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House Beautiful: Shawnigan home hand-hewn with love

The Shawnigan home of Jude Gilley and Tom Schindelka is a marvel, not only because it nestles in an idyllic forest glade, is designed in the shape of an octagon and has soaring ceilings and meticulous millwork that glows like polished amber.

The Shawnigan home of Jude Gilley and Tom Schindelka is a marvel, not only because it nestles in an idyllic forest glade, is designed in the shape of an octagon and has soaring ceilings and meticulous millwork that glows like polished amber.

It’s amazing because the two owners built it almost entirely themselves.

Apart from pouring concrete, hanging drywall and lifting beams, for which they had help, they did virtually everything on their own, including forming the foundations and pouring most of them, milling about half the lumber required for the beams, routering and planing the wood, doing all the framing, roofing, plumbing, electrical, millwork and cabinetry, laying in-floor heat and building windows and doors, not to mention painting and staining.

“We were the architects, too,” added Gilley with a grin.

This is the second marriage for both and clearly, their relationship was made in carpentry heaven.

Schindelka, 70, a retired insurance broker who grew up on the Prairies, said he was born with a hammer in his hand. “I built a lot of huts starting when I was about seven. I’d collect scrap lumber and build a hut, then take it apart and build another. Building that fascinated me.”

By the age of 12, he was making planters and fences, mixing cement to make sidewalks and cutting neighbours’ lawns.

Gilley loves construction, too.

“My son always said I should be an architect,” joked Gilley, 73, whose career as a developmental psychologist included teaching at UBC and SFU. “I love designing homes. I built two others before this one and also redesigned a couple of kitchens.

“I’ve always had the ability to read plans.”

This construction project has taken them the better part of 15 years. During the first year and a half, they lived in an old trailer that they had moved onto the property, while they built a garage with living quarters above.

They lived in the garage for the next two years before finally moving into their hand-hewn home.

Their original plan was for a 2,577-square-foot house, but it grew with additions for visiting family and a studio for her art. The house now covers 4,500 square feet.

“Building for us is a passion, not a vocation,” Schindelka said. They used to live in Vancouver but wanted to retire to the Island and searched the length of it before finding this property.

“It was totally overgrown when we came here, but we managed to get a trailer into the forest far enough to set up shop,” said Schindelka. “We borrowed water from one neighbour, power from another and did all the designing ourselves on a computer — which took about two months.”

They had soon dug a well and blasted down to bedrock (saving as much rock as possible) and were well underway in 2001.

Since then, he estimates they have used about 10 kilometres of board feet to create doors, windows, floors, baseboards, trim, beams and more. Much of that wood came from the property and it all had to be finished.

That is Gilley’s department.

She does all the staining and painting, while he does the woodwork and they share the design work. They have worked side by side on almost all of the tasks, and have the scars to prove it. For instance, there was the time Gilley crouched down to check the level of some concrete Schindelka was pouring, and he accidentally stepped on her finger. It still won’t bend.

The home is octagonal in shape and there are few right angles, except on four sides where rooms jut out. And because the owners didn’t want the house to cantilever over a dip in the land, they built five-metre pilings under that side of the house and back-filled.

“It took over 100 truckloads and we had to compact between each later,” said Schindelka, adding that’s partly why it took a year to do the foundation.

At that point, they took a break while as he had bypass surgery, but soon they were back at it.

“This whole project has been a mammoth amount of work, but we got what we wanted in the end. And more work more fun,” he said.

They had many adventures along the way — the most fun was framing the house, Gilley said. “It’s great getting to wear a belt with hammers and stuff hanging off your hip.”

The most challenging time was “the dreaded 33-hour day,” she said. It happened when they were planning the foundation. They had rented forms and ordered a concrete truck, but the concrete people suddenly phoned and said they had to come two days early.

“We had to work all night to get ready,” she said.

Schindelka set up a mercury vapour spotlight and they parked their car nearby and turned on the headlights. It was November, pouring with rain and freezing.

“Around 4 a.m., I started to cry and said I couldn’t go on. I had to rest. Tom came to bed about 7 a.m. and we both got up an hour later and worked all that day till 4:30 p.m. We went to bed with no dinner. We were too tired.

“After that, we didn’t order any more concrete,” said Schindelka.

He started mixing and pouring it himself, drawing on early skills developed as a lad when his father had bought a little cement mixer.

Another setback came one sunny day when Gilley had just finished coating the kitchen-cupboard doors and had laid them on a tarp to dry. Her husband was felling a tree nearby.

“I suddenly heard a creak and a humungous tree came down and landed in an explosion of dust and dry needles that landed all over the doors. It wasn’t a big deal, as I was able to sand them all off once they were dry.”

Another time, it was his turn to grimace. After he’d spent an entire day staking out their future home, she found herself a lawn chair and sat on it, imagining she was in her new bathtub. Glancing around, she asked if he could please turn the house just a little to improve her view. He spent the next day redoing every measurement. Again she hopped in the “tub” — and suggested he move it. After three moves, he got down on his knees and begged her not to move it again.

The house has a touch of fantasy, with elements taken from mythology and fairy tales.

The bookcase in their library, for instance, has a secret doorway into the attic, inspired by C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. The living-room fireplace has its roots in the imaginary universe of German author Michael Ende’s The NeverEnding Story. In honour of a giant rock character, Schindelka gave the fireplace two sturdy legs of stone.

Gilley says her husband is a brilliant builder: “He studies absolutely everything and is so meticulous. His father used to tell him: ‘We’re not building a church.’ ”