Maksymov Studios

Seattle · Ballard

Renovating a Ballard house.

Kitchens, baths and whole-house work in Ballard, Phinney Ridge and Sunset Hill, drawn and built by one team from a studio ten minutes away.

A Ballard primary bathroom with a freestanding tub at the window, green walls and a gray patterned tile shower
Ballard/Primary bath addition/2025

Most of Ballard was built before anyone planned for the way we live in a house now.

The bungalows and four-squares north of Market went up when a single bathroom off the hall was the whole plan, the kitchen was a working room with a door, and nobody had heard of an island. The rooms are good rooms. They are just in the wrong order, and almost every Ballard project we take on is really a question about which wall can move.

The Ballard house we added a bathroom to.

There was no primary bath. There was a bedroom that could give up three feet and a back wall that could take a window, so we built one. The tub sits where the window is, which is the whole point of the room and the reason the plumbing runs the long way round.

See the project
A freestanding white tub set beneath a window with gray patterned tile behind
The tub went where the window is
A walnut vanity with deep drawers under a wall-hung mirror
Walnut vanity, milled in our shop

What an old Ballard house tends to be hiding

  1. 01

    Wiring older than the code

    Knob-and-tube is common in houses of this age. You find it the day the plaster comes off, and once you have seen it you cannot leave it.

  2. 02

    Galvanized supply pipe

    It silts up from the inside and takes the pressure with it. If it is there, the renovation is the cheapest moment in thirty years to replace it.

  3. 03

    Floors that are no longer flat

    A hundred years of settling on a Seattle hillside. It matters most where cabinetry meets a wall, which is why we measure before we mill.

  4. 04

    Asbestos in the old sheet flooring

    Common under kitchen and bath floors of the period. Testing is cheap, abatement is not, and it is not optional.

Ballard permits go through Seattle, and that is a schedule, not a formality.

Move a wall, a gas line or a circuit and the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections wants a permit. We pull it, the fee belongs in the quote, and the review time belongs in the calendar you are shown on day one rather than in an apology in month three.

The studio is in South Lake Union, which is a short drive from Ballard and the reason you can see the tile before you own it.

Drawings, full-size samples and the actual cabinet doors are at 920 Dexter Ave N. Most Ballard clients come once at the beginning to choose, and then never have to imagine anything again.

Start in BallardWhat a kitchen costs