Last Fall the Seattle City Council approved some changes to the Single Family Land Use Code (aka Zoning) that affect what many of my clients are able to do with their addition and remodel projects.  It was signed into effect by the Mayor in October and can be found here.  The section of the land use code  (chapter 23 of the Municipal Code) affected can be found here.

So what impact does it have on a single family home owner looking to add on to their abode?  The biggest change is in the lot coverage allowance.  Your house, porch, decks (depending on height above grade), eaves, and garages all count toward this “lot coverage“.  Previously, the code allowed 35% of the lot, or 1750 sf, whichever was greater, to be “covered” with house/deck/etc.  The new zoning is the same for lots over 5,000 sf, or 35% of the lot.  So a 5,000 sf lot would be allowed 1,750 sf.   If the lot is under 5,000 sf though, as many are, there is less coverage allowed.  The new formula allows for 1,000 sf + 15% of the lot area.  So for a 4,000 sf lot it would be 1,000 sf + (4000x.15) or 600 sf, or 1600 sf.  That’s 150 sf less than under the old code.  I’ve created a short table below showing the difference in the old and new zoning codes as related to allowable lot coverage.

While that’s a bummer for homeowners looking to expand, the code also changed how decks and eaves factor into the lot coverage. It used to be any deck over 18″ above the ground counted as lot coverage; the new code only counts decks above 36″ or higher.

And roof eaves longer than 18″ used to count towards lot coverage also, making the defacto eave on most new houses a measly 18″.  The new code allows for a whopping 36″ of eave to not count toward lot coverage.  This is good news for owners of Craftsman Bungalows and their typical 24-32″ overhanging eaves.  I can’t emphasize enough the importance of a decent eave overhang in our rainy climate; keeping water off your wall and windows extends the life of the paint, wall, window, and house itself.   Much of the new “modern” home architecture sprouting up around Seattle has done away with this important roof overhang, meaning the materials and workmanship must bear the brunt of the weather and water.

There are many other tweaks in the single family zoning code, including removing the corner lot bonus for calculating lot coverage, as well as the height-limit averaging provision.   Peaked (or gabled) roofs now must be at a 4:12 slope (instead of 3:12) if they are above the 30′ base height limit (with a maximum of 35′).  There are changes relating to detached garages also.  I haven’t found an easy-to-decipher list of all the changes, so I’d recommend hiring a design professional to help you if you want to know how the new zoning code might affect your addition or remodel project.

From Studio DEC. That’s Intern Elf Shawn and Santa Dan.

Things are slowing down all across our economy, and residential building and remodeling is no exception. If you have the money or credit for a remodel or addition to your house, 2009 might bring lower bids from contractors, lower material prices, and much better scheduling for contractors and tradespeople that have been booked solid in years past.

The StudioDEC crew is proud to have helped another great old house escape the wrecking ball. Another Nickel Brothers Moving job, this house ended up only a short distance down the street from where it had been built in Seattle’s Madison Valley. Surrounded by a city green belt, the Seattle Parks Dept. bought the house from Fred Noland and Susan Hansen in order to extend the green belt. Part of the sale agreement was that the Parks Dept. would try and find a buyer that would move the house to save it from becoming landfill. That buyer turned out to be Fred and Susan, along with friend Karl Stillner. They found a lot just blocks away and the move was on! Nickel Brothers Moving handled the logistics, and connected StudioDEC with the homeowners. We worked with them to design a basement for the moved house that could contain a mother-in-law unit (or ADU as the city calls them). The new site was a tight fit for the moved house, and steep slopes at the sides and rear of the lot made for a difficult design and permitting adventure, and of course a tough time excavating and building retaining walls. Associated Earth Sciences was brought it to provide geo-technical expertise to the project. Currently, the framing has been finished and the house is resting on it’s new concrete foundation. Follow the entire story here (with great photos) as told by the owners friend Ed Plikaytis.

Many homeowners doing remodeling projects recycle wood trim, plumbing fixtures, cabinets, windows and more - but Steve Flynn is going to the extreme and recycling the entire house. And Dan and Shawn at Studio DEC have been busy the past few weeks helping to make it happen. We helped Steve with the drawings and permits needed, in very short notice, to deconstruct the small existing house on his lot in upper Fremont in order to make way for the new old house moving from it’s current lot on Palatine Ave N. Here’s a map of the move route. The house moves this Sunday morning, September 7th, (or Saturday night, if you are still out at a bar) and the story is covered here by Jeff McCord of Nickel Brothers Moving.

Here is the Fremont house being saved from the wrecking ball by Steve Flynn.

Incorporating locally produced “green” materials and components in your project is a sustainable practice in several ways.  By reducing the distance that materials used in your project have to travel, less fossil fuel will be burned thus reducing the carbon footprint of your development.   Shipping windows or tile from a plant in Iowa to Seattle will take many gallons of diesel, whether by truck rail or even air.  Using locally produced goods will also strengthen the local economy in which your project will exist, as well as bolstering the companies here that produce such sustainable goods enabling them to expand their product offerings.

What is local?  Materials I will discuss below are manufactured within 200 miles of the Seattle metro area.

Since there are many products not produced or harvested locally, I recommend salvage and deconstruction as a way to augment what can be found within a 200 mile zone.

The easiest component to source locally is lumber.  The Puget Sound region has many kinds of wood being sustainably harvested, including Doug Fir, Cedar, Red Alder, and Madrone.  Framing lumber, timbers, and plywood are available from nearby forests, though depending on where it is purchased the locale of origin might be hard to identify. Many smaller lumberyards can provide the location of where their wood was harvested, especially the FSC certified lumber.   The Forest Stewardship Council is a non-profit that publishes guidelines for sustainable harvesting of lumber, and its certification indicates the wood comes from a forest which is well managed according to strict environmental, social and economic standards.

Windfall Lumber is a Tumwater based company specializing in certified wood products for commercial and residential use sourced from reclaimed tank stock and buildings on the west coast, FSC certified hardwood and softwood forests, and logs salvaged from urban forests in the northwest. Products include a line mouldings milled from reclaimed Douglas fir, flooring products, butcher block, and hardwood stock.  Other woods they carry from local Northwest sources include Big Leaf Maple, Red Alder, and Madrone (butcher block).   In addition to a variety of countertop butcher block (both end grain and side grain in multiple species), they offer a full millwork shop that can mill any profile of trim lumber.  According to Chris van Daalen of Windfall, all of the aforementioned species can be found within 200 miles of Seattle, and the company can verify this.

They also stock SCF certified wood.  Smartwood Certified Forestry (a program of the Rainforest Alliance) is a national non-profit that conducts audits, maintains chain of custody (COC) information, and accredits wood salvaging operations.

Windfall Lumber is also a member of the Healthy Forest Healthy Community partnership, a non-profit network of businesses that are locally owned and committed to making high quality wood products in a way that maintains forest health.

This local business can supply the flooring, framing timbers, mouldings, decking, and countertops for your project.

There are several local companies dealing in sustainable flooring choices like bamboo, but the bamboo is grown overseas in china and usually milled into plywood or flooring there before being shipped here to be packaged and marketed.  Teragren on Bainbridge Island is one example.  We won’t include these companies in this report, even thought they often encompass environmentally and socially responsible manufacturing and business practices.

Cherry Creek is a Vashon Island based company that has been making wood windows and doors since the early 1970’s.  They use vertical grain Doug Fir grown here in the Northwest.   Wood is a renewable material if harvested in a sustainable manner, and this company offers windows made of FSC certified wood.   Glazing is energy efficient glass with low-e and argon gas.

The glass might not be manufactured within 200 miles, but does come from Pacific Northwest suppliers.

Squak Mountain Stone is a countertop material that has the look and feel of soapstone or concrete.  It is made from recycled waste paper, waste glass dust, Portland cement, pigments and waste fly ash, with both ingredients being sourced within a 125 mile radius of Seattle.   It contains 67% recycled content, mainly post-industrial with a small amount of post-consumer content.  The product is fabricated in Woodinville and distributed only at the Ecohaus in Seattle.

The class F fly ash in this material is from a regional coal generating power plant.  The Portland cement, though not recycled, is sourced from a manufacturer in South Seattle.  The Glass is from local window manufacturers & installers.  The manufacturer of Squak Mountain stone also participated in the Green Tags program, which offsets the carbon dioxide generated from the manufacturing process of the Portland cement used in the Stone.  Every Green Tag prevents 1,400 lbs of greenhouse gas emissions from entering our atmosphere.  Money collected from the Green Tags supports the production of electricity at wind and solar plants here in the Northwest, in turn reducing the amount of energy generated at fossil fuel plants and thus reducing their emissions.

The countertop material has two coats of a factory applied food-grade acrylic sealer.  It comes in stock sizes and 5 colors, with custom sizes available by special order.  The manufacturer also makes 12”x12” tiles and smaller “Subway” tiles in the same colors.

Another counter and surface material is Paperstone. It’s “Certified Series” is made from 100% post-consumer recycled paper and a proprietary, petroleum-free resin made from Cashew shells. It is the only solid surface material certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, Smartwood and the Rainforest Alliance.  It can also be used as an exterior rain screen, vertical cabinet panels, and interior window sills.

For finishes, Seattle’s Best Paint Company has been producing no- and low-VOC paints since 1989, a pioneer in the field.  There paints limit or eliminate volatile organic compounds, chemicals that are used in many paints and finishes and are released during the drying process, easily evaporating at room temperature. Repeated exposure is thought to cause everything from headaches to cancer.

Best paints also have no or low levels of Biocides, or use low/no VOC biocides.  Biocides in paint are usually fungicides to inhibit mold and mildew growth on painted surfaces, and can be mixed in to paint as needed. 

Best offers primers, interior paints and exterior paints in 4 sheens, as well as floor paints useful on porches and stairs.

Bedrock Industries tile in Seattle uses local waste glass to make their glass tiles.  Their Blazestone tiles are 100% post-industrial and post-consumer glass with no added pigments (the glass provides the color).  They also have a stone yard that has many salvaged stone and tile items, recycled glass items, as well as 2nds from their manufacturing.

Though there is an accelerated kilowatt credit multiplier available for solar generating equipment is manufactured in Washington (in addition to the annual $2000 credit for power sold back to the grid at $.15/kwh), producers of solar photovoltaic modules are conspicuously absent in Washington, but other businesses in the state are involved at various points in the creation of PV systems. Arlington, in Snohomish County, is home to two manufacturers of the current inverters that turn DC power from solar arrays into usable, storable AC power— locally based Outback Power Systems and Xantrex, a Canadian firm that recently bought Trace Engineering.

Shell Solar, which bought out Siemens Solar, produces the pure silicon used to build solar cells in Vancouver, Wash.  The silicon is formed into ingots there, shipped to California, then cut into wafers and made into photovoltaic cells.

In summary, you can see there are a variety of wood products available here locally, and several interior finish options.  But to fill in the gaps you will have to expand your range to encompass Green materials from other parts of the country and overseas, as well as products with unknown origins.  Using  salvage materials is  a good option to source materials you can’t find local manufacturers for.  I’ll look at local  building  material  salvage shops in an upcoming post.

Our new home is in the heart of Capitol Hill’s Pike Pine Corridor, teeming with nightlife, old warehouse buildings, and the ever-encroaching tide of condominium buildings. Our elegant, turn of the century brick building has escaped the wrecking ball so far…

Formerly the Seattle Automobile Company showroom, it’s now home to architects, the Petit Rosso Cafe, a structural engineer, landscape architect, developer, linen importer and more.

We share our 2nd floor space with Blackbird Consulting, a sustainable building consulting firm.

To reach us:

Mail and phone remain the same.

Our new physical location (buzz at either the Pike St or 11th Ave doors):

1101 East Pike St.
Suite 200
Seattle, WA 98122

The most common and inevitable question I get from clients – and one that really can only be answered by your General Contractor. But there are rules of thumb that my experience has found to be accurate. For older (pre-1950) Seattle homes, both for remodeling and additions, remodeling ranges from $200-$275 per square foot (sf), and the new construction of additions runs $150-$225/sf.

Remodeling costs more than additions/new construction because of the time and labor to tear things apart – carefully – before the new construction can happen. Dealing with old wiring and plumbing systems, often done incorrectly, takes time.

My cost averages have several assumptions:

· Projects size of ~400sf or larger – smaller projects cost more per sf, as many subcontractors have minimum fees to come out to work on any project. Travel time, set up and clean up take time, so even a few hours of actual work can take an entire day.

· Kitchen and bath projects cost more per sf than other areas. Plumbing, electrical, built in cabinets, and expensive finishes drive the cost up in these rooms. Here’s an idea of kitchen pricing.

· These averages do not include freestanding appliances, and landscaping.

· These averages are for construction cost and do not include design and permit fees.

Homeowners often want to lower this cost by taking on parts of the project such as demolition or painting. Most demolition is best left to the Contractor, unless the owner has construction skills. Wiring and plumbing can be inside any wall, requiring skill to avoid or reroute.

One of the best things home owners can do to keep their project cost down is to keep the contractor on the job working – not spending time tracking down fixtures and materials. If you have all appliances and fixtures picked before the GC bids your job, you will get a much more accurate bid and the construction process should go quicker and cost less.

There are many articles and data about the return on your remodel project. Look for regional data instead of national surveys, such a this article in the Seattle P.I.

Here is another article on a local kitchen remodel that has some good kitchen pricing as well, and an article outlining four improvements which will add value to your home.

It seems like there are three of four of these a year… acres of hot tubs, gas fireplaces, windows. If you are working on a home remodel project and can brave the crowds and salesmen, the Seattle Home Show is a good place to compare cabinets and doors, appliances, flooring etc. It’s all under one roof and you can come back a 2nd day on one ticket. the show runs Feb. 17-25th at the Qwest Field Event Center and is open til 8:30 weekdays and 9pm on Friday and Saturday. The $10 entry fee ($8 with coupon found in the Seattle daily papers) also gets you a year subscription to “This Old House” magazine.

Be wary of contractors/vendors you find here though - I’ve had clients find what they thought was a great cabinet vendor at the show only to have their kitchen remodel turn into a nightmare due to this vendor. You still need to check their references and work despite a good sell.

I usually go to at least one of these shows per year to see what the latest products being pushed to everyday homeowners are. Last year there was a bounty of tankless water heaters - a great space saving solution in tight quarters, as well as an energy-saver.

Be sure to wear comfortable shoes, and go early on a weekday if you can. OH, and don’t forget your suit for the hot tub action!

On August 15, Mayor Greg Nickels signed Ordinance 122190 that allows detached accessory dwelling units (sometimes called Mother-in-law units, which really refers to attached units) in single family zones in Southeast Seattle. This area is bounded by I-90 on the north and I-5 on the west, and Lake Washington on the east. Here’s a quick rundown on the specifics:

• Your lot must be 4,000 sf or more to be eligible
• Lot coverage and rear yard coverage are the same as your current single family zoning restrictions
• One off-street parking space is required
• You (the owner) must live in either your main structure or the detached unit
• The DADU is limited in height and size.

Client Assistance Memo 116B covers these new requirements.

If you want to consider turning your garage into an apartment, or adding a structure to your yard, I can help you understand the requirements and see what is possible on your lot! This is a great way to earn extra income to help offsite the expensive mortgage payments that come with buying a house in Seattle these days.
Official notice can be found at this link:

http://www.seattle.gov/dpd/news/20060830A.asp .