Cabin Fever -- This Old Magnolia Beach House Was A Project She Could Dive Into

PERKINS LANE IS A SLENDER, SERPENTINE street that hugs the Magnolia shoreline from Elliott Bay Marina to Discovery Park. Funky old beach houses and million-dollar manses hang precariously from its steep shoulders, sacrificing a sense of security for a precious patch of saltwater beach just minutes from the center of the city.

Although she was raised on the cliffs above, Cynthia Snellman always dreamed of owning a home on Perkins Lane.

Seven years ago, she realized her dream, although some might have considered it more of a nightmare. The 1938 beach house she bought was a dilapidated mess. Its metal crank windows wouldn't shut, the floors and ceilings were infested with bugs, and the kitchen had so many mismatched cabinets it looked like a Pay 'N Pak showroom.

"Everybody thought I was nuts," recalls Snellman. "They just couldn't see how neat it could be."

Instead of razing the house and starting from scratch, Snellman worked within the existing shell, simplifying the jumble while taking pains to preserve the character and materials that gave the home its bygone charm.

From the street, the house looks much the same as it did when Snellman found it. Moss clings to the old shake roof, and lichen lends a greenish cast to the rugged split-cedar siding. The front yard has been spruced up a bit, its lush beds of rhododendrons, ferns and ivy interrupted only by a meandering flagstone path that deposits visitors at the vine-covered entry.

The interior changes are apparent the moment you step inside. The front door is fitted with a glass panel emblazoned with sandblasted animal designs. The clunky, dated interior is now light and bright with a coat of gray-beige paint. Old partitions were removed to open the rooms to each other and the sweeping view of Elliott Bay. Snellman installed new multi-pane wood windows, and established uniform sill heights for a less jumbled look.

Snellman kept most of her changes cosmetic in the first few years. The real transformation started after she married attorney Bill Price in 1988. Snellman ripped out the kitchen's suspended ceiling and fluorescent lights, opening up the room to the roofline. She took down the walls dividing the kitchen and dining room, and replaced the knotty-pine paneling with painted fiberboard cut to match the painted cedar in the dining room. New oak cabinets with granite counters surround a split-level island fitted with a combination halogen/electric cooktop and a built-in TV facing the dining room. The Indian slate

floors look beautiful, and help hide the dirt tracked in by the cat and three dogs. Zinc pendant lights add a high-tech counterpoint to the room's natural finishes.

Snellman accessorized the kitchen with plenty of art and collectibles. Chocolate molds top shelves and counters, while a wall displays an assortment of ceremonial daggers from Bali and Java. A shelf tucked under the ceiling peak holds a painting and several carved animals.

A fine artist who also makes furniture and maintains an interior-design practice, Snellman created many of the home's furnishings herself. The dining table consists of a shallow wood box with a glass top that frames an antique kilim rug.

The coffee table in the living room is embellished with sandblasted and painted-copper animal drawings. When she's not furnishing her own home, Snellman makes pieces on commission for others, including a recent table for the governor's office in Olympia.

The home's bathrooms were small, so Snellman lined the walls with mirror and floated the granite-topped vanities off the floor to make the rooms feel more spacious.

When Snellman bought the house, the lower level was open and used as a rec room. In remodeling the space into bedrooms, she tried to preserve the rustic 1930s character as much as possible, building walls with recycled wood and new paneling carefully stained

to match the existing stock. She purchased old doors, and created new closets modeled after those found elsewhere in the home. She covered the fireplace with slate and furnished the master bedroom with Japanese tansu chests, a bent willow chaise and Native American baskets and pottery compatible with the room's lodgelike ambiance.

The library next door is a cozy retreat, with its cedar paneling and book-lined walls. "The floors were pegged fir, but you couldn't tell before because they were just filthy," recalls Snellman. "Nobody had ever done anything to them."

She refinished the wood and covered one of the walls with primitive masks from Mexico, Africa and Guatemala, which she illuminated with inconspicuous halogen track lights.

Snellman tore out the old greenhouse behind the house and replaced it with a sunroom equipped with a full kitchen. "We like to live outside, and I wanted a kitchen down here because you can't go up and down all those stairs if you like to entertain, and we like to have friends over."

The sunroom's floor is inset with foot

prints commemorating the various forms of wildlife that Snellman has observed from the house. Eagle, heron, raccoon and crow prints were cut from sheets of brass and set in the wet concrete. "We were pouring the floor, so why not do it?" reasons Snellman.

An arbor wraps around two sides of the home, linking the structure to the series of decks that step down the hillside toward the beach. A stroll through the property often leads to a discovery: a modern sculpture or birdhouse peering from the brush.

Although Snellman knew nothing about landscaping when she started, the yard looks like the work of a pro. Like everything else she tackles, Snellman jumped in, read a few books, and let instinct take care of the rest. Just what you'd expect from a woman who named her interior design firm "Sisu."

That's Finnish for "perseverance." SEATTLE WRITER FRED ALBERT REPORTS REGULARLY ON HOME DESIGN FOR PACIFIC, AND IS CO-AUTHOR OF "AMERICAN DESIGN: THE NORTHWEST," PUBLISHED BY BANTAM. RICHARD S. HEYZA IS A SEATTLE TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER.