jason030808

From drawing board to done

Steve Rice, Star Tribune

The nerve center of the house is the kitchen, and the focal point of the room is a breakfast bar that was crated from a 26-foot-long beam of Douglas fir salvaged by the Duluth Timber Co. from a 1940s Boeing Aircraft hangar in a little town near Seattle. The kitchen also has an Electrolux induction cooktop that is reportedly 84 percent efficient vs. 40 percent efficiency for gas.

After nearly a year of blogging and building, the Hammonds have finally moved into their new house.

By JASON HAMMOND

Last update: March 7, 2008 - 5:46 PM

For most of the past 10 years, our beautiful 1916 Craftsman-style home had been the ideal setting for my small family.

But a second child, my wife's growing design business and limited storage space made the 1,700-square-foot St. Paul house feel cramped.

We explored our options, including a small addition, but the costs would have quickly priced us out of our neighborhood and left us upside-down on our mortgage.

Instead, we decided to build. Stacy and I (we're both designers) have always been drawn to modern houses such as those in the pages of Dwell and Metropolitan Home magazines.

But where? We knew that covenants and restrictions on style would make it difficult to build in many suburban developments, and we wanted to be close to the city or in a nearby suburb.

We stumbled on an infill lot in Maplewood, where in June we started building our modern contemporary house. This is how it turned out.

Jason Hammond is at hammond@mojosolo.com.