Hamilton cottage as featured in Canadian Homes and Cottages Magazine
On the Rocks - By Susan Doran
The first thing John and Terry Hamilton did when the construction of their 5,300-square-foot, split-level cottage was completed was to throw a party. Not for their friends (that came later), but for the contractors and every tradesperson who worked on the place.
No wonder builder Gord Smellie says, “The Hamiltons are the perfect clients.”
John Hamilton owns Financial Horizons, a financial planning company in Kitchener, Ontario. Terry is a teacher/dietician. They have two teenage sons, Chris and Justin.
The couple – who, Smellie says, are very understanding clients – say they encountered no major problems during the building process, except the standard one: coming in way over budget.
Smellie’s Penetanguishene, Ontario-based design/build company, Stone Tree Inc., which he co-owns with partner Geoff Myers, took about a year to complete the cottage, located on four-and-a-half boulder-strewn acres on Southern Georgian Bay near the village of LaFontaine.
The Hamiltons purchased the land – a double lot that’s 600-feet-deep, with 460-feet of rocky waterfront – 13 years ago from Bill Ballard, son of the late Toronto Maple Leafs owner Harold Ballard. Bill Ballard has a cottage down the road, and at one time he owned the entire surrounding peninsula before opting to subdivide it. Smellie built Ballard’s impressive cottage, along with many others in the area.
What the Hamiltons were looking for, first and foremost, was to make the most of the view. “We wanted to be able to see the water as soon as we walked in the door,” Terry says.
On the open concept main level, there are soaring vaulted ceilings and plenty of windows and glass doors. “We wanted the great room, living room, dining room and kitchen together, so when we are entertaining, we can cook and chat with people at the same time,” says Terry.
In order to keep the view as unobstructed as possible, the Hamiltons chose the unorthodox concept of having a glass railing/barrier on the main portion of the big cedar deck running the length of the cottage.
“It’s the same type of glass they use in hockey arenas –very durable,” says John. “For safety reasons, we had to have it approved by an engineer. Everybody thought it was idiotic to have glass there. They thought someone would crash into it and fall through. But it’s perfect.”
Although the exterior and corresponding interior walls appear to be solid logs, they’re actually log veneer siding – one-inch-thick pine boards with chinking between them for authenticity.
Wood and wrought iron are dominant themes, inside the cottage and out, with every latch and hinge made of wrought iron. Many are dramatically over-sized for decorative effect, most notably the brackets on the formidable big round-topped entrance doors.
There are chandeliers of hand-forged wrought-iron that are replicas of fixtures from the singing Von Trapp family’s lodge in Stowe, Vermont. A staircase with wrought-iron railings, in the cottage’s breezeway/locker, leads to the garage above, where there is a loft complete with a large-screen TV. A spiral wrought-iron staircase descends from the bar area on the main level to the lower level with its games room, bedrooms, bathroom, wine cellar and walkout to the lake.
Along with the cedar decking, cedar shake roofing and pine exterior, wood is used in a variety of other appealing ways. There is tamarack pine flooring in the great room, spalded maple flooring in the en suite master bathroom, a mahogany bar upstairs (made from planks salvaged from a local institution for the criminally insane), and a walnut bar downstairs.
Various types of local stone have also been used, generally as flooring and fireplace materials. The floor-to-ceiling cobblestone fireplace in the living room is two-sided and backs onto the master bedroom.
“We joked about that,” says Smellie, “but it enables you to build one fire and access it from two rooms. There are smoked doors, so you can’t really see through it.”
Like the bulk of the cottage’s main level, the master bedroom has 16-foot vaulted ceilings. Dominating the room is an enormous hand-made Paul Bunyan bed. “It’s awesome,” says Terry. “We wanted something chunky to fit with the cottage décor, not something delicate.”
The cottage is low maintenance, with white melamine kitchen cabinets (some glass fronted) and easy-to-clean surfaces. The counter top is San Francisco granite in a hunter green colour with spectacular patterns running through. A harvest table and other farm-style antiques are scattered throughout, as are African artifacts purchased when the couple was on safari.
“Everything came together well and turned out way beyond our expectations,” says Terry. “We can’t believe it’s ours. It’s like a dream place. We never want to leave once we get here.”
-May/June 2004
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