BY THE TIME Liz and John Tinkham moved here from Chicago — and decided to stay — this sumptuous waterfront estate on Yarrow Point had lived through a lot.
Built in the 1940s, “This home had been remodeled and added on to numerous times,” says architect Carrie Anderson, of Stuart Silk Architects. “While each project added value, there was a lack of coherent design for the house as a whole.”
From the outside, she says, “Stuart and I noticed it wasn’t symmetrical coming down the driveway.” Inside, on the main level, Liz says, “The whole area was a warren of rooms. The ceilings were low.” In the disoriented little kitchen, “They basically just built over what had been a solarium,” she says, and nearby, actual peril perched just above the main stairway: “As you came down the stairs … if you were over 6 feet tall, your head would hit a beam.”
In their first meeting, Anderson says, Liz and John requested a unifying update of “symmetry, harmony and simplicity.”
And now, thanks to a series of structural fixes, ingenious transformations, strategic additions and room-to-room switcheroos, the Tinkhams’ home is living its best modern life: as a thoughtfully traditional home with contemporary touches, transported in one coherent form to the 21st century — and, in one sense, to the northern hemisphere.
“[The home] had a whole Balinese theme, very beautifully and expensively done: Pacific Northwest on the outside, Bali on the inside,” says Liz. “For a while, we thought we could live here, but it was really dark. It was beautiful, but when we put all our Midwestern stuff in, it just didn’t work.”
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