When is a skylight more than a skylight?

When you live in the perennially rainy Pacific Northwest, and you need all the natural light you can get. When neighboring houses abut your narrow lot by just a few feet, making walls of windows a no-go. And when individual, square glass skylights just won’t do.

That’s the situation that architect Clint Bailey and his wife, Amy, faced when expanding their tiny 700-square-foot West Seattle cottage—and rather than courting compromise, they opted to clad the center ridge of their home’s roofline in glass. It’s a bold move—especially when all the contractors they interviewed suggested cheaper, smaller, off-the-shelf skylights as a value-engineering step.

“We fought for it for sure,” Clint says. “I mean, the house before the remodel was not only dark from a lack of windows, but there weren’t even light fixtures in every room. Maximizing daylight was our biggest goal after adding space.”

He estimates the ridge skylight cost twice as much as traditional skylights, although Amy says “I honestly don’t know if we even ever got real pricing for an alternate look—we were so committed to having this be a part of the house.”

Before: Facade

Clint purchased the home back when he was single in 2014, and its two modest bedrooms provided enough space for him and his dog, Eutaw, an Italian Spinone. Amy moved in with her Golden retriever, Luna, two years later, and she and Clint married soon afterward.

By then, he recalls, “the house felt a little tight.” He also started his own firm around this same time, and he found home office space lacking.

After: Facade

The real impetus for expansion came when the couple decided to start a family. “We needed an extra bedroom and just a better, more thought-out living space with some additional elbow room,” Clint recalls. Even beyond its cramped 700 square feet and low ceilings, the existing house, built in 1936, was not a good place to entertain.

“The front door opened somewhat awkwardly into a small connecting space between the modest living room, with seating for two, and the galley kitchen,” the architect explains. “We did not shy away from entertaining in the house, but it simply wasn’t set up for it. We wanted the remodeled home to be a space for friends and family to gather, with spaces designed for standing and talking, sitting and dining, and lounging while playing games or watching movies.”

Before: Kitchen

Which is to say nothing of the existing kitchen’s seafoam Corian countertops and a shiny laminate floor. “The whole thing,” Clint says, “felt a bit too much like plastic. And you had to walk to the kitchen to turn some of the living room lights on.”

After exploring the market, the couple were somewhat surprised to find nothing checked all the boxes for location (the house offers a 10-minute commute to downtown Seattle) and square footage in the same way an expansion of their own house would. As it happened, this dwelling had a fairly sizable back yard, with leftover yard space and a mature willow tree that could be retained.

After: Kitchen/Living Area

Clint’s initial design was fairly modest—he sought to add a bedroom off the back of the house, but not change its existing layout.

“Ultimately, we decided that we wanted to invest a little bit more so that it would be a longer-term proposition for us,” Clint explains. “We said to ourselves that it was going to be at least a 10-year house for us: a place we could imagine being comfortable in for the next decade of our lives. It ended up making us push the envelope a little further.”

The couple opted to keep the basic gabled form in front, where two small bedrooms had been, while stripping these spaces down to their studs. They preserved the basic form of one room, and it now serves as a nursery for their baby son, Beau. The rest of the plan involved some heavy lifting. “We shifted our second bedroom to where our living room was,” Amy explains. “And then we had to slide over our front door. We also took the existing bathroom and expanded it a bit, because it was quite small.”

Before: Bedrooms

They retained the original low ceilings (just over seven feet) at the foyer to create a Frank Lloyd Wright–esque feeling of compression and release, which is fully expressed in the new part of the home, which includes the kitchen, living room, and primary suite in back.

The kitchen, at the center of the original plan, used to be the darkest place in the house. Now, with the ridge skylight, it’s not just bright—it has a kind of cinematic attraction.

“It was worth it,” Clint says. “If you had just a series of smaller openings, you couldn’t couldn't watch the sun set, going down through those evergreen trees. You wouldn’t see the dappled light coming through the giant cedar in the neighbor’s yard every evening across the walnut cabinets. Those are the kinds of moments that you just aren’t going to get from something that’s a little more regular.”

After: Primary Suite

The skylight spans a wide-open kitchen/living area that’s supported without columns thanks to glulam ceiling beams tucked beneath oak cladding that matches the floors. The cabinets and the base of the kitchen island are clad in eye-catching walnut finished with tun oil and Waterlox. “It brought out the wood’s natural grain pattern more than any other finish did,” says Amy.

The main bedroom, tucked in the back at the easternmost edge of the house, is also full of light, with windows on three sides and a sliding-glass door that opens onto the patio. A new adjacent bathroom means that Amy and Clint needn’t walk to the length of the house to reach the front bathroom to shower.

Before: Backyard

This modest little cottage’s metamorphosis into a light-filled family home has given the couple a sense of can-do optimism. Clint's firm may be called Rain City Architecture, yet at this house, the sun is always out.

After: Backyard

More Before & After Stories:

Clever Changes Bring Out the Charm in a 1920s Seattle Bungalow

9 Impressive “Before & After” Remodels of 20th-Century Homes in Seattle

A Midcentury Gem in Seattle Is Revamped Into a Modern Stunner

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Rain City Architecture / @raincityarchitecture

Builder: Heartwood Builders

Structural Engineer: Swenson Say Fagét

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Before & After: An Architect Levels Up His Tiny Seattle Cottage With a Soaring Skylight