This project came to me from two dear friends, who had purchased a rather unique house, located at the southern end of the Mount Baker neighborhood of Seattle. The site has gorgeous views of Lake Washington, Mercer Island, and the downtown Bellevue skyline. The house was originally designed and built in the late 1980’s by Cihan Anisoglu AIA, of Anisoglu Architects. It was built to be a new house for his then young family, and as a showcase example of his firms signature “Post Modern” residential design work at the time. It was featured as a Seattle Times / AIA “Home of the Month” on August 9th, 1987. With such a strong historical pedigree like that, I was very nervous to design any intervention in such a signature showpiece house! My friends and clients had the original hand drawn plans for the house from the 1980’s, and I studied them very carefully to understand the design of Mr. Anisoglu. I wanted whatever I designed to be fully informed by his original intents, so that the finished addition would look like it was entirely original to the house.
The problem I had to solve for my friends was to find a way to expand the rather small primary bedroom suite bathroom on the upper floor, to include room for a new soaking tub. Luckily there was a small roof balcony adjacent to the bathroom to expand into. The solution was to extend the existing roof dormer over the bedroom area further north, to enclose that balcony. The new soaking tub sits there, with a new casement window to overlook the Lake Washington views. As often happens in remodel projects, the scope of it can sometime expand in the imagining. We included a small reorganization of the upper floor, to carve out space for a new upper floor laundry room, and to update the finishes and fixtures of the adjacent second bathroom. All of the existing carpeting of that level was removed, and all new oak hardwood floors were installed, to match the existing hardwood flooring of the main floor. All the new interior paint colors, cabinetry, and finishes were selected by my clients friend, Laura Einowski of Einowski Color + Design LLC. She did a magnificent job of it, in my professional opinion. The project was completed In April of 2025.
Construction services provided by Gatewood Builders LLC