Schenkar Construction Design/Build: When Custom is King | The Builder’s Journal
A Custom Home on Lake Washington Benefits from a Non-traditional Building Approach
By Tara Hayes
When a 1,320 square-foot building site is pinched between a steep hillside and the lapping waves of Lake Washington, it is prone to both landslides and flooding. Now add a unique building partnership, state of the art design, and a perilously narrow residential street and you’ve got a project that requires nothing less than creative pragmatism. On Riviera Place, at the edge of Lake Washington, a new home now stands ready for its owner, a modern testament to the fact that these challenges can be effectively addressed, and, as the maxim goes, two heads are sometimes better than one.
A recent sunny morning finds Alex Schenkar of Schenkar Construction Design Build, and Wade Damey, of D2 Design Build Construction, walking through the house they built, pointing out the many details. Schenkar came to the business of building through sales, marketing, and project management after earning a degree in Environmental Design at the University of Colorado. Damey is a structural engineer with a degree from the University of Washington. He learned some of the hands-on specifics of building as he practiced renovations on several houses he subsequently sold. The two met in the showroom of a local supplier and soon found that the personality mix leading to their friendship also made for a great working partnership.
“He is very meticulous, very calculated, with attention to detail,” Schenkar says of Damey’s working style. Damey, the engineer, marvels at Schenkar’s assertive project management, “He can visualize and execute a project from beginning to end. He is the ultimate project manager.” They realized that, together, there was a niche they could fill. “We looked and saw what was on the market and felt we could succeed by providing a specially qualified design build team. We wanted to exceed what was considered market standard.”
After a year and a half of building challenges, the finished Riviera Place project is a beauty made from the beast. Standing on a grated dock over lakeshore, Damey starts at the beginning, with the foundation. With the water table so close to the surface, his first challenge was to keep the house in place. His engineering solution was to design the foundation above grade and above the water table. By sending pipe piles down up to 65 feet in places, the house is secured to bedrock. “The soil could slough away, and the house would still be here,” says Damey. Raising the foundation also helped with the concern of flooding, as a trickling drainage pipe exiting the hillside behind the house unleashes a torrent in the rainy season.
When Schenkar speaks, he starts with the bigger picture, the overall vision. The key word for this house is “custom,” he explains, from the beautiful tongue and groove cedar soffits, to the tile design painstakingly laid out by the architect. It’s a small plot and a small home – just 940 feet of maximized living space, including the lofted bedroom and bathroom. The focus, says Schenkar, was on the easterly aspect, for obvious reasons. The lake is what makes this location so special.
Architect Peter Gregory Maxwell’s design took full advantage of this fact; the eastern wall is composed of commercial-grade storefront glass windows. On the ground (a.k.a lake) level, glass Nana wall doors fold, accordion style, to create an eighteen-foot opening and an alfresco style living environment. Above the doors the glass windows project skyward to 28’-foot vaulted ceilings, creating a physical effect like riding the bow of a sleek and luxurious water craft. Maxwell is nationally renowned for designing beautiful spaces with utilitarian appeal, a trademark he’s established through his eclectic combining of commercial and traditional materials.
The interior of the home is just as visible from the outdoors as the lake is from inside. The two environments, natural and architecturally designed, provide a contextual complement, from the shifting blues of water and sky to the varying textures and soft shades of gray that make up the house’s interior. A two and a half inch architectural concrete slab floor will keep the house cool in warm temperatures and provide radiant heat via the pex piping installed underneath in cooler weather. This eco-friendly green style helps mitigate and manage energy consumption.
The commercial and customized nature of the materials provided some of the biggest challenges for Schenkar and Damey, both in organizing the project and engineering it. Competing delivery dates, international customs, and the need for specialty contractors added to the list of things to consider in managing the project. High-end materials clad the house including tile, industrial laminated plywood, Iodized aluminum, HardiePanel and painted surfaces. A boom crane was required to lift in many of the materials, given the narrow and limited access of the location. The fabrication and complicated installation of glass and steel created one of the greatest time crunches for the project, says Schenkar, who prides himself on attention to detail while completing jobs on schedule.
The structural steel frame is unusual for a residential project. And the 15-degree angle of the glass wall is atypical. “Generally, forces load vertically” explains Damey. In this case, the primary columns have to hold the roof, which is 18,000 lbs per column. With the frame in place the builders then dropped 2X6 balloon wall studs to fill in the steel skeleton. For all his skill at planning, getting a house up in raw form is the moment when the vision gels for Damey, when he can really see the layout, figure what does work, what doesn’t, and how to make adjustments. A broad window offering sweeping views of the lake sits above the sink on the master bathroom’s eastern wall. Not originally in the plans, the placement of the window became obvious during construction.
All such changes happen in realtime, shifting the organization of the whole project, and keeping Schenkar on his toes. It requires a lot of communication with clients, architects, neighbors and subcontractors. He obviously gets a kick out of projects perceived to be more difficult. “It is a true partnership when you’re building with a variety of materials, a complicated construction sequence and a challenging building site”–it takes skill, communication, attention to detail… and of course passion. I love to build.”
Schenkar knows that communication is what keeps a complicated and exciting project like this one in motion. Of course, for Schenkar, having an engineer in-house speeds up that process. Both Schenkar and Damey know that when problems and changes arise–as they inevitably will– they can call on the skills of the other right away, no middle men or extra delay. It’s a dynamic that works for them, and their clients.
For more information, please contact Alex Schenkar, Schenkar Construction Design/ Build, by calling1-800-279-8461 or visit www.citydesignbuild.com. Wade Damey, D2 Design & Construction, may be reached by calling 206.650.6196.
