Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 7, Issue 8, August 2003

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Historic Ballard home renovated

after four-block move

By JAMES BUSH

After a year and a half of physical work, paperwork, and detective work, the former Augusta Gay family home in Ballard has settled in at its new location.

The ornate, two-story Nordic vernacular structure which was built in 1904 and spent the next 98 years at 5912 14th Ave. NW is now located at 918 NW 60th St., due to the efforts of Mark Houston and Charlie Sampson. A set of new condominiums occupy the house's original 10,000-square foot, multi-family-zoned lot.

"The developer was going to take it down and make room for his new condos. A friend of mine stepped in and got the salvage rights in order to move it," says Houston.

When that plan fell through, he convinced Sampson, owner of Charles E. Sampson Construction to partner with him on the job. "It's one of those homes that's just absolutely stunning to look at," says Houston of the historic farmhouse.

Fortunately, the original would-be home mover had already secured the site to move the house and worked on plans for the relocation. "So all we had to do was resubmit with a few changes and it went right through," says Houston, who credits Diane Sugimura, head of the City's Department of Design, Construction and Land Use, for her support of the project.

The house was moved four blocks down NW 60th Street, where it replaced a dilapidated structure known locally as "the shack." The house was jacked up and a new concrete foundation built underneath it. Houston and Sampson chose to build a wheelchair-accessible mother-in-law apartment in the basement.

Both the renovation of the basement apartment and the house itself were governed by one simple rule, he says. "We made a decision at the start of the project to be period-appropriate."

That means that new items (such as the bathroom floor tile) matched styles used around the turn of the century. Even in the modern kitchen, they used black granite counter tops with a matte finish, rather than the highly-polished look favored by modern contractors.

"[The builder] wouldn't have had that capability in those days," says Houston. Krissy Biernacki of Natural Garden Design & Care created a front lawn and garden befitting a fine Victorian-era home.

The period-appropriate rule necessitated some major searching by Houston. Several doors were missing, as were most door handles. Vintage windows were needed to make the basement apartment more closely match the rest of the house. And Houston needed a pair of wooden pillars to replace the ones which had been removed from the front room entryway.

Houston, who works at South Park's Second Use Building Materials Inc., proved the right guy for the job. After buying and installing the basement windows, he happened across a front door that matched them exactly. He even found two wooden pillars that fit perfectly in the front room.

His connections in the reused building material industry also helped: Patrick Brady of VintageLights.com found several period light fixtures which, actually modernized the original lighting system (most rooms featured bare light bulbs with pull chains) reports Houston. "I think there were three [light] switches in the whole house."

A little more detective work was required for other jobs. A single spindle discovered in a closet helped in the reconstruction of the stairway bannisters.

Some concessions were made to the passage of the past century: the builders installed a radiant heating system, a flash water heater, and modern wiring to the point where one of the upstairs bedrooms has five dual-outlet panels and a cable jack. The third upstairs bedroom was also converted to a bathroom, with a washer and dryer placed in a newly-built closet.

The house is currently up for sale.

Houston says his interest in saving the 1904 house shouldn't be misread as some sort of anti-growth statement. "We accommodated the growth by saving this house and adding an extra unit," he says. "We tried to make a difference here."