We usually don't do remodels on spec, but the opportunities with this house were simply too great. Located on a large plot in the heart of Montlake, this 1920s brick rambler had seen so little change that it still featured the original appliances from the 1930s! We hired an architect to help transform the home: redesigning the upstairs, finishing the basement, yet all the while maintaining the home's original architectural character. The result is a classic, charming home, with all the modern conveniences.
When we first bought this house, the previous owner, an electrician, left behind a century's worth of construction paraphernalia. A cornucopia for us—our carpenters loved the vintage 1940s Delta table saw—some of the most interesting mementos were the catalogues. They gave unbelievablely low prices for hardwood floors, metalwork, and plaster arches. While gutting much of the house, we wanted to maintain, clean up, and even expand these classic bits of character.
Unfortunately, the hardwoods had been stained and, in the kitchen, damaged by linoleum glue, so we brought in our hardwood subcontractor to install a classic vertical grain oak floor. Likewise, the preexisting railing was too low to meet code, so we had our metalworker design a simple yet elegant replacement. The arches, on the other hand, only had some small cracks in the plaster. We protected them throughout construction and built similar arches from scratch in the newly renovated kitchen. With a few coats of plaster and paint—plus a new skylight, illuminating the heart of the home—these arches looked as good if not better than when craftsmen first built them in the 1920s.
The custom mahogany cabinets are the centerpiece of the remodel. Built individually by hand in our shop, each was designed with its particular function in mind. For instance, instead of cramming your pots and pans into a cabinet, then clearing it out to get at the ones in back, we built large drawers and use the sturdiest slides available—500 lb. Blum Tandems capable of holding your largest and heaviest cookware. Granite countertops, new appliances, and new fixtures brought the kitchen up-to-date, and the custom crown, carefully installed to match existing variations in the ceiling, serves as yet another hallmark of our craftsman touch.
When this house was first built the basement was left unfinished, making it effectively a rambler with everything on the same floor. By finishing the basement and adding two downstairs bedrooms, we were able to expand the kitchen into an old upstairs bedroom and make space for a breakfast nook. To bring in light, we added two large west and south facing windows, and then had our cabinetmaker build a custom bench, desk, and bookcase. With network cables preinstalled in the desk, this nook makes for a perfect place to read the morning paper, either online or in print.
If W. S. Feldt is a company defined by its craftsmanship, custom cabinets like these make for our defining touch. Perhaps the best example is this concealed Sub-Zero refrigerator: craftsmanship so precise, you can't even see it. Hiding behind that huge panel is the main compartment of the fridge, there below it, in pull-out drawers, the crisper and freezer. With its outsized dimensions, 55" tall by 36" wide, the main panel is so large that national cabinet shops like Conestoga won't even warranty their product. Even with a smaller panel, Conestoga only guarantees that warpage will not exceed 5/16", an error that would make a fridge like this stand out like a sore thumb. Our shop met the challenge head-on, producing a panel so flat that it exceeded even our normal high standards.
In the master bath cabinet, pictured right, you can see those standards at their typical best: made from the same mahogany as the kitchen cabinets, and finished with the same radiant stain, the subtle flourish of custom feet makes this cabinet unique. Precision and a restrained beauty—that's what craftsmanship means at W. S. Feldt, and that's what you can count on us to deliver.
Taking the house down to the studs allowed us to bring the 70 year old electrical and plumbing work up-to-date, and it also allowed us to take the house into the future with a structured wiring and whole house audio installation. Starting from a wiring panel in the utility room, we ran bundles of two cat-5s and one standard tv cable to multiple points around the house. The advent of wireless may have rendered cable obsolete for day-to-day web surfing, but cables will only become more important with the growth of data-intensive entertainment like digital video.
As for audio, we prewired the downstairs den, which we rechristened the media room, as an inhouse theater—ready for a projector, drop-down screen, and Dolby 5.1 audio. We then ran audio wires from the media center to most of the major rooms, ready for professionally installed speakers should the future owners decide they want to be able to pump music to any room in the house.