Located in the Arroyos Heights neighborhood of Seattle, this project transformed a mid-century single-story home with a partially finished basement into a modern, energy-efficient two-story residence, with a remodeled basement space. A 600-square-foot second-story primary suite addition now crowns the home, offering sweeping views of the Puget Sound and serving as a focal point of the redesign.

The main level was reconfigured to create an open-concept layout, connecting the living, dining, and kitchen areas for a more cohesive and inviting space. A new view deck was added to the front of the house, maximizing the home’s connection to the stunning vistas.

The new second level features a vaulted-ceiling primary bedroom with sweeping corner views to Puget Sound. The primary bathroom contains a walk-in two-person shower, separate water closet and walk-in closet.

The basement underwent a complete remodel, now housing a guest bedroom with an ensuite bathroom, a laundry room, a family room featuring a wet bar, and a dedicated office space. These updates provide versatility and expanded living areas suited for the owner’s various needs, and separate spaces for their visiting guests.

Exterior improvements include regrading the front yard, replacing rockeries with retaining walls, and designing a revised pathway to the front entry, ensuring a polished and welcoming outdoor experience. Additionally, the home was designed with sustainability in mind, featuring insulation that surpasses code requirements and large solar arrays on the south and west-facing roofs.

 

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A swimming pool can be a tricky addition to integrate into an existing home design not only because it’s a very large and prominent design element, but also because of strict safety code requirements. One of these requirements was to enclose the pool with a four foot high fence. Since this home sits on a thirteen-acre property it wasn’t feasible to enclose the entire property, so a way to surround the pool with a fence needed to be devised.

The solution was to integrate the fence into the landscape that gently slopes to an existing pond, while keeping the pool deck level. This created a pool deck that rises above the level of the fence and allows unobstructed views of the pond beyond. The west side of the pool was pushed into the hillside, necessitating the construction of stone walls clad in the same stone as the house to hold back the hillside. A set of stairs passes by a small outdoor shower and bluestone patio and leads to the hot tub located in a screened porch on the main level of the house.

 

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