Heritage Projects

The Story

This 1912 sawmill was practically falling apart when we first walked through – roof caved in, timber beams rotting, the works. But man, those old-growth Douglas fir beams? Absolute units. We salvaged about 70% of the original timber structure, which honestly felt like winning the lottery.

The trickiest part was matching the original mortise-and-tenon joinery. Modern carpenters don't usually work with these techniques anymore, so we brought in a master craftsman from the Interior who'd apprenticed under old-school millwrights. Watching him work was like seeing a lost language come alive again.

We kept the industrial character – exposed beams, original brick, even preserved some of the machinery as art installations. Now it's a mixed-use space with artist studios and a community workshop. The building's got another century in it, easy.

The Story

A 1898 Methodist church that'd been sitting empty for almost 15 years. The community wanted it saved, but couldn't afford to keep it running as a church. So we reimagined it as a cultural center while keeping everything that made it special.

Those stained glass windows were the real headache – three of them were cracked, two were missing entirely. Tracked down a heritage glass artisan in Victoria who analyzed the original glass composition and recreated the missing pieces using period techniques. You literally can't tell which ones are new unless you know what to look for.

We inserted a modern mezzanine level for offices, but kept it visually separate from the original architecture – steel and glass, clearly contemporary. The idea was that future generations should be able to read the building's history, y'know? See what's old, what's new, understand the layers.

The Story So Far

This one's our current passion project – a whole block of 1880s commercial buildings in Gastown that were about to be demolished. We're talking original cast-iron storefronts, pressed tin ceilings, the whole Victorian commercial package. Couldn't let that go, obviously.

The buildings had been chopped up over the years – dropped ceilings hiding original details, partition walls everywhere, layers of linoleum over heritage tile. It's like architectural archaeology, peeling back all these layers to find what's underneath.

Found something wild during demolition – original hand-painted advertising murals on the brick party walls between buildings. We're documenting everything, getting heritage paint analysis done, the whole nine yards. These'll be feature walls in the final design.

The plan's to create a mixed-use development that actually respects what's already there. Ground floor retail (keeping those storefronts intact), office space on the second floors, and yeah, we're adding residential units on top – but set back so they don't mess with the streetscape. Modern living in a heritage shell, done right.