For years I’ve been in search of the perfect place to call home and have certainly tried on many. I started searching more seriously in the Pacific Northwest over the past few years, as I grew up here & while admittedly biased, I think this part of the world truly has the best of everything.
An embarrassing amount of hours were spent on Zillow over the past couple of years, & I just never really saw what I was looking for. You know what I’m talking about… an absolute refusal to settle until you find the kind of home that feels like it was made just for you, the one that gives you all the warm fuzzies. I became resigned to the fact that maybe home ownership just wasn’t for me.
Then in December, I first learned about John Burrows, a renowned architect/builder in the Seattle area. He built 35 absolutely impeccable homes in the area in the 60’s and 70’s and then stopped cold turkey. I had seen a few of his homes in midcentury features in design magazines and every time, found myself saying “wow, now *that* is a dream.”
John was famous for designing and building homes in an almost impossible manner always on a sloped hill, tucked into the woods, and in a style as sturdy and mid mod as houses come. They just don’t build them like that anymore.
A few weeks back, a John Burrows house popped onto the market. It was giving “the one” vibes from first glance so I rallied Erick and we drove up (and back) to Seattle on a Saturday, 14 hours round trip all in. We prepared ourselves to be let down… rationalizing all the ways the house would be probably be “bad” on the way there. But it wasn’t… it was even better in person. Original kitchen, funky bathroom fixtures, skylights all intact and spotless.
During the showing, the agent could tell I was a serious buyer (you mean my John Burrows obsession was a tell?!) and pulled us aside to share some of these typewritten notes from meetings between Burrows and Christiana, the original and only owner, from when the house was first built. The critical eye, the self destructive thinking, the meticulous attention to detail… it’s almost like the blond woman who owned this house prior reminded me of someone I knew 😏
Owning *this* particular house feels so “me”, like owning a little piece of Seattle history, and like caretaking Christiana’s history too. We are so so excited to transform this museum piece into something incredibly special.
