trees).

Inspired by a treehouse

"Trees House" might borrow from the aesthetic of tree houses--going out on a limb, cut lumber mixing with nature, rope ladders, structure visible from below, store-bought window panes incongruous in a more rustic setting. Maybe a black steel spiral stair up to a roof deck at leaf-level. Angled kicker supports--wider at the top than the base. Vertical--lines converging to a vanishing point in the sky.

What if the Trees Room were up from the entry? Floor @ 267.0, say. No more open plan--no seeing the TV from the kitchen. But...a better view into Carkeek, and an easier way to reach a master suite (or just a roof deck) over the garage.

Insulation

We need to decide how efficient we want the house itself to be--will we bring the existing house up to surpass current standards? Or will the heat move through the house to find the walls that we didn't insulate or seal as well?

Before we paint the existing siding, should we drill holes and force in dense-pack cellulose?  (There are 27 voids on the east wall.) Should we hang batts between the floor joists and pile it on in the attic? (1230 SF each.)

Heavy timber, wood soffits, but white walls

Structure

The structure is integral with the style, and the PNW style calls for honest, transparent structure. But it also has to do with insulation--slim, old school decking, for example, doesn't accommodate sufficient insulation. Which is how we came to SIPs--zero air flow, minimum thickness for a given R-value.

One thing I'm coming to realize is that, while radiant heat might be $20,000 and a metal roof might be $20,000, beams and lumber and framing don't cost that much. You can do a lot in wood for $20,000--the SIPs for the A.11.3 Trees Room were bid at $3,400.

Heating

Jonathan at Yosemite (Photo by Evan)

I thought we had this much figured out, but now I'm not sure. Forced air is the least attractive, but radiant heat does not have to be in the floor, and mini-splits might be fine for a 2100 SF home. A German boiler that handles heat and domestic hot water (DHW) might be fine, but there are alternatives like the Daikon Altherma air-to-water heat pump, or the Mitsubishi distributed approach.