Morrison Lake Cottage
A timber-frame hybrid cottage with a sunken lake room on Morrison Lake
Tearing down an old cottage and replacing it with a new one sounds like a straightforward process. As this cottage on Morrison Lake in Gravenhurst shows, grandfathering one rarely is.
The owners wanted a modern cottage that soaked up the lake views, with space for a growing family and for guests. Staying steps from the waterfront meant satisfying current zoning bylaws and the Ministry of Natural Resources instead of the rules the original cottage was built under.
A grandfather clause covers a property that no longer conforms to current bylaws, ordinances or construction standards. Anything new has to meet today's requirements. Here that meant the ground floor had to follow the outline of the original cottage inside the original setback, and the expansion, part of the ground floor plus the entire second floor, had to step further back from the water. The site sits in an environmentally sensitive area, so the Ministry asked for further setbacks from the wetland features around it.
The lake room
Height restrictions tighten as the building moves toward the water, so the layout drops the main living space into a sunken lake room. It sits so close to the lake that you lose sight of the shore, and it walks straight out to the outdoors. Exposed timbers and floor-to-ceiling windows make it feel like a very comfortable boathouse.
Structure and skin
The frame is a timber hybrid: true timber framing where the light comes in, conventional framing behind it at the washroom and laundry. A floating timber roof sits on Douglas fir posts. The exterior is clad in Abaco, a Forest Stewardship Council certified tropical hardwood known for its hardness and its natural resistance to rot, decay and termites.
The custom mahogany entry door is extra wide and sits under a large overhang, so rain never reaches it and it stays dimensionally stable through the seasons.
Inside
The primary bedroom and ensuite are on the ground floor. Upstairs the ceiling vaults toward the lake over three bedrooms and a Jack-and-Jill bathroom, all with timber ceilings. Aluminum-clad windows with Douglas fir interiors are aimed at the lake, the shoreline, the trees and the sky.
Floors are reclaimed hemlock in random-width planks, a rustic note in an otherwise contemporary cottage. The staircase is the piece people stop at: open timber treads carried on a steel stringer, cantilevered. The kitchen runs custom bamboo cabinets with PaperStone counters, made from recycled paper, non-petroleum resins and natural pigments, which age into a patina the way fine hardwood does.
The cottage is full of nooks. A breakfast nook with built-in banquette seating holds the family's board games, and a second-floor reading nook with windows on three sides puts you in a treehouse with a view of the sunset.
Outside and underneath
Three outdoor spaces catch different amounts of sun and shade. The main floor has a covered porch. The second floor walks out onto the flat roof over the lake room, where a barely-there glass rail leaves you suspended twenty feet above the water. A summer kitchen porch sits under the extension of a second-floor bedroom.
The cottage is on a bedrock knoll with southern exposure, and that bedrock made a conventional septic difficult. A Waterloo Biofilter solved it, compact and low maintenance and built for exactly these sites. The crawlspace under the first floor is tall enough to hang canoes and to carry a ceiling-mounted furnace.
Spec.
- 01Douglas fir timber frame, floating timber roof
- 02FSC-certified Abaco hardwood cladding
- 03Reclaimed hemlock flooring
- 04Bamboo cabinetry with PaperStone counters
- 05Aluminum-clad windows, Douglas fir interiors
- 06Custom extra-wide mahogany door
- 07Waterloo Biofilter septic system
On site, on the lake.
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