One of the amazing things about working at Seattle Homes & Lifestyles is the chance to visit so many beautiful homes and hear their stories. While we learn about many of the houses we feature through design professionals (architects and interior designers, for example), we also often get to meet the current owners. And, because a lot of the homes we publish are new construction, we sometimes hear their entire histories from the people who commissioned them, designed them, built them and decorated them.
But when we run stories about older homes that have been remodeled or renovated, those houses have all kinds of stories that we often don’t hear-stories of past owners, other renovations and sometimes even former architects and builders whose names are unknown to a home’s current owners.
On rare occasions, we learn more about a home after we publish an article about it-and this was the case with the Queen Anne home once owned by Seattle design icon Jean Jongeward, which we featured in our January/February 2009 issue. After the story was printed, we were surprised and pleased to receive an e-mail from a woman, now living in California, who purchased the house from Jongeward’s estate. She and her late husband hired San Francisco architect and designer Nestor Matthews of Matthews Studio to renovate the house and repair the ravages of time. Matthews, and Seattle-based builders SBC Construction, remodeled the kitchen, master bedroom and living room, and added the main floor terrace and courtyard.
Like a vintage dress, even a well designed older home usually needs some tailoring to make it a perfect fit for a new owner, and that was the case with this beauty. Steven Hensel, the interior designer hired to make the alterations for the home’s current residents, was happy to see that Jongeward’s home had already been restored before his clients purchased it in 2007.
"What they had done was great," recalls Hensel, who designed the current interior look of the home. "We didn’t have to do very much remodeling … they had added the deck, which was breathtaking [and] that courtyard area (designed by David Pfeiffer), which we didn’t touch."
Perhaps it is the mark of a truly great home when it can be tailored to perfectly fit several owners over the course of its long life.
If you know an untold story about a home that has been featured in the pages of SH&L over the years-either what has happened to it since our feature or what it looked like before—we’d love to hear it. Please drop me a line at the address below.
In this issue, we turn our focus to what lies outside a number of homes in the Seattle area, featuring two beautiful gardens that have completely different personalities: a structured garden outside a Mediterranean-style villa on Mercer Island and a lush garden overflowing with foliage, flowers and art year-round in Laurelhurst. We also spotlight the winner of the fourth annual "First in Home and Design" award, which SH&L gives to the Northwest Flower & Garden Show display garden that represents the best ideas in residential garden design. This year’s winner-designed by New Yorker Rebecca Cole-was an urban rooftop garden filled with great ideas for going green.
Whether your passion for gardening is active or passive, we hope you’re celebrating the arrival of spring.
Giselle Smith, editor
gsmith@seattlehomesmag.com
April 1st, 2009
Reflecting the spirit of much of the country, we elected to focus this month on Change. This year, that means home renovations that make the most of what you have, with a respectful nod to sustainability and an emphasis on great design.
In our Home section, we feature four outstanding remodeling projects that worked mostly within the original footprints—but better. A great room remodel in Magnolia, designed by Stock & Associates, gave the owners more usable open space with a look they both could love. In Medina, architect Lane Williams worked with a couple to open up and brighten their space, and interior designer Holly McKinley designed custom furniture to suit the new look, as well as how the homeowners live. Also in Magnolia, landscape designer Scot Eckley worked with a young couple to recreate their landscape to be low-maintenance, usable year-round and family friendly. And Room for Improvement spotlights a Mercer Island living room given a 21st century face-lift for new owners.
Our Style section also focuses on renovations, with some of our favorite new products to change the look of your space and new interpretations of classic shapes. This month’s Design Report offers advice from local designers on how to freshen up a room without replacing major pieces of furniture.
And In Good Taste continues the theme: Food writer Jean Galton shares recipes for new-and-improved takes on old favorites such as grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.
If you’ve seen a great transformation recently—or think your home qualifies for that title—we’d love to hear about it. Just send us some digital snapshots (no need for professional photos) of the home before and after, along with a short note describing the changes. We’d love to consider your ideas for our next Room for Improvement page.
Giselle Smith, Editor
Photo by Hank Drew
March 5th, 2009
It’s my pleasure to usher in a new year with 10 new additions to our Seattle Design 100+: People, Places and Things That Define Seattle Design.
Since launching this list in February 2006, we’ve watched the honorees with interest and some sense of pride as their stars have soared on the local and national level.
Celebrity architect Tom Kundig of Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen, for example, won the 2008 National Design Award in Architecture from The Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. The architecture firm also received a Merit Award from AIA Seattle for Noah’s Ark at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.
AIA Seattle also recognized Miller Hull with a Merit Award for the Kitsap County Administration Building and a Citation for its Bumper Crop conceptual project. The organization gave E. Cobb Architects a Merit Award for a Queen Anne remodel project and a Commendation for its 56 Piles project. (A Merit Award also went to Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, the architects on SH&L’s 2007 Home of the Year, for that project, as well as an AIA Honor Award for a residence in Woodway.)
The Berger Partnership won a Merit Award from AIA Southwest Washington for its Pierce County Central Maintenance Facility project, completed with TCF Architecture. The firm also received a Merit Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects’ (ASLA) Washington Chapter for its Water Management Strategies project.
Honoree Nancy Burfiend of NB Design Group, whose design work is featured in a Leschi home in our January/February 2009 issue, placed first in the Northwest Design Award commercial category for her work on the Vida Wellness Spa in the Pan Pacific Hotel. Prestige Custom Builders received the Built Green Choice Award in the 2008 Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties Remodeling Excellence Awards.
Culinary giants Canlis and Crush were nominated for prestigious James Beard Foundation Awards in the Outstanding Service and Best Chef: Northwest categories, respectively. Canlis was also recognized with a Wine Spectator Restaurant Award in the Grand category for the 12th consecutive year, as well as a Washington Wine Grand Award. Honoree Seastar Restaurant and Raw Bar also garnered a Washington Wine Grand Award.
In January 2006, we predicted great things from the new Four Seasons Hotel Seattle, which opened to guests this past November. At press time, 69 percent of the elegant residences on floors 11–21, above the 10 floors of hotel rooms, had been sold.
AIA Seattle Merit Awards went to E. Cobb Architects for this Queen Anne remodel project (above) and to Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen for its Noah’s Ark project (below). Photos courtesy AIA Seattle: Steve Keating; Grant Mudford.
In this issue, we feature some outstanding design projects by many of our honorees, as well as their insights on design trends, favorite recipes and great Washington wines.
If you think we’ve omitted some talent in our January/February 2009 issue, we’d love your suggestions as to who we should recognize next year. Although individuals and companies cannot nominate themselves to the Seattle Design 100+ list, we’ve got some connections.
Giselle Smith, editor
gsmith@seattlehomesmag.com
January 14th, 2009
We think even Scrooge would be charmed by the elegant black-and-white holiday décor of Alec Puskas’ Central District home. But I was lucky to have the added insight of the story behind his evolving career as a master of festivities.
On September 11, 2001, Puskas was in Tampa, helping set up a new Nordstrom store; the following weekend, a hurricane soaked Florida. The two events got him thinking about the importance of doing work he loved rather than simply liked. “I came home from that job and told my manager at Nordstrom ‘October 31 is going to be my last day,’ ” he recalls. Puskas had started his visual merchandising business, Visionart, on the side five years earlier, but now he decided to pursue his passion. It was scary at first, but working out of his basement turned into a 2,500-square-foot warehouse in SoDo as the business “just snowballed.” For Puskas, it’s now Christmas for almost the entire year.
This month’s issue is all about luxury—not just the sparkle of holiday decorations, but also
sumptuousness bathroom ideas culled from some of the world’s best hotels, the opulent beauty of a Belltown jewel-box condo, glamorous home design that recalls the 1920s and the allure of the region’s most expensive homes currently on the market.
SH&L extends congratulations to all of the winners in the 2008 Northwest Design Awards, including Seattle Design 100+ honorees Nancy Burfiend (first place, Commercial category), Tyler Engle (first place Bathroom category and first place Whole House Less Than $400,000) and Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects (first place Unusual Spaces category and first place Whole House More Than $400,000).
Happy Holidays!
Giselle Smith, editor
November 29th, 2008
Seattle Homes & Lifestyles’ Home of the Year contest is kind of like Christmas. We set a deadline, send out an announcement and then we wait. Slowly, the entries trickle in … usually with a rush just a day or so before the deadline. And then we get to open each one, admire all of the photographs and marvel at the quality of the designs, furnishings and architecture. Next, we remove all information about who entered the project or who owns the home and copy the entries into a folder to share with our panel of judges, who view the entries anonymously.
This year’s judges were Linda Humphrey, SH&L market adviser and city editor for Metropolitan Home; architect Aaron Mollick from Stuart Silk Architects; and interior designer and 2007 Design Achievement Award honoree Paul Devon Raso. They reviewed the entries and discussed each home’s merits and limitations. This year’s winning entry was the unanimous choice of all three judges. Raso called it, "individualistic," and Mollick praised it for not being "heavy-handed."
Professional photographers can make things look different than they do in real life—better, usually, but also sometimes bigger (or smaller) than they really are. An example of this accompanies writer and designer Randy Altig’s article about setting a holiday table.
Photograph by Hank Drew
We didn’t worry about what it would take to replicate his entire dining room in the photo studio. Photographer Hank Drew and SH&L art director Shawn Williams are pros at all of this. Under their direction, Randy—with some help from the folks at J.Z. Rose in Bellevue—put together just a corner of this holiday table. The photo above (shhhhh …) shows what it really looked like in the studio.
Also in this issue are an elegant home in Laurelhurst and a playful, window-rich teahouse in Ballard. Our Style Editor, Virginia Bunker, suggests unexpected gifts, reveals trends in screen prints and reports on the latest sofa designs.
SH&L is hunting for a holiday decorating makeover for our December 2009 Room for Improvement page. Send us before-and-after holiday decor photos of a room in your home and maybe we’ll send our photographer out to take a professional shot to appear in the magazine next year.
Giselle Smith, Editor
gisellesmith@seattlehomesmag.com
November 12th, 2008
I was born in Seattle and have lived within the city limits for almost my entire life. So by Websters standard definitions of "urban" (1. of, pertaining to, or designating a city or town. 2. living in a city. 3. characteristic of or accustomed to cities; citified), I could call myself that. But as the metropolitan area loosely described by the name Seattle (or "greater Seattle") has grown, both geographically and in population, our definition of what it means to live an urban lifestyle has changed too.
Sure, I walked to my local grade school, but we didn’t walk many other places. (Of course, gas was cheaper then too.) Now, living urban generally means walking to shops, grocery stores, restaurants, movie theaters and more. As new, bigger, better and more interesting condo projects crop up in the region’s urban centers, the opportunities for living this new definition of a city lifestyle are increasing daily.
In the pages of this urban living-themed issue of Seattle Homes & Lifestyles, we share four homes—in downtown, the Lake Union area and Capitol Hill—that live large in relatively small spaces and share tips from real estate agents on finding a condo property that will retain its value.
We also congratulate the 2008 Design Achievement Award honorees presented by SH&L and Seattle Design Center, share ideas for circular obsessions and creative trimmings and visit a trio of Oregon wineries.
This month, SH&L welcomes new Assistant Editor Angela Chang, who wrote this issue’s In Good Taste article on new Northwest cookbooks. In her new position, Angela is thrilled that she is able to combine her love of writing with her interest in design. She has written about diverse subjects such as home design, computer technology and novel-writing, and is excited to immerse herself in Seattle’s fine design community. Contact Angela by e-mail at achang@SeattleHomesMag.com.
Giselle Smith, Editor
gisellesmith@seattlehomesmag.com
October 7th, 2008
Behind every great issue of Seattle Homes & Lifestyles is a hardworking, talented team of writers, photographers, editors, designers, account executives and more. In addition, we depend on the participation of interior designers, architects, landscape designers, builders and homeowners—without whose involvement the stories on our pages and Web site would never be possible. 
One example of this teamwork is the people involved in creating just one feature in the magazine, our story about the Bellevue home of Seattle Seahawks quarterback Matt Hasselbeck and his family. The snapshot here, taken during the photo session for Matt and Sarah Hasselbeck’s home includes (left to right) managing editor Lindsey Rowe, interior designer Michelle Yorke, Sarah and Matt, assistant stylist Debby Good, art director Shawn Williams, photographer assistant Clay Martin and photographer David Papazian.
No matter how well a team works together, there comes a time when players are traded or move on. Such is the case for SH&L this month as we say goodbye to Lindsey Rowe. Lindsey is moving to Washington, D.C., where we bid her luck in her career and best wishes for her upcoming wedding. We also welcome a new team member: assistant editor Angela Chang.
Giselle Smith, Editor
gsmith@seattlehomesmag.com
September 1st, 2008
