In a real estate market as hot as Seattle’s, it’s not uncommon for 100-year-old houses to get torn down in favor of building bigger and boxier. But the couple that bought this 1921 bungalow didn’t need more space—they just needed the layout to flow together better.

“They did not want to tear it down—they wanted to work with the existing bones of the house, and open up the kitchen and the dining room to the living room to make it a Bohemian hangout pad,” says designer Prentis Hale, of the Seattle firm SHED Architecture & Design.

Before: Front Porch

SHED’s redesign started outside. Access to the front and back doors was compromised by the home’s height off the ground and narrow staircases, which emphasized the separation between inside and out. SHED rebuilt the staircases to be wider and more generous, so that they could double as seats.

After: Front Porch

The original floor plan—a simple rectangle—is common to homes of this time. A long and narrow living and dining room lies on one side of the home, and two bedrooms and a bath sit on the other. However, a few small additions and faulty interventions had created too many compact rooms connected by narrow doorways and haphazard pass-throughs.

SHED removed two walls to improve the circulation between the main living spaces. “The clients initially were like, ‘Let’s open this all up.’ But it was a little too open,” recalls Hale. The solution is a half-wall topped with slim shelving that “keeps the whole space open, but creates some definition between spaces so it doesn’t feel like you’re in a big, long tube,” says Hale.

Before: Living Room

After: Living Room

Before: Dining Room

After: Dining Room

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“The kitchen was super weird, and had also been remodeled a couple times,” says Hale. “It was extended to enclose the back porch, but the plan of the kitchen hadn’t changed.” The result was a series of chopped-up spaces, disconnected from the rest of the house.

When the firm removed a structural wall to combine these spaces into one, they installed a generous island with a slim structural column at its corner, which Hale calls the “linchpin” in the design. “It was this pin in the plan that anchored the island and allowed us to clear out the walls in the kitchen,” says Hale.

Before: Kitchen

After: Kitchen

While the owners were happy to preserve the character of the 100-year-old house, they also wanted to foster a tension between old and new throughout. “The owners really liked this house, so they didn’t want to go super contemporary on anything. They wanted a mix,” says Hale.

In the kitchen, custom plywood and laminate cabinetry by Seattle-based Kerf Design contrasts with the exposed brick chimney and classic detailing on the range. In the bathroom, a Kerf medicine chest echoes the new casework elsewhere, while a claw-foot tub nods to the house’s vintage.

For Hale, the remodel really “shows the value of small moves,” whether borrowing a couple feet of space here and there, or opening up walls and installing new cohesive casework. “A few subtle changes transformed the house,” he says.

Before: Bathroom

After: Bathroom

Before: Back Porch

After: Back Porch

More from SHED Architecture & Design:

A Midcentury Ranch Home Is Totally Transformed in Seattle

Before & After: A Remodel Brings a Cartoonist’s Former Home Back to Life

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: SHED Architecture & Design / @shedarchitecture

Builder: Thomas Jacobson Construction

Structural Engineer: Todd Perbix

Cabinetry: Kerf Design

Photography: Rafael Soldi

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Before & After: Clever Changes Bring Out the Charm in a 1920s Seattle Bungalow