Over the past 20 years, we’ve been lucky to have some incredible projects — like this cottage addition.

Year: 2017

We’re incredibly lucky as home builders and designers to be the hands that help to lay our clients’ visions. In the last blog of the series, we are ending it with one of our all-time incredibly challenging pieces of work, the unique addition to the island cottage we call “Mission Impossible”. Nestled high up in the steep terrain of cottage country, our assignment was to add a new living space underneath the existing cottage. Our clients, a young professional family from the city, were referred to us by their architect David Gillett Design. We rose to the challenge, helping to create a stunning addition that has now been profiled in Style at Home and has become a mainstay of GIlbert and Burke’s designs.

Image via Style at Home

With this project, our biggest goal was to create more space in a unique way to help family and guests take in every aspect of Muskoka summer cottage life. We worked around lots of challenges — including extraordinarily steep terrain — to blast the rock from underneath the existing home, remove the debris, create a new deck and completely build a new lower level. The project didn’t have the word “simple” anywhere in its description; instead, we thought creatively and persevered to overcome the challenging landscaping issues, tie in the new foundation and waterproof the addition.

Images via Style at Home

When all was said and done, our Mission Impossible was next level (literally). With a new deck created on the lower level, custom cabinetry and a new family orientated living area that matched the existing pine, the home was finally complete. The new addition also supports absolutely stunning and soaring upper and lower decks that allowed for optimal viewing of the scenery and water outside, making the already beautiful home a complete and total masterpiece. Even though the project involved quite a bit of maneuvering and blasting, this addition remains one of our projects that we are most proud of.

Image via Style at Home