Artisans at Work
While the run-up to remodeling was filled with legal and logistical matters, the construction itself was long on craftsmanship, teamwork, and natural materials. Wenge, granite, limestone, ashlar, and flagstone show up both inside and out. Southern yellow pine and cypress, a traditional Japanese material, were used as structural lumber, but it’s the extensive use of Brazilian ipe that really sings.
“These clients have the ability to really keep up the ipe. They’ve got a maintenance guy who starts at one end of the property and keeps cleaning and sealing it,” Smith says.
Hands-on touches can be found throughout the project, from the main house — which kept its basic footprint but went from four bedrooms to one —to the 1,761-square-foot, two-story guesthouse (with two-car garage) to a covered walkway and “greeting space” that tie everything together.
“One of the key factors with this project was the carpentry work, which was 75% of the project,” says Walker, who hit the jackpot when he was introduced to a group of talented Ukrainian carpenters working nearby. “I was willing to negotiate on a time-and-materials basis rather than a hard number because of the complexity of this project. I also knew that there would be some starting and stopping points along the way. In the end, I took their figure and doubled it, and that became the budget.”
Walker and his crew garner high praise from Maho Abe of Zen Associates, the design architects on the project. “This kind of Japanese design is quite authentic, and you have to take care of the detail,” says the Japanese-born Abe. “Mike did an incredible job.”
Client Culling
In Michael Walker’s 30 years in the business, he has learned to focus on quality-minded clients. “I look for clients who want a quality job and who are willing to go through the process to get quality,” says Walker, whose company, Michael K. Walker & Associates, has a full-time staff of seven. “It’s very difficult to provide this level of quality on a quantity basis, so we turn away more clients than we take.”
His staff draws up a preliminary services agreement with prospective clients. “We work with the engineer and the architect and the owner while the house is on the drawing board to bring in all of our knowledge early so you’re not spending a lot of time redoing things down the line,” Walker says. “If we are chosen [to do the job], that preliminary agreement is voided and then becomes a contract between the client and Walker & Associates.” If his company is not chosen for the job, clients pay an offset fee that covers everything the company has contributed to the project. “It’s an escape valve that pays for the work we’ve invested in the project. Normally we work with 6 to 10 of these clients at a time, with 85% to 90% of the projects going forward,” Walker says.
The right client is key to Walker’s high-end work. “If you’re a year in approvals and two or three in construction, you’d better have a decent client,” he says. “Before we even write their name on a piece of paper, I sit and talk with them for at least an hour. Sometimes you can tell that the project is being driven by money or by time. The best clients are the ones who are driven by quality,” Walker says. “You can have two out of three, but not all three.”
What Goes Up Must Come Down
Remodeler Michael Walker was able to give his clients what they wanted only by raising the original house by about seven feet, building up the foundation walls, demolishing the entire building down to the structural flooring, and then starting again.
- It took the house mover that Walker hired three full days to get the house in the air, which is where it stayed for six weeks. The pool had to be filled with sand for two reasons: to provide the house mover with access to the house and to preserve the pool’s existing footprint. After construction was complete, the pool was dug out and a new pool built in the old footprint — eliminating the need to get a variance.
- The house-moving crew raised everything and then slid wooden cribwork underneath to create a temporary support for the whole house. While the house was elevated a very strong storm hit the Sarasota area. “Amazingly, that house just sat there up on wood blocks and there wasn’t a shingle out of place afterward,” Walker says. “If we had lost the house then, before the foundation walls could be extended, the whole project would have completely unraveled.”
- Once the house was elevated, Walker’s crew went to work. “We added seven or eight courses of block right on top of the existing block,” Walker says. The whole assembly had to stay within the existing footprint. “We couldn’t step out of it one inch and still be in compliance.”
- The removal of the house caused some neighborhood confusion. Another big storm hit the area just as it was being demolished. “We were living in a rental house nearby, and just after the storm our mail lady rang the doorbell and told me how sorry she felt for us,” owner Susan Strober says. “She said, ‘You went to all that trouble to renovate your house and then it blew down.’”
- Walker needed a small addition to accommodate a first-floor bathroom, but it could not touch the ground. “We could go up, but we couldn’t touch the ground with anything horizontal,” Walker explains. He cantilevered a two-way beam from the new, extended foundation to create a small rectangular-shaped space.
- “Reconstructing a house on the old footprint raised a lot of eyebrows,” Walker says. “Many people assumed that the house had gotten damaged in a storm and we weren’t able to save it. But the truth was that we had to tear it down. It was all part of the plan.”