Via some unix command-line magic, the first thing I did was systematically delete all nights and weekends. This eliminated about 75% of the images producing a 13 minute movie. It was still, however, too long, too big, and filled with too many stretches of marginal exterior progress. At that point, I opened up my FTP program and started going through all 22,000 of the remaining images and deleting any stretches of time that lacked exterior activity. The end result was a final movie consisting of 5929 images and lasting a little over three minutes… and here it is:

… and with that, A House By the Park is essentially concluded! It’s been fun writing this journal, and hopefully if you’re about to start a new project of your own, you’ll get as much out of it as I put into it. One final thanks as well to my friends at Build, without whom, this project wouldn’t have gone nearly as smoothly.

At long last, it’s time to stop neglecting my main blog and begin writing over at Mike Industries again.

Thanks for following along. It’s been fun.

Now that the house is done and we’re all moved in, I thought I’d write a short post about how the first couple of weeks have gone. Since I haven’t lived in anything but apartments and condos since going off to college, it’s been a bit strange expanding into a much larger space.

The strangest part isn’t really the size, but rather the amount of “things” to keep track of… especially entrances and exits. In a condo, your only point of security is your one main door so remembering to close and lock it isn’t difficult. Additionally, unless you’re on the ground floor, any windows you may leave open are not much of a security risk. Yes, we have a security system to tell us when these sorts of things are open, but it’s still another thing to keep track of. We also have an indoor cat and there are quite a few neighborhood outdoor cats that hang out in our backyard, so making sure those boundaries are not crossed is another concern.

Another thing that was unexpected for me with new construction is how many post move-in tweaks and fixes there are. It’s definitely not like buying a new piece of precision electronics that’s been thoroughly tested and should be flawless right off of the assembly line. New homes are imperfect. They just are. Until people begin living in them, many of their flaws go undetected. Some examples in my situation include a shower with a defective thermostatic valve, pocket doors which don’t have the proper clearance to slide unencumbered, and a built-in dresser that isn’t tall enough to hang certain garments.

I won’t lie… at first, it’s a bit frustrating seeing these sorts of things right after you move in. You’d like to think a large team of professional “testers” came through your house before you moved in to flip every switch and jiggle every bolt, but unless you hired that team specifically, it is likely they didn’t. Builders do the best they can to present as finished of a product as possible, but as a homeowner, you’re always going to find things they don’t. This is no different than my business, where we produce web experiences we think are great only to have our clients and our customers point out things we didn’t do right.

The other important part of getting settled that we haven’t completed yet is just getting everything functional and into place. TV, internet, and whole-house audio are all working now, so that helps, and we have some nice new furniture as well, but a house feels empty without art, plants, and some of the other human touches people adorn their surroundings with.

I still have probably 10 or 15 more posts to write on some subjects I haven’t covered yet, but until then, feel free to visit the photo gallery for some new shots of the completed house. Build also has a new post on the completion of the house.

• 30 Marlin 1505 Series AT-17 double/triple pane aluminum windows with thermal breaks
• 2 NanaWalls
• 2 Milgard thermally improved clear anodized sliding doors
• 2 motorized Tam skylights
• 1 Bilco roof hatch

The largest of the Marlins weigh 350 pounds and measure approximately 9 feet by 9 feet. Unfortunately I wasn’t there to film the action, but from what I understand, it took a crew of seven to jostle some of these giant glass forms into place. I find it amazing that not a single pane was damaged or dropped.

I know I routinely say good things about Build, but when a four man design/build shop shows up on site to help physically install 350 pound windows, that is pretty special… and these guys aren’t exactly Lou Ferrigno either (check out Kevin’s arms). They also saved me a ton of money when some of the windows showed up unexpectedly unglazed due to their weight. Calling a full field glazing team in to remedy the situation would have cost several thousand dollars, but because Build provided additional sweat equity, two field glazers were able to install everything in a few hours.

For some specifics on all the glass, read on…

The windows

The State of Washington made things very easy on me, decision-wise. If you have a two-story space to glaze and you specify aluminum frame windows, there is exactly one kind of window which meets the Washington Energy Code: the Marlin 1505 Series. While this is not good from a “shopping around to get the best value window” standpoint, it’s good in that it’s one less decision to make.

Energy codes are a controversial subject. Especially in states like Washington and Oregon, some people say the codes are so strict that they dramatically increase the price of construction without proportionate reduction of energy footprint.

The Marlins have a U-value of 0.35 which is right at Washington’s limit. Smaller inoperable vinyl windows can get down to 0.15, but who wants a bunch of small, inoperable vinyl windows on their house?

The windows were supplied by Goldfinch Brothers out of Everett, WA and Marlin themselves are a Spokane, WA company so it was nice to buy local.

I will not be throwing stones anytime soon.

The NanaWalls

The Nanas are one of my favorite elements of the house. A NanaWall is essentially a sliding glass door that folds away like an accordion instead of sliding. The upshot of this is that the entire passageway can be opened, unlike a sliding door which is never really more than halfway open at any given time. Another nice feature of NanaWalls is that the first pane swings outward like a standard door so you can open and close it with ease. NanaWalls are especially good choices when you are trying to seamlessly connect outdoor space to indoor space, as I doing with my patio and north kitchen area. They are a little more expensive than Fleetwood sliding doors but worth it, in my opinion.

Yes, there will eventually be a safety rail and a proper deck here.

The Milgard sliders

NanaWalls notwithstanding, there were still a couple of spots that needed standard sliding doors: the basement and the dining room. When you look at Milgard sliding doors, “standard” is about the only word that comes to mind. Inexpensive and unremarkable. Kind of like anything from Old Navy.

Motorized skylights

As you can probably tell, the house isn’t exactly starved for light, but in the summer, it is critical that it has proper ventilation. In order to suck cool air in and draw hot air out, we made part of the lower west glass operable and installed two motorized skylights at the top of the double-height great room.

The skylights will be tied into the Myro home automation system as well as open and close in reaction to heat and rain.

The roof hatch

What can I say. It’s a big ugly steel hatch leading up to the roof deck. Roof access is rarely a pretty thing and this is no exception, but it gets the job done with as small of a footprint as possible.

What’s next

Now that the house is 95% dry, the space around the window frames will be waterproofed this week and the entire house will be sheathed in waterproof fabric. Once the house is all covered, the rainscreen paneling and metal roof will be installed. There should be lots of progress on the livecam for the next two weeks.

I’ve also update the gallery with shots of all the new glass.

Here is the timelapse of framing phase:

I mentioned in my last post that we encountered a few sizing “issues” during framing, two of which were solved by minor shifts in interior walls, and one of which was unsolved.

The unsolved issue centered around the feeling that, at less than 12 feet, the master bedroom was too shallow. While 12 feet is a perfectly livable depth for a bedroom, it just seemed too cramped, especially for a house designed from scratch for its owner. The girlfriend and I both felt the entire master suite was just too small so we asked Build for options, priced out. The options were:

1. Move the entire exterior west wall of the master bedroom two feet west, enlarging the bedroom depth by two feet and shrinking the deck depth by two feet. This seemed like the most attractive option, but it was also by far the most difficult because it posed far-reaching structural problems. Turns out we would have had to re-beam a good portion of the house all the way from the north to the south. Approximate cost: $14,000.
2. Same thing as above but move the wall six feet west instead, to the edge of the deck, eliminating the deck. This was a lot easier structurally, but losing the master bedroom deck did not seem good. Approximate cost: $10,000.
3. Move only the section of the west wall that is glass two feet west, leaving the structural part of the wall in place. This poses no structural issues, shrinks part of the deck to a 4 foot depth and leaves the other part at a full 6 feet. Approximate cost: $1,500.
4. Steal a foot from the already small master bathroom and walk-in closet. Approximate cost: $500.
5. Do nothing. Cost: only disappointment.

After some heavy thinking, option 3 arose as the clear winner. It accomplished the objective of enlarging the master bedroom, didn’t cost too much, and it even improves the deck in a way, since the six-foot-depth area is a bit more private now.

So, sizing crisis averted!

There are a few very important things I learned from this process:

1. I can’t stress how relieving it is to have a design/build firm whose interests are completely aligned with mine and who isn’t interested in nickel-and-diming me for every little change order that comes along. With many traditional architects and G.C.s, even meeting about such a change would “start the meter” so to speak. Build has been great through all modification requests and I feel very lucky to have a team that cares as much as they do.
2. Not withstanding the above, I am a bit mad at myself for not doing more during design stage to ensure the house was sized appropriately. In looking at plans, I tended to concentrate on the more obvious questions like “where is the kitchen in relation to the living room and dining room” and “how many bedrooms are on the same floor at the master”. I really never scrutinized actual dimensions of rooms because I just figured there was a standard size for everything that would be either met or exceeded. What I should have done is physically laid out string in an open space somewhere to match the dimensions of each room in the house. Just a quick “reality check”. This lesson gave me a great idea for an invention/business that I may pursue at some point. The bottom line, however, is that it doesn’t matter who your architect is… they are going to design what they think works and if you don’t have the data to know otherwise and say something, you’ll end up with questions and change orders.
3. In this phase of the project, I will freely admit that I have gone from a “low to medium maintenance” client to a “high maintenance” client, and I think I know why: I am a web designer. My world is not a world in which I spend months planning things with the intent of building them out to the meticulous specs of the plan. My world is a world in which you have an idea, mock something up, prototype a little, iterate, launch, and then keep iterating after that. The foundation is never set, the walls are never nailed, and the paint is never dry. Working on the web is an infinitely iterative process and designing a house is the opposite of that.

A timelapse is worth a thousand words, so before explaining this phase any further, take a look at the whole process compressed down to about a minute:

Probably the most amazing part about this deconstruction is how much material we saved from going into a landfill. I don’t have the final weight numbers yet, but essentially 40% of the house was resold to other home builders, 50% of it was recycled, and only 10% of it went to the dump. Amazing. For all the talk about building green using expensive solar panels and other technologies, this step has a much greater immediate positive environmental impact, in my opinion. I talked to Paul — the gentleman operating the excavator — and he told me he could have technically knocked the entire house down in five hours if it was all going to the dump. I ended up paying more in labor fees to deconstruct the house instead of demolishing it, but I would have paid more in dumping fees the other way. In the end, it’s better to spend your money on good, honest, environmentally-conscious labor than on dumping fees.

As an extra-added bonus, I had the re-sold elements appraised at Foss Appraisal and they came out to a whopping $18,000… about triple what I expected. This means I can write off $18,000 in donations from my taxes (note: any claim over $5000 requires this third-party appraisal).

The second-most amazing thing about this process was how little collateral damage was caused by it. One of my Japanese maples lost a branch due to a window frame falling and one of the neighbor’s garden rocks got cracked when a dumpster truck bumped into it, but that’s about it. To remove that much house off the side of a cliff with that little damage is astounding to me. The crews were all very nice too and entertained the neighbors with explanations the process.

Finally, the last amazing thing to me about this deconstruction was how freely everyone moved around in the presence of such dangerous machinery. In watching the livecam all day (I have an actual video feed on my desktop… not just the stills), I frequently saw people crossing in front of, behind, and on each side of the moving excavator arm without ever getting hit. The almost unconscious coordination these people have is unbelievable.

On to framing!

In short, since part of my property is in an “environmentally sensitive area” (i.e. near a cliff) the City insisted that I sign a covenant running with the land that did many things I felt were overreaching and unnecessary. I understand why the City’s standard procedure is to ask for this (and most people accept it as is) but it contained two particular things that my attorney, Patrick Moran, was thankfully able to negotiate out:

• A clause stating that if anyone sued the City for anything relating to the issuance of my permits, I had to indemnify them and pay for all legal fees, judgements, etc.
• A clause stating that this covenant ran with the land and if I ever sold the property, the new owners would also be burdened by it.

The first clause was reduced such that the indemnification only covers actual damages caused by construction. This means that if a neighbor decides to sue the City because they don’t like the look of my house, I’m not on the hook to defend anybody or pay anything. The second clause was modified such that the indemnification ends if and when the property is sold. This is key in preserving value, as I would flinch if I was buying a property which transferred such indemnification to me.

A lot more language was clarified as well, and I feel like the $1049.50 I owe my attorney in fees has been well worth it.

During these final stages of preparing for construction, I’ve also completed a few more tasks and spent a little more money:

• We had the asbestos abated for $2,335.64 by Partners Construction, Inc.
• Some additional structural engineering work from Swenson Say Faget was completed for $2,192.29.
• Some additional geotech work was required by the City and performed by Icicle Creek Engineers for $600.
• The additional City of Seattle fee to complete the permitting process was $3,450.75 (bringing the total permit fee to $8,911.50).
• Printing fees of $172.91 for some additional drawing sets.

So with that, we’re almost all set to build. I’m still waiting for my refinance to close, but after that it’s all systems go. Unfortunately, the place that is going to deconstruct and recycle most of the existing house is a little booked up right now so we may be looking at July.

It’s also interesting to note that the official amount of investment it took to get to the point of breaking ground has been exactly $78,543.85.

One of the nice things about Build is that Kevin Eckert and Andrew van Leeuwen — the principals — are very transparent about how long things will take and how much they will cost. When I went in to sign the contract with them, Kevin gave me a spreadsheet of where all time and money was expected to go, even though we were going with a flat-fee structure of $48,000. I won’t list every line item in the document, but the main sections are as follows:

• Information Gathering and Documentation: $3,220 (42 hours)
• Schematic Design and Design Development: $29,440 (370 hours)
• Construction Documents: $10,430 (126 hours)
• Pre-construction Services: $800 (8 hours)
• General Conditions: $2790 (30 hours)
• Contingency: $1,500

All of that adds up to $48,000, which I will be paying as I go, every month. The initial deposit, which I will pay today is $9600.

As the prospect of building became more and more certain though, I felt I still had some homework to do, specifically around the subject of pricing. High end custom home architects have an awful reputation for designing without cost consciousness in mind. I’ve talked to people who’ve gone through it first-hand as clients as well as other people in the construction industry and most seem to agree that although architects are very important to the process of building a house, most are not overly concerned with building you a nice house as economically as possible, but rather building the most impressive house they can, with overspending as the main by-product. I know not all architects are this way, but from personal accounts, I also know that many are, and that’s why I have to be extra careful. Since I don’t want to spend a million dollars on construction, finding the most cost-effective high end architect has quickly become the most important part of this project.

Following is everything I’ve learned about architects over the last several weeks:

Fee Schedule

Even among just the 8 firms I talked to, there are four different methods each uses to charge their clients:

• As a percentage of the cost of construction — This seems to be the most common arrangement. On the low end, I found 8%, and on the high end, I found 16%. Essentially, in a 15% arrangement, if you spend $1,000,000 building your house, you then pay the architect $150,000 on top of that for their fees. I was not aware that this arrangement was so common, and frankly, I don’t like it. If I make the simple decision to use a $50,000 material to cover my floors instead of a $25,000 material, why should the architect make an extra $3750? I don’t blame architects for charging this way because I would too, but as a client, it just doesn’t seem ideal to me.
• A straight hourly fee — This appears to be getting more popular these days. Instead of tying their fees to the often unrelated variable of construction costs, some architects are now simply presenting an hourly rate to their clients and the final bill reflects a simple calculation of the total number of hours spent. This fee structure is common in my world (graphic design/web development) but I never liked it much either. As a designer, I want to know how much money I’m making up front, and as a client, I want to know what a project is going to cost in advance.
• Hourly, followed by percentage — This was the least attractive option in my mind. Essentially, the firm charges you an hourly fee during initial design stage, and then bolts on the X% of construction costs afterwards. I asked the one firm who used this method if the hourly cost disappears if and when the client proceeds with construction and they said “No, it’s added on”. Perhaps it’s not such a bad option if the firm’s percentage of construction cost is low, but that wasn’t the case for this firm. No thanks.
• Flat fee — Ahhhhhh. Sweet, sweet certainty. This is my favorite cost structure, both as a client and also as a designer. Architects who charge flat fees generally estimate the amount of hours they will spend on a project and then give a fixed bid based on that. I love this arrangement because I know exactly what I’m on the hook for in advance. If the firm takes a little longer than expected, their effective hourly rate is lowered a bit, and if they finish quicker, it’s raised but with the benefit of the project going quicker.

Cost of construction estimates

One of the first things you should ask any potential architect of yours is “what do the houses you design normally cost?” When I asked this question, I got answers ranging from “$125-$225 a square foot” to “almost always around $600 a square foot”. What a huge difference. To put that in perspective, for a 3000 square foot house, that’s the difference between $375,000 and $1.8m in construction costs alone. Most firms I talked to were in the $300-$400 per square foot range.

What accounts for such huge price swings? Well, when I asked the $600 per square foot firm why their houses were so expensive, they said:

“When you design the way we do, it requires a different level of construction from the get-go. We don’t use any moldings so there is nothing to cover up errors with, and thus, you must have the finest construction standards and the most skilled workers to achieve the standards that we design for.”

While that level of design and construction is great if money is no object to you, money is an object to me as it is to 99% of other people in the world. I’ll save that firm for my rich investors.

Another factor to think about is that when architects quote “per square foot” costs, they are only talking about construction costs, or so-called “hard costs”. When figuring the total budget for your project, make sure to add in sales tax, permit fees, architect fees, and landscaping fees if you have them. In some cases, these “soft costs” can add another 50% on top of construction costs.

Design vs. Design/Build

The traditional way of having a custom home built is to hire an architect to design your house and get you to build-ready stage and then hire a general contractor to build the thing for you. Recently, however, there seem to be more “design/build” firms popping up that will not only design your house for you but also manage the entire construction process and hire their own subcontractors to do the labor. There are positives and negatives to both approaches.

Traditional architects will tell you that separating design from build is essential such that the design side can keep the build side honest and true to what they agreed to build. In other words, let’s say the design calls for a certain type of plank to be used in the floors and the builder decides to use a different type of plank to save himself money, figuring no one will notice or care. The architect can then come in and demand that the agreed-upon plank be used instead.

Architects will also sometimes tell you that design/build firms have a conflict of interest which can cause your house to get built with an emphasis on ease of construction as opposed to effectiveness of design.

On the flip side, design/build firms will tell you that cutting out the friction between architects and builders is what will save you the most money and anguish at the end of the day. I’ve heard multiple stories of architects and builders literally yelling at each other on-site, and in the end, it’s often the client who ends up paying for either side’s mistake.

Going with a design/build firm also saves you the hassle of having to deal with two separate companies with two separate agendas. If you decide on a design/build firm up front and you’re comfortable with them, then your team is more or less set from the get-go.

I’m pretty confident at this point that going design/build is going to save a bit of money. How much “a bit” is, I’m not sure yet. By allowing the same firm to do say, $700,000 of the work, instead of one firm doing $100,000 of it (architecture) and the other firm do $600,000 of it (construction), it would seem the overall profit margin needs would be lower.

Finally, if you go with a design/build firm, it’s important to make sure it’s not a “DESIGN!/build” firm or a “BUILD!/design” firm. It should be a balanced “design/build” firm, meaning they are equally adept at architecture and construction management.

House Stalking

One of the best ways to find which firms you even want to interview is to scope out some nice, recently built houses around town and find out who designed them. In Seattle, this part was easy and fun as I just took a boat around the Mercer Island shoreline, snapped some pictures, and noted where each nice house was. Then, I located each house using Zillow’s maps and wrote down the addresses. The easiest way to then find out which architects worked on which houses is to drive down to City Hall and have the clerks look up that information on the building permit records. Below are some of the houses I found particularly awe-inspiring and which architects designed them:

Designed by Olson, Sundberg, Kundig, Allen. This was my favorite house on the lake.

Designed by SkB Architects.

Designed by Weinstein A|U

Personal recommendations

When it comes to working with new people, nothing beats a personal recommendation. If you know friends who have built houses recently, ask them about their experience with the architect they chose and if they have any pointers for you. Unfortunately, if you already have your eye on a few firms, chances are you don’t know anyone personally who has worked with them. In these instances, ask the firm if you can contact a client or two of theirs. Most should be happy to arrange this for you, although they may ask politely that you be near a decision first so as not to inconvenience too many of their clients.

It’s always a good sign when a firm proactively suggests contacting their previous clients, but if they don’t bring it up, you shouldn’t be afraid to.

Previous work and style fit

There are two aspects to evaluating a firm’s historical body of work: typical price range and breadth of design style.

With regard to price range, if your desired price range is $250 per square foot, the firm should be able to show you specific examples of houses they’ve built for around $250 per square foot. You should not accept responses like:

“Well, we typically only display our highest end homes in our published portfolio.”

or:

“A lot of our houses come in at more than that, but the end price of construction really depends on you and what sorts of compromises you are ok with.”

While both of these responses are perfectly honest and valid, my stance is that I do not want my house to be designed or constructed outside the typical range of what the architect is used to building. It’s like the difference between asking Ferrari, Audi, or Hyundai to build you an affordable luxury sports coupe. Each company could do the job, but most people would agree that Audi would probably do the best job since that’s their sweet spot. You want your house to be in your architect’s sweet spot; not above or below it.

The other aspect of looking at an architect’s past work is determining if their style fits yours (e.g. modern vs. traditional) and also how flexible they are within their own style. One of the young firms I looked at had a very nice modern style about them, but it was clear to me that, being a young firm, they hadn’t really broken outside their “bread and butter” design elements yet. When I was a rookie designer in college and shortly thereafter, you could look at every single one of my posters, advertisements, and other design work and tell it was mine. The colors you use, how you set type, and other peculiarities of the design process all come together to produce a fairly recognizable design signature. When you’re young, your design signature is very specific and limited, but once you get more experienced, you start to branch out into all sorts of cool things. Unless you love an extremely specific style, you’re probably better off picking an architect who has already branched out a bit.

Software

I don’t know a whole lot about architectural design software (except that it seems extremely unwieldy and slow compared to things like Photoshop and Illustrator), but in my trips to visit different architects, I did notice a substantial gap in the quality of final 3D renderings depending on which software was used. The best renderings I saw were done in the latest version of ArchiCAD and they were so realistic that they looked like actual photos from a few feet away. Pretty spectacular. Which software your architect uses probably isn’t going to make a huge difference in how your house turns out, but it sure is nice being able to see a photorealistic 3D rendering of your home before you sign off on everything. Ask to see some final 3D renderings from another project in order to see what your potential architect is planning to provide for your approval.

As for software you yourself can muck around with during the design process, stay away from the CAD stuff and look no further than Google Sketchup. It’s the only 3D software I’ve ever come close to being comfortable with, and I’m a graphic designer! Its super easy to learn and super quick to work with.

Who is actually doing the design?

Many of the biggest and most famous firms around town will be very quick to impress you with essays and awards from their principals, but if you dig deeper, you may find that often times, the real design celebrities won’t be the ones actually designing your house. In a firm of 100 people, it’s just not possible to have the principals do everything. Instead, you may get someone just a few years out of school, with other people at the firm helping out. There is nothing wrong with this approach, but you should just keep it in mind as you make your decision.

On the other end is the small firm of 10 or less people where the principals are a lot closer to every project. Some people may prefer this arrangement instead.

And the winner is…

After months of research and deliberations, I have chosen Build LLC as my design/build firm.

The reasons I’ve chosen Build are as follows:

• They epitomize the balance of top quality design and top quality construction management in a single firm, thus saving me money without sacrificing expected results.
• They are a small firm of four people and the principals will be doing the actual design work.
• The principals are great guys who were spoken highly of by other architects I interviewed.
• I talked to a past client of theirs for almost an hour and he gave Build one of the most glowing recommendations I’ve ever heard.
• Build was able to show me a house they recently completed that is very close to the style I’m looking for and it came in at just over $200 a square foot (quite affordable). No other firm was able to show me such a close style and price match.
• Build gave me the option of paying hourly or a flat fee of just under $50,000 for architectural services. I chose the flat fee, and I feel it’s less than half of what I would have paid at some other firms.

Through the process of settling on an architect, I never thought I’d know for sure that I’d picked the right one until the job was done, but I’m fairly confident now that I have picked the right firm for my needs. We’ll see for sure in 14 months or so when everything is done, but for now, I feel like I’ve made the most researched decision a client can make.

The indemnification thing is a bit of a calculated risk for me. Essentially, this other agent feels he should be compensated as the selling agent even though he was never retained by the seller. I have worked out a deal with my agent to pay this agent a .5%-of-selling-price referral fee out of his commission so everything should be good, but I understand why the seller would ask me to indemnify him. I don’t like having to do it and I don’t think any lawyer would advise anyone to ever do it, but I figure the chances are tiny that it becomes an issue, and even if it does, the amount we’re talking about is just 3% of the sales price. It’s not a trivial amount, but it’s not millions of dollars either. I will just have this other agent sign a release form before releasing his referral fee from escrow. Since both my agent and the real estate office that they both work for have confirmed to me that he has no claims to any commission, I’m not worried about it.

As for the deal itself, it was signed about an hour ago, at around 11pm and I’m still in shock that it came together. The seller and I both drove out to the real estate office, and as I was waiting for him to show up, I honestly thought that there was a chance he was going to take our signed offer and just sit on it over the weekend as the property went on the market. To his credit however, he read over the deal, faxed it immediately to his sibling that was the executor of the family trust, got it signed and faxed back, and congratulated me on being the new owner of their beloved home.

It’s such a great feeling to have made it through this process. By taking matters into my own hands and not allowing myself to be governed by the customs of the real estate industry, I have a once-in-a-lifetime house at a great price from a great family.

The stress isn’t over quite yet though. I have five business days to do the geotech inspection to make sure this house isn’t about to fall off the cliff and only a few weeks to close financing.

“Off-market opportunity with commanding view. Can u meet in 45 mins?”

I called him back to confirm my availability and get a quick overview of what we were going to be looking at. Apparently, it’s an estate sale, hasn’t been lived in in a couple of years, needs quite a bit of work, but sits on a large lot with a jawdropping view of Puget Sound. It is currently being prepared for market, but the sellers (four beneficiaries) have not signed on with an agent yet or communicated a price.

Upon hanging up with my agent, I turned to my girlfriend and said “I have a good feeling about this.”

Love at first sight

45 minutes later, we met my agent several blocks from the property and drove over in one car. Upon arriving, the first thing that struck me is that the house is only a few steps away from one of the nicest parks in Seattle. I don’t spend a whole lot of time in parks, but it’s certainly a nice amenity to have at your doorstep.

The house itself — from the front — was quaint in its own way but unremarkable. Built in the early ’50s, it was conceived in what I would consider an architectural dead spot: right between the brick Tudors of the ’30s and ’40s and the wonderful mid-century moderns of the late ’50s and ’60s. It has a carport instead of a garage, sits very low to the ground, and is covered in a combination of old-growth wood and period-popular stone siding.

Entering the house exposed right away both the greatest and worst things about it.

On the great side, the view is about as spectacular as I’ve ever seen in Seattle. It’s a full 180 degree Puget Sound view spanning from Alki beach to the south all the way past the north point of Bainbridge Island to the north. Almost as amazing as the view itself is the fact that the backyard drops right off a 300 foot cliff so no one can ever block your view. Additionally, the house is completely separated from its neighboring structures on both sides by beautiful foliage.

The view facing west before sunset. Apparently, bald eagles perch on the tree to the left.

On the bad side, however, the layout of the interior squeezes four levels into two stories, one of which is a daylight basement. Essentially, there is the daylight basement, then two bedrooms a half floor up, then the main floor another half floor up, and then two more bedrooms another half floor up. Because of all the half floors and the staircase that connects them — right down the middle of the house — the great room and other areas are chopped up a lot smaller than they could be. Without that staircase and one of the levels, the great room could be 2-3x as roomy and open. Additionally, although the house is in fine shape, it hasn’t been updated much at all since it was built.

With the above and about 100 other considerations and details in mind, this house is the first house I’ve seen which feels unconditionally like a place I could live in for the rest of my life. Much better than the last house and also the first house.

Meeting the seller

While at the house, I got to meet the seller. He is one of the four beneficiaries of the estate and the one officially handling the sale of the house. He’s an attorney (as were his parents and as are two of his siblings!) and a really down-to-earth guy. I asked him for some historical stories about the house and he told me that he had lived there from age 5 or 6 all the way up until college. He also showed me a great Sony reel-to-reel tape player and phonograph from 1960 which still sits in the living room. I told him if I ended up buying the house, I wanted to showcase that stuff in the new living room.

In talking to the seller, I could tell this had been a special house to a lot of people and it was a tough decision for the family to sell at all.

Not a question of if, but how

After we left the house and my girlfriend and I discussed it for a few minutes, the question wasn’t if I would make a bid, but instead how and for how much. The seller hadn’t signed on with a selling agent yet and was still auditioning several of them, so there was still a possible opportunity to save him some sell-side commission and thus get the house at a lower price.

I’ll be writing up an offer of some sort tomorrow. So psyched.