When Dieter and Rebecca Giselbrecht first decided to move to Canada from Switzerland, they didn’t plan on moving to the remote wilderness of Port McNeill, but a leisurely detour after a holiday’s kayak trip presented an opportunity they couldn’t pass up.
The couple had gone to Haida Gwaii for a two-week, 240-kilometre paddle. At the time, they were actually on the cusp of breaking ground on a home in Ucluelet.
After this adventure, the couple took the ferry down the Inside Passage and stopped near Port McNeill, intending to explore. They spotted a “for sale” sign on a piece of property they’d first seen online, while still in Switzerland, and decided to take a closer look.
And what had intrigued them virtually took their breath away in person: two and a half acres of oceanfront paradise, with a Sitka log home planted beneath a sky that feels as pure and broad as heaven itself. The couple snapped it up, with big plans in mind.
Today, a winding gravel road leads to the entrance of the 3,500-square-foot main house, the pathway laid with flat stones and bordered with lavender bushes. Just off to the side is the garage and guest house, where a one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment sits ready to accommodate friends and family.
A thick wilderness of forest borders the property on one side, opposite the spectacular expanse of ocean and sky at the front of the house. The sheer feeling of space, of being at once so close and so dwarfed by the majesty of the wilds, is tempered by the solidity of the log home itself. Stepping inside, though the heavy logs are grounding, the whole interior design is – surprisingly – light and airy.
Huge swaths of windows and skylights bring natural light in from every conceivable angle, while both the main floor and upstairs are almost entirely open, with views to the outside no matter where you stand. And in the centre of the home, stretching its wide trunk from below the floorboards to the raised ceiling, is an imposing Douglas fir wrapped in a spiral staircase.
It almost feels like it’s supporting the entire house, and it’s one of the only original features that wasn’t touched when Dieter and Rebecca undertook a dramatic renovation.
“It was a beautiful Sitka log home, but we saw lots of potential, and that’s what we do. We like to create space that’s good to be in,” says Rebecca, adding with a laugh, “That’s kind of what we do when we’re not working.”
Dieter, who previously worked in IT for global insurance companies, designed the complete renovation with Rebecca, bringing in an abundance of natural light, opening up the entire layout and adding their own touches to virtually every surface of the home.
“When we started thinking about coming to Canada, I found my old passion, which was architecture and architectural design,” Dieter says. “There is nothing we did not touch. Every room we changed, every floor we changed, every ceiling we touched and changed.”
Originally handcrafted at the Sitka Log Homes facility in 2009, the home was eight years old when Dieter and Rebecca contacted Sitka in late 2018 to plan the biggest structural changes, one of which was adding a sunroom.
Encased almost entirely in glass, the sunroom brings in an incredible amount of natural light and creates a unique spot in the house that straddles the sense of being both inside and out. A fireplace – one of four installed throughout the house during the renovation – keeps the space cosy on cold evenings. And with its ideal exposure trapping the heat from the sun, it serves another, more pragmatic purpose as well: heating and drying any ambient moisture in the air, which is a must for any home on the misty West Coast.
Dieter designed the sunroom to reflect the living room and create another set of vistas with the angled front, then collaborated with Sitka owner Brad Johnson and senior project manager Brett Smith to make the extension seamless with the original design. They brought in additional Douglas fir logs matched in the same quality and size as the originals to maintain the congruence of the overall structure. And when it was time to actually start revving the chain saws, it was Brad’s father, John Johnson – the founder of Sitka Log Homes himself – who pulled the chord.
“He cut through the wall for the sunroom himself. It was like his chainsaw was attached to his arm, he was just so smooth,” Rebecca says.
The other major structural changes involved adding a number of skylights, knocking down the walls upstairs and changing the entrance and design of the master suite and bedroom. In fact, the only doors remaining in the main house are to the guest room and en suite bathroom upstairs. The openness of the layout combined with the abundance of natural light truly fosters an expansive sense of space, as well as bringing the outdoors in. No matter where you stand, every direction, every view offers a different – but equally spectacular – vista, whether of the ocean, the gardens or the trees.
“This is also what I liked about the design, that we don’t have a square floor plan,” Dieter says. “It’s not just square towards the ocean; it has a 120-degree angle going out there, so when you have light in the house, it reflects, and you see the light reflected many times.”
The old kitchen was repurposed with spacious cabinets, granite countertops and high-end appliances, but there’s one particularly unusual feature that really catches the eye: there are two islands.
Initially coming up against some professional resistance to the idea, Rebecca held firm to her vision, and designed the two islands herself, resulting in something utterly unique. There’s a figure-eight-like pathway through the space, with a luxurious amount of counter space available no matter where you stand, easy access from one side of the kitchen to the other, two sinks, and a huge amount of storage.
“The kitchen is truly amazing,” Rebecca enthuses. “When I finally got to cook in it, I had so much fun.”
Some of the less structural changes were no less impressive in their overall effects: adding simple globe lighting fixtures with exposed bulbs brightens the space while contributing just a smidge of modern design; the master closet was replaced with a glass shower surround to better show off the logs behind; and in-floor lighting was installed throughout the home for much the same reason.
“The floor lighting is super cool,” Rebecca says. “It shines onto the logs, and each log has its own face and character. As that floor lighting is beamed up, it’s pretty dramatic.”
Outside, the grounds went through almost as dramatic a transformation, with the couple designing and building an Asian garden, a purple garden full of California lilacs, a Pacific Northwest-inspired garden, a brand-new forest with katsura and ginkgo trees, and a sheltered ocean cove right on the beachfront.
From purchase to the completion of the renovation, Dieter and Rebecca spent many blissful days in the midst of their wild retreat. “I did quite a bit of writing while I was there," Rebecca says. What I really loved was being in bed and having the fireplace on, and having the doors open to the ocean, and having the birds greet me.”
“Equally amazing was reading on the daybed in the library and overlooking the ocean and the mountains.”
She pauses, thoughtful, and then smiles. “In German, we call it ‘letting the soul dangle.’”
This story originally published in spring 2021 edition of Boulevard Central Island; the couple since returned to Switzerland to be closer to their children and listed the home for sale with Megan Centrone.
