In 2016, after Barbara McDonald lost her husband, legendary track and field coach Dick Brown (who coached 1980s world-champion distance runner Mary Slaney), she was ready to say goodbye to their spacious home north of Eugene, Oregon’s city center. It was the end of a chapter, and she was ready to make new connections.

“I found it a little bit isolated, as nice as it was,” she explains of the home they shared. “I really wanted to be where things were a little bit more vibrant, so I started to look around the University of Oregon, where I could be near friends, walk, and ride my bike.”

A close friend knew of a house going up for sale in her neighborhood, a 1946 two-bedroom on Orchard Street. From here, Barbara could hear the roar of the crowd less than a mile away at the university’s famous Hayward Field during track meets, a reminder of her late husband’s legacy.

The house, originally just 750 square feet and one bedroom, had previously been expanded by converting the garage into a second bedroom, adding 250 square feet. The home’s ceilings were just seven feet tall, and “very plain-Jane,” an outlier on a street of early 20th-century Craftsman homes, as Barbara recalls. But the home was on a double-sized lot, retaining some of the original apple trees from the orchard for which its street was named.

After Barbara purchased the house, she and her son, architect Ben McDonald of Tacoma, Washington’s Aperture Workshop, considered tearing it down to build anew. But with Barbara retired and living on a fixed income, the budget was modest.

“It felt like a double-wide trailer inside,” Ben remembers. “The only question was, How much were we going to do to it? In the end we really heavily simplified everything, using 90 percent of the existing footprint.” Ben’s redesign focused on creating openness and improving the building’s thermal performance. There was also an emphasis on craftsmanship, executed with the help of general contractor Craig Wooden of Green Compass Builders.

The house underwent what Ben describes as a “a down-to-the-studs teardown,” starting with a reconstructed gable and trusses, which sit on a new continuous rim-beam that increases the ceiling height to eight feet. The new standing-seam metal roof is two-toned, with a Galvalume silver used on the backyard side to increase reflectivity and minimize solar heat gain, and a darker gray metal facing the street for better aesthetic compatibility with the wood and fiber-cement siding.

Ben’s design also added a rain screen, which is untreated and unpainted cedar, paired with a new covered porch and exposed post-and-beam joinery. “I told Craig, ‘I'm not painting any of the exposed wood structure on the house,’” Ben recalls. “And he said, ‘Well, then, this has to be architectural quality: visible connections, well-executed. He really took a lot of pride in doing that work, and it really shows. That’s what makes the house stand out from a craft perspective.”

Once the ugly duckling of its street, the house is now popular with neighbors and passersby thanks to the natural siding, says Barbara. “People have stopped their cars and said, ‘I've been watching this place. I love it.’ It’s a different guy on the block, that’s for sure. It calls some calm attention to itself.”

$59,100 Structure	$23,100 Fixtures & Appliances	$16,800 Windows & Doors
$18,700 Electrical	$34,750 Site Work	$10,400 Plumbing
$3,800 HVAC	$12,500 Exterior Cladding	$58,850 Fees
$21,150 Demolition	$10,000 Furnishings	$19,000 Interior Finishes & Flooring
$27,300 Millwork & Cabinetry	$8,300 Countertops & Tile	$12,000 Showers
Grand Total: $335,750

The single-level home was already conducive to aging in place, especially with the garage having been turned into a bedroom that could house a caretaker with its own en suite bath and a separate entrance (where the mudroom had been). For now, it’s a private-feeling guest room, which Barbara likes because older friends, who might otherwise hesitate to accept a dinner invitation for fear of driving home in the dark, are encouraged to stay overnight.

The primary bedroom, though adjacent to the main bathroom, has its own sink, which Barbara had in her childhood home. “Victorian houses had sinks in sleeping spaces way more often,” Ben says. “I rented a flat in San Francisco that had that. It’s weird how that fell out of favor, because it’s handy.”

The main bedroom and guest room include custom Baltic birch plywood cabinetry by Green Compass, finished with Osmo, a natural oil. To save money and keep a connection to the existing home, Ben and Barbara agreed to keep the original Douglas fir floors, even though they were “pretty beat up,” Ben says. “I actually think that’s a really cool element of the interior, that it has this original rustic wood floor.”

Installing new roof trusses allowed Ben to reconfigure the walls to make a more open kitchen and living and dining area. A new skylight brightens the interiors.

The renovation utilizes affordable, sustainable surfaces. Kitchen counters are highly durable soapstone, complementing the custom Douglas fir veneer cabinetry. The bathroom countertops are Richlite, manufactured in Ben’s adopted city, Tacoma, from recycled paper. Bathroom and mudroom flooring is Marmoleum, a natural linoleum that’s more affordable than tile and easier to maintain.

Though the house was designed and built for Barbara as a single occupant, it accommodates both her and her new partner, Steve Hull. They love taking advantage of their backyard orchard, and have already added peach trees to the mix. The sound of cheering from nearby Hayward Field has been a welcome sound, and the couple looks forward to at least listening in on this June’s U.S. Olympic team trials, which will be hosted at the field.

Decades ago, Barbara watched Ben excel at drawing from an early age, wondering if he might become an architect. With the pressure of staying within budget, there were times when Barbara had to push back on her son’s creativity, “but there was never a nasty edge to it,” she says. “It’s part of our healthy discourse, I think: feeling comfortable enough with each other to say what we wish, rather than a negative thing. I feel extraordinary lucky, because the trust factor was huge.”

More Budget Breakdown:

This Napa Family’s $226K ADU Repurposes Skateboard Wheels and Vineyard Stakes

Budget Breakdown: This Sears Kit Home in Houston Originally Cost $1,299. It Just Got a $368K Glow Up

Project Credits:

Architect of Record and Landscape Design: Aperture Workshop

Builder and Cabinetry Design: Green Compass Builders

Structural Engineer: Pioneer Engineering

Appears In

Budget Breakdown: A $336K Cottage Renovation Gives an Oregon Widow a Fresh Start