A CHILDHOOD HOME:
You can go home again, but you might want to remodel before you do.

From her breakfast table, Jayne Michaelson orients a visitor to her backyard view. "Maybe the eagles will be out this morning," she says. "They fish off that tree over there." Beyond the gnarled shorefront fir – where a bald eagle alights as if on cue – stretch the waters of Puget Sound. In the distance rise the steep green shores of Vashon Island and, across a narrow strait, Point Defiance, the park district of Tacoma, Washington.

It's a view one could get used to, and Jayne has had plenty of time to do that. She grew up an only child in this house, living here until she went off to college. When Jayne's father died two years ago, her mother moved to a nearby apartment and sold the house to Jayne and her husband, Gene. Such arrangements are common in this part of the world, where community ties strain against a tide of rising property values. "In Gig Harbor now," says Jayne, "this kind of view and property, you inherit."

Jayne and Gene knew they would have to remodel – not only to make a home for themselves and their 9-year-old daughter, but also to correct some serious shortcomings in the house itself.

In spite of the spectacular setting, the 1960 floor plan followed a plain-vanilla ranch formula. A fireplace sat squarely centered across the living room's water view. The three bedrooms, clustered together at one end of the house, shared a single bath. The kitchen, like the rest of the house, was 35 years old and showed its age.

Jayne and Gene's opinions differed, however, on how far the change should go. Jayne envisioned transforming the house into a Craftsman bungalow. Her husband was skeptical. "We had a little rambler here," he says. "I thought we'd just make it bigger." As he put it to his wife and others, "You can't turn an apple into an orange."

To settle the matter, the Michaelsons consulted Bret Drager, a Tacoma architect and close friend. After touring a nearby Craftsman house that the couple admired, Drager told them, "We can re-create this house exactly – if you really want that – but maybe there's a way to save more of what you have here."

The changes to the building's shell are deceptively simple: a second-story master suite addition, a 1½-story gabled breakfast room, and a carport enclosed to create a garage. Projecting outward and upward from the existing structure, these elements put a striking neo-Craftsman face on the house. The less assertive shapes of the original structure recede into the background, becoming the connective tissue that ties these stronger forms together.

Functional changes inside the house began with a shuffling of existing spaces. Enclosing a covered patio created room for the new kitchen. The existing kitchen became a formal dining room; the laundry room and bath near the entry, an office for Gene. A large family room yielded space for a tightly organized utility area and a small library with a gas fireplace.

For access to the new master suite – bedroom, bath, and Jayne's office/exercise room – Drager penned a graceful stair that incorporates the living room entertainment center. Replacing the living room hearth with a double patio door brought in another big wedge of the priceless water view.

The main wing's timber frame roof structure left Drager free to chip away at the separation between rooms. Some partitions are capped at door-head height. Those that rise to the roof beams are detailed with a "water table" trim band and pierced with glass block windows that give discrete rooms a glimpse of light from adjacent spaces. 

The Michaelsons took a deep breath before giving the go-ahead for such an extensive makeover, but their long friendship with Drager and his wife bolstered their trust. "They were almost perfect clients," says Drager, who enjoyed an unusual degree of freedom in conceiving the design.

Still, the architect took pains – drawing elaborate perspective sketches – to ensure that his friends knew exactly what they were getting. With remarkably few exceptions, the final product reflects Drager's initial proposal.

The couple took a similar approach in hiring remodeler Gary Howe. They found someone they trusted and then let him do his work. "Gary was the only contractor I interviewed," says Jayne. "We had really good recommendations, he had roots in the community, and he seemed really excited about the project, which a lot of people wouldn't be."

Howe, a soft-spoken man with graying hair, is a native of Gig Harbor. "That's my fishing ground right out there," he says, pointing to the waters off Point Defiance. "I got 50 or 60 salmon out there this year."

Howe isn't afraid of a little rain, but when his crew began work in normally dry August, the weather surprised even him. "We opened up the roof, and it rained for 30 days and 30 nights," he says. To fend off the deluge, Howe relied on two weapons: "Tarps and tons of labor."

At the far end of the job, another ton of labor went into the cedar shingle siding. "Each and every shingle was hand-dipped in our shop," Howe says. "That's an area where I probably underestimated. It was a task that went on and on." Still, despite the trials of Mother Nature and Benjamin Moore, Howe brought the job in on time and on budget.

Having gotten the house they wanted at their price, the Michaelsons are generous with praise for both Drager and Howe. But Jayne speaks with genuine gratitude for the way the remodeler and his crew conducted themselves on the job. For starters, she says, "they were welcoming to my Mom when she came around."

Jayne had expected her mother to be upset at seeing the family home torn up. But Mom turned out to be an enthusiastic spectator, showing up often with cookies for the carpenters. Instead, says Jayne, "I was the one who was kind of a case for a while. I grew up not making marks on that wallpaper, and now they were ripping it off."

But Howe and his crew did more than merely navigate these sometimes choppy waters. "Morale was high on this job," recalls Howe, "because of the emotions that went along with it." Seeing what the house meant to their clients made the job mean more to them.

During demolition, Howe saved the door jamb where Jayne's parents had charted her growth as a child. He also put aside a matching jamb for the Michaelsons' daughter and mounted both on a column in the basement playroom.

Jayne is struck by the symmetry – her childhood on one side, her child's on another; an only daughter returning home to raise her only daughter – and she's not alone. "Now my daughter says when I get old, she's going to find me a place."

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