Mystery Bay Cottages LLC: For Sale: Background

This story begins with a happenstance.

Whilst driving around one fine spring day through the uptown Port Townsend neighborhood of Morgan Hill, we stumbled upon a most homely little hovel, with a "For Sale By Owner" sign planted defiantly in the yard. Verily, our curiosity was piqued.

At the time, we weren't in the market for a property, already having one in our pocket that we were gearing up to develop.

And yet there we were, as if placed by Fate: precisely the right surgeons with precisely the right patient at, well, not exactly the right moment in time.

Still, with this hemorrhaging little dear desperate for triage, how could we turn our backs?

In an instant, and with the selfless abandon of the noble hero (not to mention the reckless disregard for our lenders and creditors), we leapt into action. And the rest, as they say, is history.

A very good question.

In a remodel situation, as opposed to new construction, the possibilities aren't exactly limitless. Short of razing the existing structure and starting from scratch, we have to work with what we have. And what we had in this case was not very much at all.

Although technically this 1942 house was a vintage structure, restoration was not the remotest option. Even brand spanking new, it was never anything more than a very modest, unadorned little dwelling; sadly, there was precious little, if anything, to salvage here. And the intervening years had not been kind, to say the least. But, viewed another way, all this actually added up to a very exciting proposition: not to restore an old house but to recreate an old house—and we got to pick the style!

So, taking a long hard squint at the possibilities, we hit upon an idea (it happens occasionally).

The plan? To roll back this home's "vintage" a couple of decades and give it the frills—and the extra square footage—its original builders didn't. Why? Well, although the existing house was completely unremarkable, it did happen to be splendidly situated, high atop the highly prized hilltop neighborhood known as Morgan Hill. This home, we thought, needed to live up to its very remarkable location.

But what of the style, the architecture? Well, this was the fun part! We decided to recreate a charming 1920s-era Tudor Revival cottage, featuring many of the signature elements of this beautiful storybook style:

Steeply pitched rooflines with hip-on-gable ends
Lovely cedar-shingled exterior with classic trim details
Gabled entry with rounded-top mahogany front door
Interior archways and solid-oak flooring
A stunning stained-glass window in the stair landing and large casement windows throughout

But why, you might ask, did we select this particular architectural style?

The answer is twofold: (1) sheer whim; and (2) in our humble opinion, Port Townsend sorely needed it. Being one of only three Victorian seaports listed on the National Historic Register (but hey, let's not forget Galveston!), this unique little hamlet boasts a plethora of stately Queen Annes. What better fun, we thought, than to break up this tea party of stuffy old painted ladies by introducing a little Doolittle into the mix?

So here, at last, our own version of the "modern" (so-called in the 1920s) English-inspired Tudor Revival cottage.

And, as always, we keep faith with that early-twentieth-century tradition of naming house designs. In honor of a dignified old friend, a dear blue-eyed aristocrat no longer with us, we lovingly christen this one the "Bentley."

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