SEATTLE — "We call it Craig's house, in fact," said David Henderson, stay-at-home dad, first-time general contractor and, more to the point, ace hunter-gatherer.
That's Craig as in Craigslist, the classified ad website. And Craig is all over Henderson's place, from the fir-ply kitchen cabinets to the old-growth, clear-fir ceiling; from the stainless-and-copper bathroom sink to the live-edge madrona bar. There's also the Wolf kitchen exhaust fan, the fir stairs (once two massive warehouse beams), the cedar bathroom ceiling (from a swimming-pool room) and fir doors (fell off a truck) remade into barn-door sliders.
"There are so many things in this house that have a story," Henderson said.
"Karen found the house looking online during a typhoon in Vietnam. We had lots of time on our hands," he said, speaking of his wife and the trip they took with their two 5-year-olds in 2008.
"We lived on the bluff over Shilshole Marina, but the house was old, and we needed more room. But we wanted to find a house that had an equally amazing view. This house had that. But it was just ugly."
Leaping to the end of his adventure, he added, "Everything from your feet up is new" — 14 months from ripping off the roof and gutting what lay beneath to completion. With as much of it as possible culled from Craigslist.
"The guys would say, 'Dave, what are we gonna put here?' And I'd say, 'I don't know yet. I haven't found it.' "
Going shopping with Henderson means pulling your chair up to the computer. He figures he spent an hour a day trolling the site's "materials" department. It was a habit that paid off over and over again.
