A Cabin in a Cabin

Everyone told them that their century-old cabin in Lake Wenatchee should be torn down—their architect had a different idea

written by Melissa Dalton | photography by Will Austin

In 1914, an article appeared in The Leavenworth Echo, an area newspaper. It compared the “beautiful” Lake Wenatchee, a glacier- and snowmelt-fed lake that’s 5 miles long and surrounded by forest and mountains just 23 miles from Leavenworth, to the “grandeur of a Switzerland.” The writer continued: “The Lake Wenatchee district will be the mecca for the sportsman in the future.” They weren’t wrong. And thanks to the establishment of new scenic roads and railways in the early twentieth century, those nature lovers built quite a few rustic log homes along the lake’s shores, including this one built in 1915.

The original cabin, built in 1915, before construction.

It was constructed as simple as they come: a single room, about 12×20 feet, anchored by a chunky stone fireplace at one end and a door and window at the other, facing the water so the attached porch had the best views. In the ensuing decades, the owners added rooms, including a kitchen and bathroom with the advent of plumbing and running water. The front porch was enclosed into a bedroom, albeit with a window into the living room. With its ad hoc layout, and exterior covered in cedar shake, after a hundred years it was barely recognizable as a log cabin anymore.

The design preserves some of the best elements while also solving for the problem of light in many historic cabins.

By 2021, the century had taken its toll, and the most recent owners, who had purchased the property in 2000, were worried. The home was originally a summer cabin and had never been built for use all year round, with uninsulated pipes and no foundation. There was a rodent infestation. The sagging roof was propped up with strategically placed poles. “Then things just started to fail, like the toilet, then a washing machine, just one thing after another,” said the owner. They wondered if they would be able to save it, or if they would have to sell. “I couldn’t stand the idea of tearing it down,” they said. But friends, neighbors and even an architect they brought out for a look all said the same thing: that the home was long past gone.

The warmth of the furniture is an unexpected gift in an unconventional cabin.

That is, until they asked architect Todd Smith, of the Leavenworth-based firm Syndicate Smith, to weigh in. Smith walked inside the remaining portion of the log cabin, with its thick log walls and exposed mortar still visible, soot covering the fireplace stone, and a thick log for a mantle, and felt the pull of the original. “You go into that room, and you are transported back a hundred years,” said Smith. “This is the heart of the home.” His idea was not to tear down the structure, or add on to it. Instead, he suggested stripping away all of the “garbage” and “bad additions,” and then “building a whole new house over the top of it,” said Smith, which would make the preserved cabin at the center “much like a museum diorama.”

Pendant lights connect old to new through log rafters.

The owners were intrigued, and cautiously optimistic. “They were imaginative enough to say, ‘Yeah, this is wacky, but I think we can do it,’” said Smith. They teamed up with local contractor Timberwood Construction, which proceeded to strip away the cobbled additions to reveal the original structure, from its interlocking corners, to the roof ridge beams. They poured a new foundation and then cleaned up the exposed logs, sanding down rough spots, and stripping paint off the chimney rock.

A dream kitchen in a historic cabin? The impossible made actual in this reimagination.

Smith and his colleagues then oriented the rest of the house around the cabin, lucking out when the property’s setback requirements made it possible to keep it at the center of the plan to function as the cozy living room. They placed an open kitchen and dining area to one side of it, complete with mudroom spots to handle wet and snowy gear, and a two-story bedroom wing on the other, with an en suite bedroom for the owners on the main floor, and upstairs, a bedroom for each of their two grown children when they come to visit. The entire footprint was kept to a modest 1,764 square feet.

Light floods into the well-organized mudroom.

In contrast to the cabin’s rough texture, the new finishes were kept sleek and streamlined, with white walls and fir casework built by Timberwood Construction. “It’s just simple materials,” said Smith. “Nothing fussy.” A bank of floor-to-ceiling windows on the lake side brings in light and views. “One thing that we told our team is we wanted it light,” said the owner. “The old cabin was actually pretty dark.” The decking from the cabin roof was removed to drop pendant lights through, and facilitate sun inside the room. That wood was then repurposed for the front door and select built-ins, like a television cabinet in the living room that looks like shutters in an old cabin window.

Large windows provide connection to the outdoors as well as a jewel case for the cabin within.

The owners have set up two rocking chairs where the front porch once was, and enjoy the same view of the lake. It’s still the best spot to drink morning coffee and consider the day ahead. Whether that entails dropping floaties and canoes in the water in the summer, or skate skiing in the winter, the area is just as much an outdoor mecca as was promised a hundred years ago. “The original cabin was someone’s piece of solace up at the lake,” said Smith. “To honor that was a big deal.”