When Matthew and Holly moved into their last house, a “1990s, totally serviceable box that we never fell in love with,” says Matthew, they immediately started searching for the next one. Both work in the arts, she as a playwright, communications professional, and administrator focused on equitable access to art and education, and he as the cofounder of a contemporary arts center and consultant. They wanted a project in the same central Seattle neighborhood where they lived with their child.

Their search went on for five years before they found this home partially hidden behind a tall laurel hedge. “At that point we had seen enough of the fixers that came on the market in the central core, which is not very many, to know how unusual this house was,” says Holly.

Before: Exterior

The house was originally built in 1904 by David Kaufman, a Jewish tailor and merchant who owned twelve acres that would later be platted as the Kaufman Addition. For decades, the home served as a single-family residence with details such as deep front window seats and a bronze figurine holding a torch on the staircase newel post. From the 1950s onward, the building underwent a succession of changes, becoming an elderly care center, a Buddhist retreat and bookstore, and finally, a series of individual rooms for rent, with every door besides the kitchen fitted with a lock.

After: Exterior

By the time Matthew and Holly toured the home, much of its original detail was gone, and walls had been haphazardly moved, but they were struck by what remained. “Even through all those interruptions, there was a grandeur and a scale that was really obvious in it,” says Matthew. After purchasing the property, they reached out to friend and architect Ian Butcher, founding partner of Best Practice Architecture, for a collaborative remodel.

Butcher provided design guidance, often on the fly—he lives close by, which made for easy stop-ins, and says “it was a lot of phone calls and sketches on-site”—while Matthew acted as general contractor, having remodeled a home on his own before. “The construction was literally me here with a hammer, hiring subcontractors, and checking in with Ian, like, ‘Hey, can I get a detailed drawing of that window?’” recalls Matthew.

Before: Dining Room Window

The ensuing top-to-bottom remodel was an organic process, completed room by room, as time allowed. After two years, the family moved in with construction still underway. “There was one functioning bathroom and the furnace was hooked up,” says Matthew. “There were still rooms without floors that you couldn’t go into. We would have kids over to play and we’d have to be like, ‘If you see a hole in the floor that looks like you could fall through it, that’s a real thing. This is a project in motion.’”

Butcher fleshed out the floor plan by restoring the home to its former layout, turning the 1950s addition into a sunroom with a roof deck, and adding a stairway reading nook. He also allowed the aesthetics to evolve alongside demolition.

For instance, when sheetrock had to be removed to insulate and rewire the building, Matthew was struck by the foyer’s exposed framing. “Matt was like, ‘Is it okay if we just leave that open?’” recalls Butcher, who quickly agreed. “It’s uncommon for us as architects to have a client who’s so interested in allowing for eccentric conditions to happen in a house.”

Before: Foyer

After: Foyer

The team also reinstated a front bay window after discovering its footprint while removing the carpet of a 1950s-era addition, and they exposed the structure of the original fireplace between the kitchen and dining rooms.

“We wanted to keep the fireplace in an interesting way,” says Butcher. “There were all kinds of conversations. Do we paint it? Do we partially cover it?” They ultimately decided to carve away the surrounding wall and flank the hearth with slender steel columns to support the floor and frame the asymmetrical brickwork.

Before: Kitchen

After: Kitchen

“There’s an element of Ian’s home where the hundred-year-old clapboard comes up against a contemporary cast concrete wall,” says Matthew. “It’s this really honest juxtaposition of old and contemporary. That embodied the design mandate that we had set for ourselves for this house. Restore where you can, and where you can’t, be really honest about the contemporary intervention.”

Before: Dining Room Fireplace

After: Dining Room Fireplace

The end result is a home rich in history—but it’s worn on the 120-year-old bones rather lightly. “When we finished the demolition and realized we had just taken literally five tons of debris away from the structure, Ian said it was like the old house had a chance to breathe again, a chance to stretch and shake and sort of roll its shoulders,” says Matthew. “We tried really hard throughout the rest of the project not to weigh it down again, to let it remain in that kind of weightlessness.”

After: Office

After: Powder Room

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After: Reading Nook

After: Primary Bathroom

More Before & After stories:

Their 1890 Farmhouse Hides a World of Color Behind Its Gray Facade

A Bland ’70s Cabin Gets a Psychedelic Glow-Up for $120K

They Gave Their Tiny Kitchen a Donald Judd–Inspired Upgrade

Project Credits:

Architecture: Best Practice Architecture / @best_practice

Structural Engineer: Harriott Valentine Engineers

Photography: Zack Bent

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Before & After: In Seattle, a 1904 House Sheds Decades of Remodels—and Five Tons of Debris