Toronto architect Greg Neudorf and his wife, Trina Macrae, always loved staying at a family vacation home on Stony Lake (in the Kawartha Lakes area of Ontario, Canada) that Trina’s parents purchased when she was a child. With the lake’s local tradition of sailboat regattas and the residence’s spectacular peninsula site with water views in multiple directions, the getaway makes an idyllic alternative to big-city life.

Yet with multiple branches of the family looking to visit (sometimes simultaneously), Greg and Trina eventually began eyeing a derelict boathouse on the property with plans to convert it to a guest cottage.

They still needed to store a motorboat and a small sailboat, so the new building would have to host both equipment and guests. Luckily, perching a 400-square-foot residence above a new boathouse brought the opportunity for even more picturesque views. “It really is kind of our happy place,” Greg says.

As a senior architect and designer at the Toronto office of Montreal architecture firm Saucier + Perrotte, Greg was used to working on larger projects like academic buildings and condo towers. Yet while the scale here was smaller—even smaller than a single-family house—the goal was the same, which he describes as “a kind of coherent simplicity.”

The two-story structure benefits from its application as a boathouse, in that it’s right up against the water. Two rails extend from the garage to allow watercraft to launch straight into the lake. (Trina and Greg’s daughter and two sons, aged between four and eight years, are taking sailing lessons, using the family’s two-person kit sailboat.)

Greg looked to this lakeside setting for design inspiration. Black granite outcroppings along the shoreline, often cracked open to reveal a lighter-toned interior, inspired him to create contrast between the boathouse’s exterior and interior. He gave the cedar-clad exterior several coats of stain, so that it would take on a dark tone while maintaining the visible grain of the wood.

For the boathouse’s interior, the architect drew inspiration from the family’s vintage 1957 Lyman motorboat, which is festooned with mahogany and plywood. Accordingly, the wood-clad floors, walls, ceiling, and cabinetry all read as one enveloping tone.

“We tried to match everything, because we really wanted that kind of monochromatic feel,” Greg explains, “which is why there’s that kind of pickling-white stain on everything.” Douglas fir plywood clads the walls, while the cabinetry makes use of a heavier, stronger birch ply, and the floors are pine.

It’s the cheapest of these surface materials that Greg finds the most interesting. While Douglas fir can take on an unpleasant orange tone if not treated properly, with the help of the whitewashing stain, “It started to take on this kind of pearly effect,” he says.

Despite its modest square footage, the home can comfortably sleep six, thanks to a master bedroom paired with a four-bunk bedroom on the upper level. Thanks to the peninsula site, each room looks out onto the water—even though the windows are located on two sides of the house.

On the other half of the upstairs floor, a living area gives way to a small kitchenette. A full kitchen was not necessary, because family staying in the boathouse (Greg’s visiting parents often use the space) have access to the main home—but the room is still designed to accommodate larger cooking apparatus.

When the weather warms up in the summer, the house can be naturally ventilated. “When that big glass slider and all those windows open up, the air just pours through,” Greg says, “so it stays quite cool.”

While it’s hard to beat the fun of slipping a boat into the water downstairs, the most striking architectural experience may actually come from the skylit stairway, which brings light into the home’s center. “As soon as you hit that stair, you’re presented with brilliant light coming through onto the light wood—it’s just warm and bright and welcoming,” Greg says.

The family spends most weekends at the property, and visits for up to a full month in the summertime. Although the winters are quite snowy, in an age of remote working, it’s more possible than ever to treat the boathouse and its adjacent original house as a workplace.

But more importantly, Greg says he and Tina want their kids to feel this place is their own: That someday they can take the main house, and the parents will graduate to the boathouse themselves.

Related Reading:

A Pint-Sized Houseboat Provides a Peaceful Refuge for a Budapest Couple

Glass Walls Wrap a Prefab Boathouse on a Remote Ontario Lake

Project Credits:

Architect: Gregory Neudorf

Builder: Timberline Custom Homes

Cabinetry Design/Installation: Gregory Neudor