"We unified it," Graciela Rutkowski says about the way she and the homeowner incorporated pieces the Oslers already owned, such as the portrait on the mantel, a family heirloom. The mantel itself was redone in a darker hue to contrast with the neutral walls and furniture. "It was great to use the older pieces and keep the integrity of the home and modernize it," Kathy Osler says.
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Building Friends
An interior designer and architect hit it off with a Laurelhurst family in the process of redesigning a second home for five.

Design Details
Interior Designer: Graciela Rutkowski, Graciela Rutkowski Interiors, (206) 527-1962

Architect: Anne Adams, Principal, Stuart Silk Architects, 2400 N. 45th St., Ste. 200, (206) 728-9500
Elegant touches, such as the glass chandelier, encourage a certain sophistication.
Adams used resawn cedar shingles on the roof to continue the crisp, tailored look begun with the original brick on the main level and the heavy split shakes on the upper floors. The towerlike turret makes the home look like an indigenous Shingle-style building.
When the weather is nice, Kathy Osler spends much of her time on the patio.
The dining room has a new round rosewood table, which encourages conversation at dinner. Guests also enjoy comfortable tufted chairs, designed and made by Graciela Rutkowski in her G.R. Hedges shop at Seattle Design Center.
Henry, who was born during construction, enjoys the fairy-tale style third floor as much as his older siblings.
The brown zebra-striped rug in the second-floor sitting area and on the turret stairs adds a dash of playfulness to the interior design.

This is a story of design-savvy people meeting at a serendipitous time. In May 2003, homeowner Kathy Osler went to a party at the home of interior designer Graciela Rutkowski, held for a mutual friend who was moving away. When the two met, they knew they could be confidantes. “I still remember what [she was] wearing that day,” Rutkowski says. Kathy, who had bought a house in Laurelhurst two years earlier—two blocks away from the interior designer—remembers how beautiful Rutkowski's home was. “I just wanted her house,” Kathy recalls. “I wanted her interiors.”

Seven months later, Kathy hired Rutkowski to help her with a small project: selecting paint colors for the main floor. Together they picked a neutral beige that would work with most future design choices. Then the pair decided to re-cover the sofa in a classy brown mohair. “We slowly started reupholstering pieces, just to get the right color,” Rutkowski says. Next was a pair of chairs. They re-covered them in a creamy white, and then Rutkowski patterned nail heads along the bottom edges for a subtle touch of eclecticism.

In tandem with the relaxed redecorating, Kathy and her husband, Geoff, decided to add a third story to their home for extra square footage four months before their third child was born. “I guess you could say I was nesting,” Kathy says with a laugh. Enter Anne Adams, principal at Stuart Silk Architects, who augmented the design duo, creating the perfect trio of homeowner, designer and architect with an appreciation for the finer things in life.

This is where the story picks up pace. In order to add a third story to a structure on a sloping hill, Adams had to bolt the house to the foundation. Then she created a third story with a turret to house the staircase—the small tower being the most effective way to include stairs and still maximize space for an extra floor in this addition. The 600 square feet the third floor added rounds out the house to a comfortable 4,200 square feet. “It's a great use of space in a small footprint,” Adams says. The Oslers' two older kids, who have bedrooms upstairs, love it. “It's really enchanting for the kids to have the spiral stair in the turret and go up to their own little world,” Adams adds.

After reinforcing the structure and adding the third floor, Adams bumped out the kitchen. “We made that bigger to accommodate a growing family,” Kathy says.

The remodel itself took nine months. Because the family had a newborn when they started and wasn't living in the house, everyone involved was inspired to finish the project as quickly as possible.

The homeowner, architect and interior designer worked together to pick out finishes and appliances while workers tore out walls and welded the spiral staircase in place. As Adams was designing the kitchen layout, Kathy chose appliances and Rutkowski suggested finishes. Everything is either custom-made or hand-picked: Because the homeowners are relatively tall, the island is 6 inches taller than the standard 36 inches; the tiles are tan-gray rectangles laid horizontally, and metallic gray paint modernizes otherwise traditional cabinetry. “They were such great sports about it,” Rutkowski says of the Oslers, who were willing to go along with the fairly unusual paint color.  “At night, I think it kind of glows. It's different; it's not white, it's not wood.” The kitchen later won the 2008 Kitchen of the Year from Southern Accents magazine, after Rutkowski entered it on a friend's recommendation.

After helping Kathy find a rosewood Ebanista table, Rutkowski then designed and made the dining-room chairs. The chairs had to be comfortable and yet fit the overall traditional style with its added touch of modernity. “The point is to keep the guests at the dining-room table,” Rutkowski says. She made the chairs tufted with a gray velvetlike fabric that's dressy but indestructible, even to kids with markers. “We tried to keep the colors warm but still work with the northern light,” Rutkowski says. That meant repeating throughout the home the signature Northwest gray used on the chairs because of the way the color dances with Seattle's unique sunlight patterns.

Rutkowski and Kathy also added a sense of youthful whimsy to the project. A brown zebra-striped rug sits in the entry and carpets the stairs leading up to the second floor. “It makes me happy every time I see it,” Rutkowski says. In the Oslers' bedroom are red toile drapes that Kathy owned before the remodel; Rutkowski designed a tufted cream headboard with red trim to match the drapes. Pistachio-colored penny tile from Ann Sacks covers the floor of the third-floor bathroom, and kid-friendly art hangs on hallway walls. “I love the way the house feels old but still has this young vibe,” Rutkowski says.

Kathy spends a lot of her time on the main floor, in the kitchen—her favorite room because of its unique aesthetic—or on the garden patio. For now, all are satisfied with the project, completed in late 2006, which provides room for two gracious hosts, three joyful children and Kathy's designer friends. The three still keep in touch. One day might find Rutkowski over at the Osler home for conversation, tea and coconut cake; on another, Kathy's kitchen stools might be missing because Adams borrowed them for a party she's hosting. And the Oslers now have two more reasons to be glad they remodeled and redesigned.  

Contributing Editor Lindsey Rowe enjoys studying architecture all over the country.