Their new home, built in the 1990s, stood meekly before them, hat in hand. “There wasn’t anything special, wasn’t anything appealing,” she notes.

Remnants of a bygone era included pillars, carpeted bathrooms, a sunken living room and a Jacuzzi in the master suite. The home’s disagreeable floor plan backed the family of five into the kitchen. They persisted with good humor until flood damage triggered a full-bore remodel.

“I didn’t know anything about remodeling,” Smith recalls. “I thought it would take a month.”

Her mother had just finished a complex and well-received remodel of her home in Jerusalem and was available to help. Early childhood memories of her mother’s dresses are a foundation of Smith’s fondness for arresting hues and patterns.

“It’s a good antidote to all the tacky, cold, sterile boxes going up, especially on the Eastside,” Larson says, “where every new home has to include a butler’s pantry.”

Smith, a curator, and her mother, an artist and ceramicist, collaborated on a provocative interior design that paid homage to their homeland of Israel. Smith and her husband, Shmulik Eisenmann, engaged Story Architecture’s Miriam Larson, who was initially skeptical.

By the end of the project, the architect had developed an appreciation of her client’s design sense and sense of community.

“It’s bold, irreverent and interesting. Everyone who walks through it is impressed,” Larson says. “There are many textures, many colors, many styles, and yet somehow it all works. It’s a unique, meaningful project and there were many obstacles to overcome.”

The high-tech industry has attracted to Seattle thousands of brilliant, innovative people from around the world. A sizable chunk of that energy — and disposable income — was turned inward during the pandemic, injecting color, creativity, and class into the region’s residential architecture portfolio.

“It’s a good antidote to all the tacky, cold, sterile boxes going up, especially on the Eastside,” Larson says, “where every new home has to include a butler’s pantry.” An early obstacle for Smith was learning to work with wood. Homes in Israel are made of brick, concrete, and tile. Kitchen floors are flooded and sluiced rather than mopped.

Smith discovered that exterior paints that look good in the showroom don’t always hold up on test drives. She isolated the proper tint — “summer blue” — by tagging the side of her home with sample swatches.

“Natalie loves blue,” Larson says. “Even the insides of her shoes are blue.”

An egg yolk yellow was selected for the front door. Completing the “Hello Wedgwood!” effect, like expertly applied eyeliner are the slender black mullions of newly installed New York loft-style windows (Marvin Modern Windows).

The black windows combine with white, high-ceiling interior spaces to create a backdrop for splashes of color throughout. Warm wood flooring fearlessly borders cool mosaic cement tile.

The living and other rooms reflect a mastery of color-block harmony design principles promoted by artists such as Piet Mondrian, who magnified the impact of primary colors by surrounding them with expanses of bright white and geometric black lines.

Quiet luxury. A sliding barn door from the pantry closes an entrance to the family room.

Photography by Miranda Estes

Quiet luxury abounds in the kitchen, with European-style cabinets and handmade Moroccan zellige backsplash (Indian Saffron). “Eventually, the kitchen always becomes the center of the home,” Smith says.

A barn door (Frank’s Lumber) can be slid from the pantry to close an entrance to the family room. Guest suites are trending locally as an alternative to building an accessory dwelling unit at the back of the property. Larson attributes this in part to demand from immigrant families, many from cultures that place a higher value on intergenerational living than the typical American family.

Quiet luxury. A sliding barn door from the pantry closes an entrance to the family room.

Photography by Miranda Estes

It’s an 18-hour flight from Jerusalem, so visitations of three weeks or longer are common, Smith notes.

A 180-square-foot guest suite was created off the kitchen with bedroom, small closet and comfortable bath, where Moroccan tiles were coaxed in from the kitchen and sent racing up the walls. In a lucky accident, the design team located an off-the-rack shower stall that exactly matches the style of the exterior windows.

The existing upper floor plan included a dead area between the master suite and children’s bedrooms. This was combined with the footage intended for the master bath to create a reading-room landing area that is now one of the most popular destinations in the home.

Sourcing a perfect-sized mustard loveseat proved a challenge. The space was wired for television, but Smith later decided against the installation. Glossy porcelain subway tile (Poseidon Blue, Cavallo) anchors the primary bath. The vanity surface is flat and painted high gloss, making it easy to clean. “I hate seeing fingerprints on the cabinet,” Smith adds. “Besides, I think it looks posh.”

Creative and colorful. The renovation created a reading-room landing area from a dead space between the master suite and children’s bedroom.

Photography by Miranda Estes

The project drew so many compliments that Smith’s mother, 70, was inspired to pursue a design career. She was accepted into Israel’s most prestigious design Institute, and spent a year learning software in preparation for beginning formal studies in October 2023.

Then, on Oct. 7 that year, Smith heard news reports that there was trouble in Israel. She immediately phoned her aunt and uncle, Lilach and Eviatar Kipnis, who helped raise her and lived in a village within eyesight of the fence surrounding Gaza. They spoke softly, concerned that nearby Hamas militants would overhear.

They were later found dead. The couple was eulogized as lovers of peace who had opposed right-wing Israeli politicians, worked tirelessly to end military occupation of the West Bank, and volunteered to provide blankets and food to Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli jails.

Seven other family members were kidnapped. Six were returned in the first hostage deal. One, Shmulik’s cousin, remains in Gaza.

Smith, a third-generation peace activist, spoke prominently in Seattle news media in the weeks that followed, condemning the attack, but also calling for protection for innocent Palestinians living in Gaza.

“We came here for economic opportunity, but also due to a disparity with what was happening in Israel,” she says. “I thought we were coming to a place of progress. America had a Black president. But in 2016, Trump was elected, and that was really, really hard.”

The house became a labor of love

An oil-on-canvas abstract of a tractor working a field, painted by an Israeli friend who lives in a kibbutz, hangs above the fireplace. Gallery-style high cubbies feature her mother’s native art.

A goal of the remodel was to amplify light from the home’s southern orientation, which overlooks a community garden, or what Smith calls “the pea patch.” It’s what originally attracted her to the home. Bright outdoor furniture gives the back deck a hard spank of primary color.

The home is now much more habitable and efficient, an important consideration in a household with boys ages 13, 9, and 3.

“Miriam came up with the genius idea to move the laundry to the second floor,” Smith says. “She made it real cute. I thank her every day for that. I had actually broken my foot schlepping clothes down the stairs. It’s the daily things that really matter.”

The new design increased the home’s footprint just 71 square feet, but peat in the soil required an arduous permitting process  for “piling,” which entails driving 2-inch-diameter foundation pins 10 to 15 feet deep.

Covid-era bids were extraordinarily high. They selected a lower-priced contractor who parted ways late in the project due to aesthetic, infrastructure, and quality concerns.

“We said, ‘We’re doing high-end, not flipping a house,’” Smith says.

Glossy porcelain subway tile anchors the primary bath. The vanity surface is flat and painted high gloss, making it easy to clean.

Photography by Miranda Estes

Larson stepped in to arrange new subcontractors to finish the job properly, which is not a service many architects provide. “I became emotionally invested in the project,” Larson says. “These are people who put a lot of love into the world.”

Other dominoes have yet to fall. In an event an estimated 30 years in the making, a neighbor recently announced that he will be repainting his house. The new color is beige.

Most of the couple’s family and friends remain in Israel. The guest suite awaits. “You try to build your new life, but you never really detach from the old one,” Smith says.