Inside a Cozy Salish Sea Family Retreat with Epic Views

While the architect, designer, builder and family behind this Sunshine Coast home comprise a formidable collective of creative minds, the land was, and is, boss. Indeed, a high bank of cherished arbutus trees and the orientation of the mid-summer sun largely dictated the placement of the house on this eight-acre property overlooking Texada and Thormanby Islands on the Salish Sea.

Viewed from the water, the L-shaped home’s flat-roofed, low-slung profile and concrete foundation scribed to the existing rock help it melt into the landscape. While the rocky topography was certainly a challenge to design around, notes architect Behsheed Darvish of O/C Architecture, the homeowners had plenty of insight into what they loved about the land. They had paved the road, carved pathways and, for the better part of a decade, were living off and on in a guest house built on the property by Western Craft Contracting. “The family chose the sweet spot on their property long ago and knew their favourite viewpoints before we started on the new house,” says Darvish.

The couple was also clear that they wanted their weekend home to fulfill a few conflicting desires: they were seeking an easily accessible, quiet getaway for just the two of them; a fun, durable destination for their visiting kids, grandchild and myriad friends and dogs; and a space that would work as an occasional hub for corporate retreats.

The resulting two-wing structure follows the natural obtuse angle of a bank on the west side of the property. The three guest rooms on the shorter, north side of the home sit a half-storey below the larger wing, which holds the primary bedroom, great room, kitchen and a hidden pantry. The latter serves as a narrow second kitchen to conceal food prep and dishes when the great room is being used as a de facto board room; the homeowner wanted to be able to “clear, clean and close the door” on food service.

Seeking a designer who would bring their vision of a casual, pretty, versatile ocean­side space to life, the homeowners found Stephanie Brown Inc. on Instagram and fell in love with her signature warm, neutral palettes and eye for playful details. They brought Brown on as soon as the architectural plans were complete.

Brown says that she, Darvish, the Western Craft team and the homeowners were all “beyond copacetic” in collaborating and nimbly shifting gears as challenges inevitably arose. One dramatic, 11th-hour example of this was the homeowners’ request for air conditioning. With no way to wire the ceiling, the builder accommodated a beam through the kitchen to hold the electrical. If you didn’t know what the beam held (and now you do), the black through-line would simply pass as an interesting, planned architectural feature.

The main entrance is the home’s dramatic axis point—a kind of breezeway between the wings with an ocean view ahead. With its charcoal-stained wood panelling and relatively low ceiling, the foyer is an intimate and, as Darvish puts it, “compressed” space that sets visitors up for a stunning experience in contrast: turn right as you come out of the cozy entryway and the house explodes into the brilliant, voluminous great room. “I wanted the entrance to feel different from the rest of the house, which is airy and light,” says Brown, who aimed to marry  West Coast Modern style with the homeowners’ request for a soft, Scandinavian vibe.

With light ash millwork setting a gentle backdrop throughout the house, Brown strove to temper the orange tones of the exposed fir groove-and-tongue ceiling. “You don’t have infinite control over wood,” she says, “so we used trial and error with different stains to reduce the brashness of the fir without turning it pink.” The resulting tone is just a smidgen warmer than the kitchen cabinetry and provides a mellow contrast to the stone grey of the large-format porcelain tile flooring.

The roof adjacent to the kitchen lifts a few feet higher as it opens to the comfy great room and dining room, where the windows, sliding glass doors and soft lighting blur the indoor/outdoor line.

The fixtures over the dining room table are a little victory for Brown. While the tongue-and-groove ceilings are a beautiful example of signature O/C style and an extraordinary feat of carpentry, they eliminated the possibility of pot lights. Brown welcomed the challenge to illuminate the dining room with a quintet of aluminum, matte-vanilla A-N-D pendants from Inform that she’d long admired but had never found the opportunity to use. “They respect the architecture and reflect the playful spirit of the house,” Brown says. 

The homeowners’ favourite places to relax are not inside the house but out—on the back patio where they occasionally see whales pass by, or down a few steps to the firepit where they watch the sun go down. Little wonder that, even with the house’s floor-to-ceiling vistas, the homeowner asked to bring a few pops of colour inside. “I admit I tend toward an entirely neutral palette,” laughs Brown, “but we found really nice ways to bring nature in.” By the time the family was ready to move in, however, they’d lost track of how some of those details would play out.

“They walked in and had a moment of rediscovery when they saw how everything came together,” she says. “There were happy goosebumps for sure.” The blue of the kitchen counter stools and bedroom headboard are pieces of the sky; the rust-coloured bedroom chaise, toss pillows and natural rust of Corten steel planters placed near the house celebrate the deep bronze richness of the area’s cherished arbutus. It’s the land, after all, that has the last word—land that, as Darvish says, “tells us what to do.”