1889 August | September 2018

home + design
Benjamin Benschneider
FROM LEFT The exterior of the South Lake Union houseboat features cedar siding, barn wood, red-painted metal and a large
pair of eyes. Art is everywhere inside the houseboat.
An Artistic Houseboat on South Lake Union
Benjamin Benschneider
Every remodel comes with its revelations.
In 2011, a couple bought this floating home
just a few slips down from their own, with
the understanding that they would tweak a
few fixtures and finishes to free the interior
of its early ’90s aesthetic. (Think curved
walls, glass blocks and institutional pink.)
Upon finding water damage, however, the
superficial makeover grew into a much bigger
undertaking. “It was going to be a really light
touch at first,” said architect Jim Graham
of Graham Baba Architects, the firm that
worked with the homeowners. Once the
demolition started and the water infiltration
was discovered, plans changed. “All of the
walls were filled with mold,” Graham said.
“That’s when [the project] really ballooned
into, ‘All right, let’s change everything.’”
Faced with a much more extensive
renovation, the homeowners decided to
personalize every inch of the houseboat
to their taste, starting with the façade. The
original exterior was a mishmash of features.
“It was extremely dated and, stylistically,
it was a Franken-house,” Graham said. He
paired up with contractor Dave Boone to
instill cohesiveness by swapping the kitschy
green-painted shingles for streamlined
horizontal cedar siding, inset panels of
reclaimed barn wood and red-painted metal,
and a stern wrapped in vertical zinc panels. “I
wanted to make sense of the massing in a way
that broke down the chunkiness of the box,”
Graham said.
Once the water damage was remediated
inside, the team’s goal was to “clean up
inefficiencies” and create the perfect backdrop
for the owners’ creative decorative style. In the
open-concept living area on the upper level,
this meant first addressing the view. After all,
the clients were moving down the dock for the
new houseboat’s prime location. “It’s at the
end of the dock so it’s not pinned in. It has this
great outward approach where the view is so
much better,” Graham said. “Those houseboats
tend to be pretty hemmed in. You have your
dockside and your water side that’s open, but
this one has three sides” fronting the water.
A poorly positioned fireplace and stingy
windows in the living area, however, were
the de facto focal point. So the team replaced
the entire wall with 18 feet of Nano doors.
These now open to a deck encased
with a sleek cable railing, ensuring
unobstructed sightlines from the
kitchen and the couch. Quirky
AUGUST | SEPTEMBER 2018 1889 WASHINGTON’S MAGAZINE 29