For more than a decade, Kas Kinkead and Marty Babcock spent vacations and weekends in a home measuring only 40 square feet. That’s because their second home was a boat, which they moored to a dock after buying an undeveloped lot on Decatur Island, Wash., in 2006.
“It was a 22-foot little power boat with an enclosed cabin, a little heater and a sleeping berth,” said Ms. Kinkead, 67, a landscape architect at Osborn Consulting. “We learned living on that little boat that we could live in a small space together.”
She and Ms. Babcock, 72, a retired nurse practitioner, were happy for many years, as they explored the area, got to know their neighbors in the San Juan Islands and admired the natural beauty of their rugged hillside lot, which they had purchased for about $200,000. The only problem was that the longer they owned their land, the more time they wanted to spend there, away from their primary home in Seattle, which was a challenge when the temperature dropped.
“We decided we could start staying in the wintertime,” Ms. Kinkead said, “but that wasn’t really tenable on the boat because the water is too cold and too rough.”
It was finally time to build something bigger, and on land. But hoping to preserve the property’s natural beauty as much as possible, they wanted only a small cabin, and to minimize damage to the landscape.
