Our first year in our lakefront Sproat Lake home!
Well it was never Dave’s and my intention to operate a vacation rental home on Sproat Lake… but sometimes things do not go according to your Plan A. We had hoped to share the property, but we’ve ended up buying both of his sisters out of the family lakefront cabin. The bad is that we now have a big mortgage… but the good is that it is our place now, and we expect to use it and love it for the next 30 years! (Dave’s parents both continued staying out here until they were 90ish, and we totally plan on doing the same). It is an amazing place – I think the best views of anywhere on Sproat Lake – and with canoeing, kayaking and an amazing set of hiking and biking trails all at our doorstep (all our favourite activities, check out the photos at the bottom of the post) – and it is only a 15 minute drive from our home in Port Alberni!
So this was our first full summer (well our first full year!) being 100% owners. We don’t WANT to run a vacation rental business – that was never our intention – but we plan to do a couple short-term rentals the next few summers, just to help with the costs. So, while enjoying our first full summer here, we’ve been working on some improvements too!
It’s amazing, after a few decades of neglect, it is like a completely different place now. We had a big decision to make about the old dock – keep throwing money into it or just get a new one. So we are loving our new big and solid concrete dock! A sheltered spot for the boat… and so peaceful for morning coffees or a glass of wine at sunset…
The place is actually two cabins, connected by a huge deck, shaded by big Douglas fir trees, and a “breezeway.”
This is the smaller cabin – best views in the world! We’ve decluttered it and rearranged – it is now our sitting/dining area, and it also has one bedroom and a bathroom.
And then the larger cabin has the main bedroom, but we’ve reno’d to create another room that can be transformed into a second private bedroom, so we have room for friends now, too. We are so happy with the changes we’ve made – so nice and uncluttered now. We were going to remove that bar, below – it was loaded with old seashells and decades of cobwebs that looked like from the Addams Family – but now that we have it cleaned up, we love it and use it for making martinis!
Dave is always saying that his parents would be really happy if they could see what we are doing here, how much we love and take care of the place that they had the foresight to buy, and that has been in the family for fifty years.
We still have some more work to do – but we are getting there. And we sure appreciate the gift – receiving one third of this amazing Sproat Lake home from them. It was never our plan to own the whole thing, and it sure means some financial juggling for us. We are still figuring out all of the licensing and everything we need to do to hopefully be able to vacation-rental it out a bit the next few years, just to make it all work. Some challenges – but overall we are super grateful and feel so very fortunate.
I have lots of travels coming up! If you would like to keep posted on the exciting things I am doing, or want to hear about upcoming opportunities to travel with me, you can reach me on my Contact page.
Jacqueline Windh 