Renovate or Rebuild: What to Do When the Old Cottage Can’t Keep Up

Should you renovate or rebuild your lakeside cottage? 

On this episode, Principal Architect James Pitropov and co-host John Tyreman explore how to decide what’s worth saving—from family memories to grandfathered footprints—in your lakeside cottage. Featuring a stunning Georgian Bay project in Killarney, this episode shows how thoughtful design can turn limitations into possibilities.

CHAPTERS:
00:00 Introduction
01:38 Renovating vs Rebuilding
07:30 Additional Challenges
10:45 Regulatory Complications
14:57 Projecting Cost
20:15 Site Story Segment
20:53 Georgian Bay Renovation with Environmental Restrictions
28:01 Considerations for Building on Sites With Constraints
30:12 Design Your Dream Home Guide

Learn more: https://lakesidearchitecture.ca/
Connect with James: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-pitropov-783029156/

Learn more at https://lakesidearchitecture.ca/

Transcript

James 0:00

But the interesting thing here was the existing cottage was almost wedged in this ideal location, among the, the stones, but there wasn't a lot of room to move in any direction except this particular diagonal way back. So really a new footprint was kind of out of the question. And although there would be costs incurred, uh, we decided to work with a site. Uh, the, the, the way it was,

0:28

You are listening to Build the Unbuildable, a podcast about designing dream cottages on some of the most challenging sites in Ontario's cottage country.

John 0:37

Hello everyone and welcome to Build the Unbuildable, a podcast about building high-end homes and impossible places. My name is John Tyreman, and as always, I'm joined by James Pitropov. James, how you doing?

James 0:50

Pretty good. John, how are you today?

John 0:51

I'm doing well, and I'm eager to learn more about building Lakeside cottages.

James 0:57

This is gonna be great.

John 0:58

So today we are tackling the question. To renovate or not to renovate. what is the kind of the thought process that goes into renovating a a, an existing cottage on a lakeside or tearing it down and building completely a new, that's kind of what we're going, going to dig into to. so we'll, we'll talk about, you know, what, what to consider before you do demo, why some older structures are more valuable than they may seem. Then we have a story from a past project that offers a really good example of kind of balancing renovation and building a new structure. So when clients come to you and they have a question in their mind, should I renovate? Or should I tear down my existing cottage? What are some of the the big considerations that folks might think of?

James 1:52

Well, John is the, uh, the million dollar question and it's on a lot of, uh, homeowners, cottage owners, clients' minds. the big question is, is what we have, is it valuable enough to develop further? Should we upgrade? In a lot of cases, people need more space. Sometimes life conditions change. They have parents coming back to live with them. They may have a new group of friends. They're entertaining more or less. Kids are moving out, they're going off to college or university or they're coming back. So the way clients use their, their place, can work in different ways. And, um, as you know, John, I'm a a, I'm a registered architect. my firm is Lakeside Architecture and we are focused on meaningful, beautiful custom architecture on lakes, and we are very client focused. So really we are here to develop architecture that clients feel attached to. So the, the, the first question is, do we build or, or do we build new existing buildings? A lot of cases, clients will be very attached to them. In many cases, they've been. Family cottage for generations. sometimes family members have physically built a place or, or they've been on a point for a very long time. Family history, a lot of great memories. And, uh, there just comes a time when it's just not enough space. what I found is we need to balance a sentimental attachment to what we have, which is great. I'm all for that, and I, I, I strongly promote those values. At the same time, we need to balance it against the, limitations of, of an existing cottage. So one of the first things we'll do is I'll go to a site, uh, with clients and, uh, just determine how structurally sound is a cottage. in some cases you might be surprised, uh, a grand old cottage, several thousand square feet, and they are just literally on blocks. You're

John 3:58

Oh my goodness.

James 4:00

hanging together, John, by paint and, and, uh, drywall nails and all that. Like, they're just, might be a bit of an exaggeration, but, there's a lot of work to be done. I like to poke around a little bit, get underneath, open the walls, see how far part the joists are, how close we are to the ground. Is there a functioning septic system, the heating systems and so on. The problem, John, that comes up with a lot of places is that they were. Built a summer, summer cottages, and they would quite literally, you would shut down in, in the fall and, uh, drain your, your plumbing so your pipes won't burst in the winter by freezing. there wasn't a lot of insulation. They're not very rugged and there is a lot of work to bring a cottage. Um. Built to those standards, up to today's standards where a lot of clients, they're selling their homes in the cities, they're retiring up in cottage country. And now, with wireless access and people, lot of professionals are working from, from home. They're working remotely. they need a place that is comfortable in all seasons, isn't humid, doesn't have grass, isn't overrun by, by rodents. So the standards are higher.

John 5:10

This is, this is really interesting. James. Let me ask you a quick question. Um, I'm, I'm really curious of the folks that come to you with this challenge or with this kinda, do I renovate or do I build something new? How many of them has the cottage been in their family versus how many of them are buying an existing cottage and then talking to you?

James 5:32

I would say the breakdown is probably 80% of. Cottages have a family history of cottage, if not more. there aren't a lot of new break, uh, break in, uh, cottage. There are some though, and typically they'll go with smaller, very modern places that are quite interesting, almost like studios on, on some of the lakes. really fun projects. the cottages that have been, uh, on the lakes and have a family history of, being cottagers. Have a lot of memories invested, in their properties. And in some cases they've gone on and they've built in the city. And at some point they come back and, and they, they want to build something typically, for, their entire family, meaning their adult kids, grandkids, friends, a lot of times they like to, to to have visitors and so on. So. There is a lot of, sentimental attachment. The question is, how far is it feasible to renovate, to achieve what you want to achieve for your family, aesthetically for your family, in terms of, of what makes sense for your, for your particular budget, before you're putting in too much money, fixing, repairing, renewing, and you're not getting enough benefit. out of, out of the build. That is a big question that comes up with, with a, with a lot of, clients that, that we get inquiries from.

John 6:56

That, that's really interesting. So it sounds like there's a few different challenges layered together. you mentioned like distributed workforces and people being able to work remotely and that's kind of opened up new locations for teleworkers folks working remotely from the lake in the wintertime perhaps. And so, so I guess you've got that, but then you also have this, during peak lake season, having multiple family members coming in and needing the space to be big enough for extended family. And every, in between. Am I, am I reading that right?

James 7:30

Yeah, that that's correct, John. and a, uh, an additional challenge is this, as we all move on, in a lot of cases. clients, they're inheriting properties from their families and the regulations are changing on the, on the lakes. And, some examples of, of regulations that are changing are, it's getting harder and harder to build a boathouse on the lake. So if you have an existing boathouse, uh, you must never tear it down hoping that you'll get approval to rebuild, because in a lot of cases you may not be able to. So. we try to grandfather in new construction over existing footprints. It minimizes the perceived impact on the lake that municipalities are against, that lake associations don't like. They want to minimize new development. However, if we can build over, existing footprints, you can, retain those 20, 30 year, year, foot setbacks. From the water that a generation ago were, or two generations ago were, were common. Now you've gotta be back at least a hundred feet. Septics needs to be back. there's more regulation. ministry of natural resources approvals are becoming necessary in some areas on the trans system. among the other other, uh, waterways, parks Canada might be involved. And these regulations are changing, John. So sometimes there's a race. To, to get approvals and appropriate approvals before the, the, the window, on regulations and bylaws, changes.

John 8:59

I think that's a bombshell. I think that is a major reason why folks would want to consider renovating as opposed to tearing down and building anew because of, being grandfathered into some of those changing regulations.

James 9:12

John, you wouldn't believe when they came down hard on, rebuilding boat houses on on the lakes. after municipality, went under, under the pressure of Lake Associations lobbying the municipalities. To, slow down any sort of development, on the lakes. I've always looked at boat houses and traditional construction as really appropriate on the lakes. And even modern construction can be appropriate depending on the scale and how things are laid out on the site. But there was a real push to finish boat houses, get them done. and that was a few years ago. Very hard to get boathouse approvals now, uh, although we still get them and now, with new changing regulations. people are wanting to check with the municipalities, what can they build? how much bigger can they build? Because 1200 square feet is a little tight. If you have three generations that want to use the property, they sometimes it's a whole different social setting. It's not only generations. There's new types of families now, there's blended families, there's various sorts of partners and arrangements and various size groupings of people. Even on one project. So that's a new consideration. And then again, the question is, which way do we go? We're taking the big step. We're we're doing the deep dive and we, we know we've gotta do something. Sometimes it's individual couples, partners and so on. Sometimes it's siblings that need to work out arrangements that will are, uh, feasible for them. So do we build over the existing, do we renovate or do we build new.

John 10:45

Can you give us some examples of either. In the past, clients who have been kind of caught off guard by certain regulations, or are there regulations that are, pending right now that you see into the future as potentially changing the impact of either design or construction?

James 11:04

Well, I'll, I'll give you a couple of tough ones. one was on, uh, links Lake North of Huntsville. beautiful Little Lake with some interesting, uh, geography around it. uh, cottage to be built out on a point, but it was, was a project there. And I'm gonna compare that with a second project on a point, which was on Skeleton Lake down near Bracebridge. now, previously, to build on a point, you had to have a setback, and it came from one direction. Now, the way that the regulations have changed is that. the setback comes from each side of the point, and you're left with hardly any land, if any, at all, to build on, at the end of a long planning process of the two projects, one on, uh, links Lake, uh, which I believe is on the website, uh, was approved and one on Skeleton Lake, they just couldn't, get the approval. they could get it, but it would've resulted in such a long contorted plan. They just didn't go that direction. But what I did on the links Lake is instead of having one big footprint, we really wanted to retain that 20 foot original setback from all sides of the property. So what we did is we, we designed the cottage in pavilions separated by breeze ways, staggered to follow the, top of the rock outcrop. And it received, its, its approvals. Well, that's one example there. Another example is on lakes such as, uh, Lake Joseph. surprisingly there are some boathouses and docks that extend quite a way into the water. And, they'll go out like a hundred feet, like at the north end of the lake. Very rare on the lakes is, is still being approved. but it's, it is to rebuild. It is being grandfathered on the grounds that there was always these extra long, Docks out there, I wouldn't rely on those, regulations remaining, uh, in effect for a very long time. So for someone that is close to the water and is thinking about renovating or rebuilding, really in some ways, the time is now Gotta start thinking about what you want to build and really knowing the regulations so that you can work with them not being blindsided later and being told, well, the new setback It's 120 feet side yard setbacks, new setbacks for septic, tanks for wells and so on. pretty much you're, crowded off your property and your property value has just dropped'cause you can't build on it anymore. So it is a huge risk.

John 13:23

And that's, I guess that's why it pays to work with someone who specializes in lakefront properties. you've got a, a pretty firm grasp on those changing regulations, James.

James 13:33

well, what I found is it's helpful to know, it's helpful to know what's been done on particular leaks and what the rationale was and, my rationale has always been to work with a site and produce good design. one tier of regulation that is above the individual municipality bylaws is the, Ontario Planning Act. The, the basic, uh, requirements are in most cases is that you produce, Forms, buildings and so on that are in scale with a property and do not diminish the lake views. That, that, that it is, those regulations are there to maintain views. Municipalities, in a lot of cases, think that means, well, that all buildings must be pushed back 150 feet away from the lake. You don't see them and they the impact. However, on some projects, such as a project that I did on, on, pencil Lake, pushing the building back from, its. Pre current 20 foot setback would put it back a hundred feet, but it's going up a hill above the shoreline trees. It's really a worse scenario, and I'm sure the people on the lake wouldn't have wanted to have this big structure halfway down the steep hillside overlooking the lake. So we get those types of, of, tough approvals. Um, so the approvals are possible and it is a big question on, on how close you want to be or how far you wanna be away from the water as well. John, the, the, the next big issue that comes up is cost. And I'm sure this is on your, on your mind as well. I know in our, from our past conversations, this was interesting to you as well. the question is, do we get more bang for our buck renovating or should we building you is the big question.

John 15:10

I suppose that's you, you know, the answer to that question is probably, it depends, right? Because it probably depends on the structural integrity of the existing cottage. You know? How is it, like you, you mentioned you like to go in and look underneath and look at the, the studs and the baseboards and the foundation of the, of the cottage and try to get a real sense of that, because I only imagine, I mean, you tell me the cost probably varies very widely.

James 15:36

Well, John, here's, my sort of experience with things and I've come up to some conclusions about Ren. Renovating cost in cottage country can vary quite widely. the, the range, for. really high quality construction using authentic materials. Douglas Fir, quarry, stone, hemlock, all the beautiful materials. for my projects, it's ranged from about 400 bucks a square foot. It can go up to six or 700 bucks, fairly quickly. So we, we try to be resourceful with the decisions that we make. And, I find that there's a cutoff line. So when you go in and you renovate an existing structure. If it's on blocks, we've gotta lift the cottage. We gotta put a new foundation underneath it. Typically, you have to insulate everything. If you're adding rooms above, you're tearing down walls. When you tear that wall down, John, you know there's going to be a bare spot in the floor and a gap that needs to be, you just fill it in with new hardwood. You can't really do that. Does the addition have its own flooring or do you tear up all of the existing, then you gotta tear up your trims if you're adding windows, you're gonna change the cladding. How far do you go with it? A lot of times the little project scope, it expands. There's this creep in the scope, and little projects get big pretty quickly. So here's my, uh, my experience is that if you're working on a project really of any size, if you're getting into$250,000,$350,000, half a million plus on the Reno, unless you have a really good reason to do it. You may be sinking a lot of money into the ground before you get anywhere near new exciting space. And by new and exciting, I mean, even practically speaking, are you adding bedrooms? Do you need to add, do you wanna add two bedrooms? Do you wanna add three bedrooms? How many bathrooms do you need Now, do you have adult children that are visiting? do you have parents that are, Have mobility issues, it's hard to get up the stairs to build them a ramp. these all add the costs. So in a lot of cases, what I found is I'll start and we can explore different ideas. I mean, I work in 3D modeling, We get on with clients, we're on Zoom, we're working together so we can try different ideas. And also under my separate company, uh, Lakeside Construction Management. Unrelated to Lakeside architecture, it's focused on cost and construction management. What we'll do is we'll take these, the, these designs from the architecture side and we will model the costs. And nine times out of 10, when we look at it, it makes sense to rebuild. And by rebuilding, you're getting the additional spaces that you need. And then we can focus new construction oriented, better on the site, better views of the lake. perhaps it's warning sunshine for the bedrooms, if you like, the morning sun walkouts. Sometimes people have noisy neighbors. In cottage country, a lot of times we'll orient new garage. You can have rooms above. You can have a studio, you can have a workshop. You can store your snowmobiles in there, but you can create privacy by the layout of your building. When we build new, it's not just a building. I tend to build. Almost like in pavilions with breezeways in between them, we spread out on the land a little bit. We can capture a little bit of the land and you get a lot of bang for your buck. It's gonna cost more, but you get so much more space.

John 19:02

Okay, awesome. Well, um, so our big question today that we wanted to, wanted to tackle was, you know, do I renovate or do I tear down my existing cottage and build a new, and so some of those key, areas to, to consider is that kind of emotional value. That versus the functional value, you know, the nostalgia that comes with, you know, the me all the memories of going to the, to the lake as a kid and trying to recreate that and keep that family lineage going. Um, it sounds like the structural, soundness of the building is a major. Major point, especially in those, early inspections. And then there's the, the evolving regulatory constraints and that, cost analysis that needs to happen. So it sounds like those are some of the main points that we covered today. Is there anything that we didn't talk about before we turn to, today's example? in terms of considerations of renovating versus building new.

James 19:57

well now there are, there are, uh, new considerations. There are new conditions and situ. Uh, environmental challenges and new technologies that, may suggest that building new, is the way to go. And, and there's some examples that we can, we can talk about.

John 20:15

All right, so, James, let's turn now to Our site story segment for folks that are watching on YouTube, uh, you can see all these, uh. All these examples are on Lakeside architecture ca go to the top menu and you go to be inspired and you'll see all the different case examples and case stories in the Lakeside architecture portfolio. James, the first view we have is this beautiful view of the Georgian Bay on this, uh, Kalani cottage. Can you walk us through this example?

James 20:45

Yeah, John, isn't that such a great shot there? All the abundant water and, and uh, it is coming right up to the rocks there and it looks idyllic. Well, this project is, is really interesting. it could be a case study on its own of taking the question of renovation versus new construction in dealing with some environmental changes. Now, that's a big clean, but I'll, I'll walk you, uh, and, and the listeners through this. So. This is a project on Georgian Bay, in, uh, Killarney, uh, not that far from, uh, Killarney, uh, provincial Park. And, uh, this beautiful property is on a bay. And for years it had very consistent high water levels. And then, as some of your viewers may recall, if they live on Georgian Bay or, or have a cottage there, or friends out there, the water levels just started to drop. Now without mentioning any international neighbors or anything like that, there were concerns that water was being taken out of the, out of the lakes at the time, and also precipitation was falling. And this was at an alarming rate so that each season over several seasons, the the shoreline on Georgian Bay was dropping and this property was in an area of flat shelves of, bedrock. That were fairly shallow. So, partial entire, like half acre would disappear at a time, you know, it just took a, a foot or two of water and a lot of the site uh, was diminished. So the owners, they had a, um, they had a bit of a, a dilemma because they were concerned about water levels that could, could rise and fall and, and things weren't consistent and should they even sell the property. So, at the time, we, we had a good, hard look at the, uh, requirements of, the, the municipality. public health was involved, um, because there were old septic kinks on site. Um, the property was close to wetlands and, and so forth. this property was interesting because at the heart of it was a vintage cottage with heavy timbers, stone work. And, uh, at the heart though, the owners, interestingly enough, wanted something that was new, but wanted to, start off, uh, build from the existing, and they wanted to do it in, in stages. So their basic solution was to keep the original cottage, but to significantly renovate and expand it. Now on previous podcasts, I extolled the virtues of building, a new, of course. But the interesting thing here was the existing cottage was almost wedged in this ideal location, among the, the stones, there, but there wasn't a lot of room to move in any direction except this particular diagonal way back. So really a new footprint was kind of out of the question. And although there would be costs incurred, uh, we decided to work with a site. Uh, the, the, the way it was, you almost call it a hybrid solution. and it, it helped spread the building out along the shoreline to make more use of a, of a, a dry beach lagoon that had had developed. So no longer was it the, the pure waterfront property. It was this dry beach lagoon with, with terraces basic solution. Which I can get into in, in, in more depth, but was to retain a core, which, which you'll see in under the main body of the house, and then build out in stages, in steps that would still be usable in case water levels ever came back up, which is, which is a possibility in, environmental conditions are not the same now. And the water level is not far. It's not that it's far, that far down below there. Once the water breaches each terrace, a whole half acre of shore gets flooded. So the idea is, was to step back to the building, use the idea of adding instead of partial renovation, more adding looks new, but really, it's built in stages, stepping back up the terraces. Um, so in that case, that high rate, approach really worked for the owners.

John 24:59

I love the way that it is terrace, and you can see that it, the, the buildings is kind of, it's kind of nested into those rocks that jut out to the waterfront there.

James 25:10

Yeah. John. The, the interesting about this project is that, uh, in a lot of cases, and, and you can, uh, you can test this by checking out the, the project on the website in a lot of cases, the architecture tends to be very dramatic and it's a big statement. And it speaks of the big a in architecture. Like it's everything is very, um, almost over the top at times. Um, the interesting thing here was that it's sort of the opposite of it, and it's sort of lower key and finishes and so on, but the takeaway for listeners would be, let's use creativity and. Think about the challenges on your own site. Make decisions on whether you, you build, rebuild, build in stages. Sometimes finances take apart. Sometimes I'll build structures in phases separated by breezeways and step'em up the hill. You can do it in parts. And, um, it resulted in some pretty interesting spaces. For example, thereafter, they, they gutted the interior. And they created a large common room. They preserved their Muskoka room. Now, I know some listeners are gonna say, we call that a cowart, this room, we call that a screen room down the states, they'll call the Adirondack room. Basically the big screen, uh, room, uh, was preserved. A new wing was added with an entryway, a breezeway, a mud room, and a laundry, dining room, and bedrooms. Overall, the feeling was open concept. But it is done in steps, like in, in stages, in discreet parts. Now, my challenge to to listeners would be to consider their own projects, their own ideas, and to think about what phases look like even with new construction. What, what is most important for us? Like what's, what's the primary consideration? Great rooms, tall ceilings. Kitchen over looking a lake, common areas, loft space and all that. Um, and then what comes next are the bedrooms. are they almost like a suite? Each bedroom is a suite unto itself, or are they smaller? Are they more discreet? Can we separate the space with breezeways and other devices to break down the, scale of the architecture? So there's a little bit of exploration with this. Project is more than, than, uh, might meet the eye to it.

John 27:32

That's very interesting. Um, so couple things that I wanted to ask you, James. Folks that are watching this, you can go to lakeside architecture.ca to see these, um, the pictures from all of these case examples, the dock that goes out onto that stone and then out a little bit more, that seems like something that you wouldn't be able to build under current regulations. Do I have that right? Is that part of what was grandfathered into this house?

James 27:55

that, that, that's correct. That's the case a lot of the time. That is, that is the case, and it gets more complex on Georgian Bay because. The water level has dropped down. So there's an established lake level for every lake, and usually it's geodetic. It's, it's based on elevation above sea level is usually the way to do it, but sometimes they'll dot it on a municipal plan or on, on, uh, on GIS mapping and all that. And you can look at it and go online and determine where you think you're gonna build things. But at the end of the day, uh, there are some heavy considerations on, on. Where and how to build. And this is what I ask our listeners to do when we're looking at this. I, I'd like them to take away, like, not the visuals on, this or any particular project, but some basic ideas that they can apply to their own projects. So the takeaway here could be if you wanted to build on your site and you had some constraints and conflicting constraints, would you consider. Breaking your floor plan apart a little bit and almost considering each major area, like its own little mini cottage or pavilion, because this is a great solution. When you don't know that little, little bit of rock there, like can we put a gazebo on it? can we put a boathouse out on the lake there? Can we have a study? Can we have a studio? What can we put there? What can we do on the land on your particular lake, not Georgian Bay. Or any particular location, your particular lake. Can we use the floor plan? Can we spread it out and make it very customized to your property? Turning, rotating the floor plan, putting it on different levels on the site, having breezeways walkways. Can we work in the site with that way? Can we create those sheltered outdoor areas with our structure? Can we protect you more from the wind and the sun? That's the level that I think. Where the opportunity is. John and I, I hope it, it translates, uh, through the project that uh, there is an opportunity not to be, um, blocked by building constraints and site constraints, but really working closely, thinking three dimensionally on the site and how can we get creative with things, but based the listener's own personal requirements.

John 30:09

Well, and I, I suppose first you gotta know what your dream is, Lakeside Architecture offers a, design your dream home guide that helps clients understand what that dream is, and it offers some prompting questions on how to bring that dream and turn it into a reality. Do you wanna help, our audience and, and tell a little bit about what this design your dream home guide can do?

James 30:31

I've done projects in, uh, all over the province, but primarily they're on the, the Canadian Shield. We're always on the water and there's always various challenges, um, that we can work with. I'm there to guide and to shape a client's vision through visits on the site, working in 3D modeling, working with clients online to in live time, model their ideas. But I need clarity on how they're gonna use their structure, what their aesthetic preferences are.'Cause the clients, John, they're the experts on the site. They know what works and at the end of the day, if they feel that something is right for them, they're correct on it and we're going to try to develop it. But the best way to communicate those ideas with me and early on is to grab the, uh, PDF and to start the process. I really emphasize that it's a process. No architect or designer has the silver bullet that once it's fired, it produces this perfect project that doesn't exist. But what exists is a, patient and thoughtful search and, uh, discovery of what works on the site. There is a solution out there. but it is great if we can sit down and get the client's ideas and then see what I've learned from my projects and what I've seen on the site and what people are doing on the lakes to, imagine reimagine the future of their, their project.

John 31:54

So based on your expertise, you, you've developed this PDF, this questionnaire to help extract from the clients. What their vision is. This tool helps them communicate that to you so you can bring their dream home to life, whether they're renovating or building a new home or lakeside cottage, that is a useful tool. So folks can check that out. Lakeside architecture, do ca the link is in the show notes. And thank you all so much for listening to another episode of Build the unbuildable, a podcast about building high-end homes. In impossible places. If you've made it this far, please give the show a, like a review, and subscribe to the show on YouTube, apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

James 32:39

Thanks, John, and thanks to the listeners. Uh, I appreciate the support Over the years, uh, we've been at, uh, trade shows, we've done public presentations. We wanted to raise the, the awareness of good architecture, and, uh, we love speaking with great clients. Please check out the website and giving you a call. I'm either on site or in the studio. I'm easy to get ahold of. Let's talk about your project. Thank you.