The Dream House, (part 1)

I am going to post this story in several installments, because when I put it into words, it was a whole lot longer than I expected. With no further ado, I give you; 

The Dream House

This story really began when our babies pushed me out of my sewing/art space, and turned our basement into a wasteland of tubs of hand me down clothes, toys, birthday party supplies, holiday decorations and pillows. Why so many pillows? We, (well, mostly I) realized that we would really like to have a bit more living space than our adorable house in North Seattle had to offer.  

The location of our home is near Tiny Trees, which is the most amazing outdoor preschool in Carkeek Park, our favorite among the many beautiful Seattle parks. We love our community, that includes my husband, C’s entire immediate family, and many dear friends and colleagues. Moving hasn’t been our desire, but figuring out how to make our family fit, or grow this little house so that our family (plus my career as an artist and C’s first career as a musician), fits in it, has been high on my life-puzzle-mastering list. 

Things like a dishwasher would be nice (too wide for our countertops), and a bathroom that you don’t have to go through our bedroom to get to would make hosting a bit less awkward. It would also make all of us more comfortable if our kids had an actual bedroom, rather than the 90 sq. ft. step down addition,(my ex-art studio), that had a curtain for a door and floor to ceiling windows that did not open. (To make the windows “safer for the kids”, we covered them with styrofoam insulation and black out curtains.) But when we imagined and sketched up every different idea of remodel and addition that we could think of, we always ran into the same conundrum, which was that our house was built in 1929 and is really quite tiny. Who will buy our house and property someday, who won’t immediately tear this tiny cottage down and just start fresh. We never felt we could justify spending a large amount of money to add on to our small, old, awkwardly laid out house. 

So we waited… and hatched this plan instead: 

The Nicklaus DADU (Detached Accessory Dwelling Unit).

We would build another house on our large lot! Seattle property laws allowed for an up to 1000 sq. ft. detached house WITH a garage. Yes, it would cost a pretty penny to build, but by our calculations and the rental market at the time, we could get a loan to build the house, then remodel our current house and rent it for an amount that would more than cover our current mortgage, and if we did an Airbnb, it would even provide a business opportunity for me, that sounded quite appealing and interesting. We could then move into our new DADU, and be happy landlords, with an even better investment, and a new 1000 sq. ft. house WITH a garage for the kids to make a huge mess of. So we got set! We found a contractor who could also design and draw up the plans for the house, (he had already done several similar projects in our neighborhood, including one on our block). We applied for  a loan, and we had some savings from an inheritance that C had received from his grandparents. The trigger had all but been pulled….

then…. March 2020…. Covid-19….