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 off-limits to kids in this house.
Jonna and Eric Butz got in a tussle the day they met. "I basically was trying to take his head off," Jonna says of her first encounter with Eric at an aikido seminar 10 years ago. "After it was over I said to someone, 'Who's that?' And he was asking the same thing about me."Then they got married.After that they bought a nondescript little rambler for $225,000 in North Seattle.   Architect Julie Campbell loves the flexibility of the rambler, the architectural equivalent of white cake. "These houses are really easy to open up to the site," says Campbell of CTA Design Builders, which served as architect and contractor on the Butz project.Architect Julie Campbell has a way of working with the rambler, which she sees as a Northwest blank canvas. "We use fir in a lot of homes of this age. These 1950s, '60s ranchburgers are Northwest homes. They are nestled into the landscape so nicely. So you can really open them up, and using Northwest material makes sense. The key, especially for smaller home to make them seem larger, is to keep a pretty limited palate. You need to pick a tile, a wood and countertops. We used fir, slate and light wood flooring. It continues throughout the house, and that's hard because there are so many wonderful materials out there."  The house, built in 1958 now has an open, Asian calm about it, beginning with the distinctive covered entry. A new kitchen wing with a big table and built-in fir bench tucked in the corner has become their favorite place to hang out. Through the large windows that wrap around the corner, Owen, 3, stands on the bench and watches his dad, an Amgen scientist, till up the fron lawn. Across the table Jonna nurses a plump and pink Trygvy, 1 year. Arbors and decks create outdoor living rooms with a very private woodsy backyard with a stream. And at every opportunity, the designers opened it up to the light.  "When we started we were foot loose and fancy free, and had all the time in the world," says Jonna,a full time mother who, with mixed feelings, recently quit her job working in biomedical research ethics at the University of Washington. "And I got pregnant while we were looking at plans." Construction started when Owen was born and completed in time for Thanksgiving in 2004. Because they are working on a budget and bescause "with Eric it will never be finished," Jonna laughs, they are remaking their home in stages.  Jonna and Eric Butz, both black belts in Aikido, collect calligraphy art. The ink-on-paper piece in the entrance is by Mitsugi Saotome, the Butzes most senior teacher and head of the organization Aikido Schools of Ueshiba. The entrance hall is black slate. The railings and door are fir. Shown today is what Jonna calls Phase I ($380,000); "I wanted the upstairs done so I could live in it and Eric could take his time downstairs" with Phase II: a remodeled bathroom, kid's play area and forth bedroom. For the most part, Campbell retained the original 2,555-square foot footprint, adding only 133 square feet for the kitchen bump-out. There are two bedrooms upstairs, one big walk-in closet and back-toback baths, one for grownups and one for kids. The dining and living rooms are one now, a huge stone fireplace seperating them moved to the far end of the living room. The Butzes live solely on the 1500-square-foot ground floor now. "We had no desire for a larger house," Jonna says. "I didn't want to clean it. I didn't want to hire someone to clean it." Their architect couldn't agree more: "Big is not conducive to intimate family living," says Campbell. The kitchen bump-out was key to the flow of the new layout. "It was hysterical," Jonna says about the old cut-up space. "Eric and I couldn't talk to each other in one room for all the walls and cabinets in the way. We couldn't even be in the same room". "Eric does all the cooking, and one day he kicked his own grandmother out of the kitchen!" Their old home will be a new place for their boys to grow up. A place of balance and tranquility - as taught by aikido sensei masters. A place to display their collections of large clligraphy art. And it will have everything they've ever wanted. Almost. "Our dream was to have a room tall enough to swing our swords and sticks" for aikido, Jonna says. "We don't have quite that much room." Northwest Living Rebecca Teagarden, Assistent Editor | Photography Ken Lambert, Seattle Times Photographer
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