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David Roach had been living in Seattle for seven years before he first set foot on a houseboat. “I was just blown away,” he says. Beyond the boat itself, David was struck by the close-knit community where the boat was docked, as well as the waterfront environment at large.

David grew up in Pasco, in the drier part of the state, and attended the University of Washington in Seattle before moving to Boston for his residency as an infectious disease physician and researcher. While attending medical school, he started scuba diving in tropical locations, and he later worked with a group of nurses who introduced him to cold-water scuba diving in the region.

David says he found the houseboat way of life “so peaceful and beautiful.” Much like diving, living on the water “was such an amazing way to be a part of the geography of the city.”

Although the city is famous for houseboats—thanks, Sleepless in Seattle—there’s actually a very limited number of docking locations available. (Also, the term “houseboat” is not technically precise, so the city has defined four different classes: floating homes, house barges, floating on-water residences, and vessels with dwelling units.)

Floating communities popped up in Seattle as early as the 1880s, first as low-cost housing for logging industry workers, and later as summer getaways for the rich. By 1902, there were 1,000 of these so-called “Amphibian Houses.” Today, the city caps the number at 525 floating homes and 250 “houseboats” across the various marinas and moorages in Lake Union and Portage Bay.

Since his first visit to a floating home in 2016, David kept an eye on the market, and he pounced on a listing in 2019 that came with its own slip (which meant he could own the space instead of leasing). It’s in a desirable location near Gas Works Park, a former oil plant turned 20-acre green space with stunning views of the city skyline. “The boat itself was essentially a floating shack not worth anything,” says David—so he opted to build a new home from scratch.

He reached out to a longtime friend, architect Aimée O’Carroll, who co-founded GO'C with architect Jon Gentry. The pair designed a floating sauna a few years before, which David had toured. “It was important to me to do this with people I knew and trusted, and to maintain a community feel during the build itself,” says David, who hired friends for almost every aspect of the project—from the construction team at Wild Tree Woodworks, to the electrician and metalsmith. “It ended up being so amazing to have people I trusted building this, because it was a really complicated process in a lot of ways.”

The team had to maintain the 12-by-40-foot dimensions of the existing craft while considering the new boat’s weight distribution (ballast), hull size, and vertical height caps. A nautical engineer confirmed that two full floors wouldn’t be possible, because the structure would be too top heavy and tippy.

They fit gray and black water storage tanks in the hull, installed access panels to boat mechanicals, and worked within the constraints of the site’s 50-amp electrical service. “That’s tiny compared to what a house would have,” says O’Carroll. “You can’t run everything at once. It’s a very specific lifestyle.”

The front door needed to align with the fixed dock, but water levels can vary up to two feet in height across the seasons. To address this, the architects arranged for the boat’s lowest level to sit below the water line, and they set the entry at a mid-stair landing. “Sometimes the door might be right at the dock [or above it], but the idea is it doesn’t go below,” says Gentry.

The stairs wrap around a central core, which contains the bathroom on the main level, and built-in storage, like a coat closet, shoe niche, and bedroom closet on the upper floor.

Although the new 618-square-foot home is significantly larger than the existing 250-square-foot dwelling, space is still at a premium—so the team packed in as much integrated storage as possible. Extended windowsills serve as shelves, the custom couch folds out to a sleeper for guests, and drawers in the bed frame augment the wardrobe, nightstands, and shelving. “It’s very much like a ship’s cabin in that you are building in a lot of storage everywhere,” says O’Carroll.

The main living spaces are below, the primary bedroom is above, and the boat has three decks: a roof deck for taking in city lights, a mid-level lounge area, and a lower launch deck for jumping in the water. These outdoor spaces are a boon for David, who loves entertaining.

The interior stairs and exterior ladders allow guests to move about without bottlenecking in any one spot, and the material palette is likewise streamlined. “We kept simplifying the palette because the space is so small,” says Gentry.

While the permitting and design phases were lengthy with many parties involved (including a marine engineer and builders in charge of the custom steel hull), once dialed in, construction at the boatyard took less than a year. David’s home was then craned into the water and towed to its slip in January of this year.

Since David has been working in Boston for the past few years, he’ll be renting the floating home to a friend for now—but he plans to return to the life aquatic as soon as he can. He’s looking forward to waking up in the morning to watch herons cruise by, hosting paddling parties, and catching impromptu bluegrass concerts on the deck of a fellow boater. “I really wanted to make this a place where it’s not just for me,” says David. “I wanted it to be a community experience.”

Related Reading:

Did You Know the Visionary Behind the “Whole Earth Catalog” Lives on a Century-Old Tugboat?

20 Impressive Floating Homes That Go With the Flow

An Unorthodox Houseboat in Sausalito Gives Its Owner Permission to Play

Project Credits:

Architecture: GO'C / @go_c_studio

Builder: Wild Tree Woodworks

Structural Engineering: SSF Engineering

Interior Design: GO'C

Naval Architect: KraftMar Design Services

Hull Construction: Snow & Company