Kathryn Renner courtesy Sullivan Conard Architects

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A walkway connects the new wing to the original red sitting room but can be closed off by shutting a pocket door. When closed, the door looks like a built-in cabinet. The loggia entertaining space shares a wall with the new garage. A massive stone fireplace and a built-in teak buffet ready the stretch of patio for year-round parties. “We had to find a color that would be both masculine and feminine,” says designer Susan Young of the new wing’s master bedroom. “This Chinese blue appealed to both.” Walls are hand-painted with a faint two-tone stripe. Regal yet relaxing, the room beckons with a fireplace and a balcony that offers a pool view. The master bath is awash in white Carerra marble. Even grills over the heating ducts are custom made.

A little more than a year ago, around an antique dining table in a home in one of Seattle’s older neighborhoods, a prominent business couple served a lavish dinner to the design team that would soon launch their remodel. Perhaps the camaraderie and the penchant to celebrate even before the first hammer hit aligned the stars. Today the 1930s-era house has been harmoniously expanded and magically transformed.

After living in the original home for 15 years, the couple considered expanding when a neighboring house went on the market. They bought the property next door to preserve their privacy, but they also wanted a bigger garage. Here was the opportunity.

The garage plans seeded what would blossom into an outdoor sanctuary and garden by renowned landscape architect Richard Haag, including a solar-heated saltwater swimming pool and a cavernous loggia with stylish outdoor rooms. As remodels often do, the project grew—the couple decided to also expand the master bedroom and casual living areas.

“The garage structure was a major player in the composition of the home and garden,” says Stephen Sullivan of Sullivan Conard Architects. “We had to connect the old and new parts of the house without making it look like a run-on sentence.”

To do so, Sullivan’s firm angled the new three-car garage away from the street, giving the home a soft “V” footprint, as if looking down on a bird in flight. Because the new loggia and pool sit behind the garage, they share this curve. The addition feels as if it tilts protectively toward the original structure. An iron gate between the home and garage is the spatial fulcrum of what Sullivan terms the home’s “rebalancing,” now that the home embraces two lots. A graceful, sweeping new roof caps the entire house, so there’s no hint of patchwork remodeling.

Creating the new interiors was “like solving a Chinese jigsaw puzzle,” says interior designer Susan Young, who also had designed a Sun Valley, Idaho, home for the family. Attuned to the traditional furnishings mixed with contemporary art that make this family feel at home, Young also played a key role in space planning. “Every detail serves their busy lifestyle and interests,” she says.

Among other things, the husband and wife each needed a home office, Young says. Hers is carved from a charming nook off the living room—perhaps once a step-down conservatory in the original home. His was designed in the new wing. Dark mahogany with a masculine, country-club air, the room was sized to the arc of his golf swing. Not only can he practice here with abandon on rainy days, a video camera built into the wall has a three-second delay to his computer monitor so he can study the progress of his swing.

The owners green-lighted such inventiveness for the entire remodel team. When they wanted to preserve the original library–sitting room—a room rich in Chinese red with built-ins along the wall—yet also create a walk-through to the new wing, Toth Construction devised a unique solution. The builder created a replica of the wall-sized cabinet, mounted it on a track and turned it into a large pocket door. With a slight push, the entire unit disappears into the wall for a clear view and walk-through to the new, more casual media room.

But for all the tricks of the trade, all the hand-painted wallpapers and lush silks, all the luxe details (a heated toilet seat in the pool’s cabana bath and Korean massage stones underfoot), the garden remains the home’s North Star. Windows were converted to French doors, so rooms now flow out to it. A new master-bedroom balcony overlooks it. Myriad sitting and dining spaces collaborate with it.

The garden wraps the home in many moods. It has a formal rose garden, a small plot of herbs, a fruit orchard and a jungle of bamboo near a stately old maple tree. Fountains gurgle rather than cascade. In tone, it’s classic estate meets Northwest hip. With the roofed loggia, outdoor fireplace and heaters, this is a space for all seasons—the setting for many a benefit event. And it’s where, after a year of planning and another year of construction, the design team still gathers with the owners as friends to toast their accomplishment.  

Design Details
Architect
Stephen Sullivan, Sullivan Conard Architects
2925 Fuhrman Ave. E., (206) 329-4227

Interior Designer
Susan Young Interiors                    
5833 Sixth Ave. S., (206) 467-6869

Builder
Toth Construction
6506 Second Ave. S., (206) 242-9093

Landscape Architect
Richard Haag Associates      
2412 10th Ave. E., (206) 325-8119

Sullivan Conard Architects was named to the Seattle Design 100+ in 2007 for projects that “enhance the natural qualities of the environment, taking into consideration each site’s history, neighborhood, views, topography and the Northwest palette.” The landscape architect for this project, Richard Haag, was also a Seattle Design 100+ honoree, named to the list in 2006 for being “the godfather of Seattle landscape architecture.” Haag, who established the University of Washington’s department of landscape architecture in 1964, has been recognized for projects such as those at Bloedel Reserve, Gas Works Park and Warren G. Magnuson Park.

Bellevue-based writer Kathryn Renner’s work appears in Country Home, Better Homes & Gardens and other national home publications.