Johnston “There’s no insulation on the inside, just logs, but it’s incredibly warm and cozy.” “It’s a house that just feels incredibly solid is how I would describe it,” said Mr. The couple is hoping to downsize to Kingston but are going to really miss the feeling of a log home. A large landing at the top of the stairs branches off to a shared bathroom, two smaller bedrooms and the primary bedroom with a four-piece ensuite bathroom that was recently updated. There are three more bedrooms on the top floor, and plenty of skylights to bring light into another lodge-like level filled with wood. That was one of the big projects the couple undertook – finishing the full basement to add two bedrooms (currently a convertible office and an artist studio), a large living room and TV room with a bar and a wall of storage lining the hallway. The stairs to the full-height basement (another rarity in a country home) are back here as well. There are posts and beams and white-oak flooring in the dining and living rooms salvaged from an old barn, and the old growth Ganaraska red-pine flooring on the second floor came from an old factory.įrom left to right, the rooms on the main floor almost seem to travel in time to the present: The living room/den has a massive fieldstone hearth and barnboard walls the dining room is filled with tiger-stripe oak antiques and glass-globed brass lighting fixtures and the kitchen evokes modern farmhouse with a huge granite-topped island over a playful turquoise lower cabinet, grey upper and pantry millwork and stainless steel appliances under a white-washed oak ceiling.Īlong the back of the house is a hallway that connects the dining room, powder room and kitchen and has three exterior doors to the stone patio and side driveway and backyard. Local property developer Dave Robertson bought the unfinished house in 2002 and filled the interior with antique beams and boards, adding decades or centuries of character in a stroke. Goodwin never completed his opus to woodworking. Much of the structure was built with very few helping hands. Every one of the windows were hand-built by him and the locally-milled white pine logs are joined without any nails. In reality, it’s neither.īeginning around 1991, a local man named Don Goodwin started building 971 Naphan Rd., spending close to a decade hand-making the log cabin as a kind of grand hobby. Stepping in the front door, your eyes are drawn to weathered and gnarled beams and posts that suggest this could easily be some pioneer’s frontier croft or a carefully preserved hunting lodge from the turn of the last century. The perennial garden full of Ontario-native species was more trial and error and continues to evolve today (they even have Ontario’s only indigenous cactus plant, the prickly pear that looks like it deflates and dies in the winter but actually comes back to life in the summer). The wall took a couple of summers to build. And after I’d collect 10 or 12, sometimes I couldn’t pick them up back at home.” “It’s odd: I’m not a huge person and I’m not young, but I’d pick up rocks, throw them in the back of the truck. We were welcomed by everybody in the neighbourhood,” said Mr. “To be honest with you, we were a little worried – we’re two guys of a certain age – whether we’d be accepted or welcome? I have to say we’ve never had any negative incidents here. Over the first eight years it went from the weekend spot to the long weekend house, then the half-the-week house until they decided to give up their place in Toronto and move full-time to the rustic community in 2013, after building strong local ties. “If there’s four cars that go by in an hour, it’s rush hour,” Mr. What they found is a handmade log cabin on a very quiet road north of Belleville and south of Tweed that’s still only 15 minutes away from Prince Edward County and less than that to the 401. “We were some of first expats to move out to this area.” Johnston, who worked in provincial governments and in charitable fundraising throughout a long career. So we broadened the search, that’s how we found this place,” said Mr. “We weren’t going to be able to find something in the County we really liked.
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