Designed for a fun, hip, young family with four teenage children, two boys and two girls, this vacation house is built on property that has been in the wife’s family for generations, and where her parents still have a small beach house next door. This house is inspired by the desire to recreate for her own family the treasured childhood memories of summers at grandma’s beach house, and to create a larger family vacation community for grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.

The biggest defining aspect of the project is a challenging site. Constrained by a setback from Puget Sound to the north and a wetland to the south, the property faced significant, almost insurmountable, challenges, from shoreline setbacks and wetland issues. We partnered from the beginning with the different agencies involved in regulation to be constructive about how we developed the site, including the King County Land Use Services Division: Critical Areas and the Washington State Department of Ecology.

Rather than simply meet the criteria for development we opted to let the wetland mitigation to become a strength for the project. Instead of building a road through it, we bridged over it. Instead of leaving an overgrown depression in the earth, we did a full restoration with native plantings that not only makes the approach more attractive, but also makes the wetland more valuable.

100% of the roof rainfall is collected and used for toilets, clothes washing, and irrigation. When the catchment tanks are full the water is also used to recharge the wetland.

Inside, floor-to-ceiling glazing along the north wall brings in diffuse light to the rooms on the main floor. A south-facing dormer in the great room pulls light in throughout the day, serving somewhat like a sundial to track time. Flooring throughout the house is reclaimed from a local high school gymnasium. In order to preserve the 15” wide boards, there were left unsanded and finished with a non-toxic flaxseed oil. We worked closely with McIntyre Construction, a firm with an incredible sense of detail and craftsmanship, to see the project through to completion. The home was awarded LEED® for Homes Silver Certification.