In 1997, builder Gaerda Zeiler promised her husband, Randy, that she'd remodel their newly purchased cottage within three years. Planted on the shores of Lake Washington in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland, Wash., the brick Tudor-style house had seen some unfortunate renovations during its 70 years of existence, including a boxy second-floor addition. The couple wanted to transform it into a home tailored to their family's active lifestyle. But Gaerda's company, Moss Bay Homes, was busier than ever, and seven years passed before she could find time to finish the project.

After settling in to the old house, she and Randy approached local architect Dave Thielsen. He'd designed several neighboring residences, and they admired his ability to infuse contemporary styles with warmth and a human scale. Their 60-foot-wide property included a garage across the street, atop which Thielsen and project architect Robert Connor drew up a guest cottage for the Zeilers to occupy while the main house was under renovation. Construction on the guest house went smoothly, and the Zeilers found a tenant to rent it over the next few years.

Gaerda finally realized she wasn't going to catch a break in her schedule unless she created one. “I finished the other house I was working on and didn't take any new jobs for a year,” she says. She, Randy, and their two daughters, now 13 and 16, moved into the guest house, and the long-awaited remodel began.

According to Thielsen, if it weren't for Kirkland's sun-angle setback rule, building a whole new house would have made more sense than remodeling. This ordinance, aimed at preserving views from the street to the water, prohibits new buildings from sitting as close to the northern property line as the Zeiler house does. “The sun-angle setback drove us towards a remodel/addition,” he says. “The existing building was built before the ordinance, so we could leave it in place.” Plus, Gaerda liked the idea of saving pieces of the old house and reusing them in the new one, something she tries to do in most of the projects she builds. “I really enjoy the feel of a house with materials that tell a story,” she says.

Moss Bay gutted the structure, leaving only the perimeter walls, the entire north wall, and the Craftsman-tiled living room fireplace. The site crew painstakingly removed the exterior bricks and chipped off their mortar so they could be re-used as cladding for the new building. The old walls needed seismic stabilization, so Moss Bay installed steel moment frames and steel beams throughout the building to protect against earthquake damage. The company also rebuilt the existing concrete foundation, lowering it by 18 inches to get more height in the basement and reinforcing it with pin piles.

Thielsen completely reorganized the floor plan, shifting the home's entry to a new, double-height stair tower in the center of the front elevation. The site drops off sharply at that spot, so he designed a footbridge of low-maintenance metal grating leading from the street to the front door. Inside the entry, he took the classic split-level concept and reinvented it. Open-riser stairs with sleek metal railings offer the choice of going upstairs to the second floor or downstairs to the first. But instead of the cramped, unceremonious feeling a typical split-level entry bestows, the extra volume and the light pouring in through clerestory windows combine for a gracious, welcoming effect.

By pulling the stairs out of the middle of the house and placing them within the tower, Thielsen opened up the heart of the building. The move freed the first-floor foyer to act as a music room: Gaerda placed her piano there. From the foyer, traffic flows naturally into the main gathering space, which contains the kitchen, a breakfast area, and a living room. The setup of the kitchen was especially important to the Zeilers, whose daughters enjoy baking and cooking alongside their mother. Thielsen designed a second island outside the main kitchen area with its own oven and dishwasher to accommodate multiple cooks. The arrangement “also works during regular days when I'm cooking by myself,” says Gaerda. “It's not this cavernous kitchen.” And the island doubles as a buffet table for the formal dining room next door.

The entire main floor looks through large panes of glass to Lake Washington, taking in distant views of downtown Seattle. The plan includes a rear concrete deck that acts as part of the lateral seismic stabilizing system. Sculptural poured concrete pillars support the deck, as well as the master bedroom and terrace addition on the second floor. “This is one of the harshest exposures you can get in the Northwest—the western exposure to Lake Washington,” says Thielsen, explaining his and the Zeilers' preference for low-maintenance, durable concrete. “Because the lake is so open, all the weather blows in. There's sun, also wind-driven rain—often it's driving horizontally. You can't depend on caulking. We consider it a finish material, not a waterproofing material.” Instead, he relies on a series of metal and membrane flashings.

Aside from the front entry, the only place where the new house steps outside the old footprint is on the southern side, where Thielsen pushed the wall out to gain space for a daughter's bedroom and Gaerda's home office. The extra square footage also allowed him to install a row of skylights in the ceiling of the finished basement. Going to great lengths to capture natural light is nothing new to him—in fact, it's one of his highest priorities in any project. “The homeowners shouldn't feel as if they have to turn on a light to be in the space, even on a gray day,” he says. He used clerestories to let light deep into all of the public spaces and a butterfly roof structure to bring the sun's rays into the entry and the master bedroom.

Gaerda's philosophy on natural light aligns with Thielsen's. “It's gray here, so getting light is essential to our good health,” she says. Her new house allows her whole family to live by that principle. And as a builder, she ended up with a showpiece that helps her explain design ideas to clients (for more on this, see sidebar on the next page). The remodel may not have happened within her original time frame, but seven years was a short time to wait for such a substantial payoff.