Name: Leslie and Laurie Coaston
Occupation: Owners and operators of the Kingfish Caf鍊
Neighborhood: Madrona
Why do you live here?
Leslie: Well, we grew up in the neighborhood. We actually grew up in Leschi. This neighborhood just feels like home. We’re really familiar with it. We went to Garfield. It’s a beautiful neighborhood.
Laurie: I like the style of homes on this side. They’re old; I like the character. I guess it kind of fits us.
How long have you lived here?
Leslie: Forever. We moved here when we were in high school from New Jersey and we went to the University of Washington and we’ve been here ever since. In this house? Ten years.
How did you find this place?
Laurie: Just driving through the neighborhood and looking. I had a certain budget that I wanted to stick with and then we were looking for a certain style of house. And, as a matter of fact, this house wasn’t on the market. I was driving past and I saw it. It had a “for sale” sign in the yard, but it wasn’t listed yet. I asked my real estate agent about it and he called back to his office and that afternoon I signed the papers.
To what extent does this space reflect you, your personality, your tastes?
Laurie: It’s a lot like the restaurant—we have black-and-whites of our family on the wall. We stuck with the original character of the house, and so I guess we enhanced it. I guess it’s got a modern flair to it. I don’t know how to describe it. We go out and we pick things that we like. The furniture is antiquey, but it’s got an Asian flair to it, too.
Leslie: It’s very reflective of who we are. We spend a lot of time here, and we spend a lot of time deciding how we want to decorate, the colors we want to use, the tile we want to use on the floor. Laurie’s really, really good at gardening, and so we spend a lot of time in the yard. You can tell we like doing gardening, you can tell we like entertaining here at home.
Laurie: Leslie and I collect magazines, and we call them our resource guide. We just kind of go through things and see what people are doing all over the place, and we kind of go from there.
What would you say your “style” is, as shown by how you put your place together?
Leslie: These are hard questions. My style? The house is sort of a Craftsman-style house. And the style inside . . . we do a lot of antique Asian, the rugs are Turkish. It’s just ethnic; it just feels like who we are. You walk in the house and you’re like, “Of course.” We have a lot of dark woods. And the house has amazing windows, huge windows with lots and lots of light. Personally I think—and I think when others come here—you just get a really good feeling. You feel very comfortable.
What do you value most about this space?
Laurie: I value the feel of it. It’s very cozy. I guess my most favorite part would be outside. We call the outside our “outdoor rooms,” because we do decorate that way. We’ve created spaces, we’ve sectioned it off so they’re kind of like rooms. We’ve got our comfortable outdoor furniture, so we’re just as comfortable outside as we are inside. But ever since I was small, I’ve always liked to garden. I used to garden with my mother. When I think of which part of the house is my favorite, it would be either the outside or the kitchen. The kitchen’s pretty cool, too. It’s kind of a modern, commercial, but homey kind of kitchen.
Leslie: And it opens up into the garden.
What is your favorite feature inside your home? Favorite object?
Leslie: I think I’d have to say the same as Laurie—the kitchen. It’s where we entertain. It’s where the family sort of gets together and we sit and we talk. When friends come over we usually park it in the kitchen. Between the kitchen and the garden in the back . . . that’s where we spend a lot of time, so that’s probably my favorite part of the house.
This sounds really weird, but I bought a bed a long time ago. [Laughs.] It’s an old bed, and it’s a wood bed—it’s got a great headboard, great footboard, hand-carved. It’s French. But I don’t want to say, “My bed!”
Laurie: I have actually two pieces that I really, really like. One is my living room coffee table, and then my dining room table. They’re antique Indonesian pieces, and they’re just huge masses of wood.
What are the benefits to living in this area/neighborhood? Disadvantages?
Laurie: I don’t even think there are any disadvantages. We’re close to everything and I like the neighborhood and I like the people. Of course, it’s changing now. My aunt lives two blocks over, and so I spent a lot of time in this neighborhood, so I know people in this neighborhood from way back when—years. And they know us as well. But even with the neighborhood changing—we still have new people coming in—the people that are coming into the neighborhood are cool people, too.
Where do you buy things for your home?
Leslie: David Smith [David Smith & Co. Antiques], which is off of Fairview. Turner Helton [Turner Helton Antiques & Interior Design], which is an antique shop on Western. We have these antique Turkish rugs that we just sort of, you know, go into the shops on First Avenue and just sort of happen in whichever shop we see and which catches our eye.
Laurie: Kasala.
Leslie: Yeah, Kasala. And our kitchen counters are metal fabricated stainless steel, so we went to Skilfab [Skilfab Sheet Metal Co.] for them. We just kind of happen on these really bizarre places, and a lot of stuff is interesting. As Laurie said, we are always buying Metropolitan Home and checking out stuff and going, “Ooooh.” And a lot of the things that they feature, which is kind of cool, are Northwest homes. And they have shopping guides in the back, so we’ll find these really off-the-beaten-path kind of shops to find great things.
Do you ever worry that you’ll have to move?
Leslie: Oh, no. It’s just too permanent, it’s too much a part of who we are. We’re just fixtures, you know?
