Up a steep, tree-lined driveway in Metchosin sits a quintessential log cabin on an oceanside cliff overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The home, which has been in the family for generations, was primarily used as a summer holiday home and was ready for a new era in its oceanfront life. The couple hired Martin Scaia of Green Island Builders to take on the renovation of this rustic 1911 log cottage that had not only endured an extensive renovation in the 1950’s but had been weathering the harsh west coast elements for a lifetime.
“I love a good challenge,” says Scaia, who is celebrating twenty years in business at the helm of Green Island Builders. “The key to a complex job like this with a lot of site challenges is to break the project down into manageable tasks while creating a realistic timeline for each job.” Upon inspection, the build team discovered that the original logs were rotten, bug infested and couldn’t be saved. Scaia and his team built a brand new, more efficient residence for the young family that maintained select areas of the existing structure and used regular plank siding instead of log in the name of energy efficiency.
Originally renovated by the family 70 years ago, the rustic home served as a summer holiday cottage for the extended family, creating a strong connection to this particular piece of land for the couple who wanted to reinvent the structure. Surrounded by massive Douglas fir and Arbutus trees, the log house enjoys commanding views of the vast Strait of Juan de Fuca and a sweeping view of the Olympic mountains. “So you can imagine the elements that this home has endured over decades of wind, sea spray and torrential rains,” says Scaia, who adds that the couples’ intention with the reno was to maintain the property’s integrity while creating a sustainable home where they could enjoy the incredible vistas and make new memories with their young family for years to come.
“The original log building came with a lot of its own unique challenges,” says Scaia, who found not one level surface in the entire place, not one plum wall and it was incredibly cold and damp. Tired of being cold, the couples’ hope was to update the energy efficiency while restoring the log home’s original warmth and rustic character. Where most people would have most likely taken a bulldozer to the original structure, it was important to Scaia and his clients to maintain the original log structure and give it a new, more efficient, life with a contemporary layout. The build team basically built a house inside of the log shell to elevate it to today’s energy standards.
“The established location allowed us to take trees from the property, mill them right on site and have them graded by an engineer for lumber to be reused on the interior as structural beams,” states Scaia. They changed the building’s structural point loads, reengineered some of the interior supported walls, and solved a lot of energy-efficiency issues that had arisen over the years.
The high-efficiency elements included new doors, windows, insulation and spray foam in the basement. They even re-chinked all the logs which is one of the most essential aspects of log home maintenance. Chinking plays a crucial role in protecting the structure from the elements which was their top priority given the home’s exposed location. Fed from roof runoff, three large water cisterns were added to the property to serve as a perimeter fire suppression system for the hot, dry summers.
Solar array panels on the metal roof create a high level of energy efficiency and transfers energy back into the grid when they’re not using it. “Milling some of the homeowner’s favourite trees, trees he and his siblings climbed when they were children, and using them in the house was really fulfilling. It just adds that personal connection to their home that they were craving,” says Scaia.
“A lot of the exposed lumber on the exterior was rotten so instead of ripping them out, we planed off the whole front face of the log to create half-logs on the exterior which looks fantastic,” states Scaia. They then added shingles which turned the challenging situation into a beautiful exterior feature. “On the topic of project challenges, attempting to fit new windows into old openings with logs was also quite the task” says Scaia.
With notions of conservation and longevity figured into every decision, Green Island Builders was striving for a Built Green Certification based on the interior finishes selection, the logs themselves, the log milling, cisterns, the solar array and many other sustainable considerations.
From less-than-ideal beginnings, a dream home to last a lifetime is born. “The owners have reconfigured the layout and made it their own in order to write their own story. For me, there are three important elements to consider in a project like this—the structure within its environment, the natural materials and finally, the human occupation of a home,” adds Scaia, who emphasizes that the house’s narrative is now being told in a new way.
