Dean and Susanne came in with some definite ideas about architecture.  He is from Vancouver, B.C.; she from metropolitan Washington D.C.  During their life together, they had already lived in “architect designed” houses in both Seattle and D.C.  Wal-Mart had recently hired her from a job in London, U.K., where he had finished his PhD. “We have come to appreciate the difference good design can make to the experience of living”, said Dean.

The homogenized new housing stock didn’t appeal to them, and new construction was unreasonable, since future overseas postings were likely.  The solution was a house in an established, very eclectically styled Rogers subdivision, circa 1976.

The house they bought was a fairly typical ranch from the period, with a redundancy of efficient rooms that lent a “small” feeling to every space in the house. There were 12 doors off the “living” room alone.  The ranch-typical, double loaded corridor plan ensured that daylight access for any room was limited to one exterior wall. The prominently gabled, north facing, entry court was a demonstration of the use of gravel and artificial plants in the landscape.

We all wanted to open the plan inside, and to the outdoors on the south side where the vintage kidney shaped pool lay. We gutted most of the interior walls, replacing the load bearing ones with beams in the attic.The beams bear on steel columns, which in turn support floating plywood partitions. These screen walls define spaces within the larger room, without touching the floor or ceiling. More intimate spaces are created within the whole, but a sense of the entire space carries throughout.

We were able to add two new spaces which lift the ranch ceiling plane skyward. The entry courtyard was replaced with a new space containing the entry, half bath, and home office, lit by north facing clerestory windows. The office space may be open to the main space or visually separated by moving a rolling set of shelves across the main opening. The primary living space now has constant access to filtered daylight from both the north and south.

On the south side, a screened porch provides a transition from interior to exterior, and projects the house both skyward and out to the pool. On the north, a new entry porch provides a sheltered transition from outside to in.

We kept the material palette simple – slate and maple flooring, exposed steel structure, birch and maple casework, and concrete counters. The exterior was re-clad, using fiber cement siding flashed with galvanized steel.

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