For Keeps

FOR KEEPS

A TALE OF A CENTURY-OLD CABIN

BY ALLI SCHUCHMAN | PHOTOS BY DAVID COHEN

When Mike Yates’ and Kathy Hughes’ first child Adam arrived in the mid ‘80s, they were living in Ballard. Adam, as new babies are wont to do, got the couple considering where their future might lay. Yates’ parents lived on Bainbridge, so he reached out to local realtor Bill Hunt. “We really hit it off,” he said. “Kathy was resistant, but she came over here and said, ‘Wow, this is kind of cool.’ Bainbridge looked like the right kind of place.”

“So, we ended up buying this house,” he said. Yates explained that while its location on Wing Point was ideal—a quick bicycle ride to the ferry, where they’d catch the boat to their work in Seattle, he as an architect and Hughes as a nurse—it was never part of the plan to move into (and stay) in a dilapidated log cabin. “The house was a groaner,” he said.

“It was a lot of money at the time for a house in pretty iffy shape,” added Hughes, “but we kinda knew it was right.”

Yates said that the cabin was originally built after a storm broke a log boom off the creosote plant and washed

the unbound wood onto the Wing Point beach. The cabin, the last of three that were constructed side by side, was built from those stray logs in 1920. When Hughes and Yates moved in, all three cabins still stood, but the other two have since been torn down.

Yates said their plan was to live in the cabin until they could afford to build a contemporary home. “But it’s kind of strange how this place grew on us,” he said. “Especially our son, especially Kathy, and I got it too.”

The early years were rustic.

“All these animals were living in the crawlspace,” said Yates. “We had a broom, and when they would get noisy at night, I would take the broom handle and pound on the floor. The noise would go away for 20 or 30 minutes.” Yates said Hughes took it all in stride and would say that, after all, the animals were there first.

As the cabin’s charm grew on the family (which expanded to four after the birth of their daughter, Michelle) the couple decided to make a go at restoring it. Their first task was to straighten the house, as it was tilted toward the water. The next project was to put a porch around the house to protect the logs, said Yates. “That’s sort of the way it worked from the get-go. Whenever we would save a bit of money, we would apply for another building permit and do that renovation.”

Next up was the living room. “It involved a very small addition expanding the house out to meet the walls of the upstairs. Basically, it was pulling the downstairs out,” said Yates. The space made room for the new entryway and door as well as the stone fireplace.

Yates also noted that all the beams in the living room sagged. They were therefore hoisted into proper position, girded with sheet metal for structural integrity and wrapped in Douglas fir to match the logs and the home’s trim. Yates’ brother, Jim, a professional woodworker, built the front door, the couch and the coffee table.

He also did all the kitchen cabinetry. “He and his family were living in Northern California, and he would drive up here with his very large pickup truck with a very large trailer,” said Yates. “He did three trips up here with cabinets and then he’d spend a couple of weeks each time putting them together and installing them.”

Yates said that the son of a family who lived a couple doors up did all the additional carpentry in the kitchen, the beams and the new foundation. “Totally tore off the floor to the dirt. He worked here for a year and a half on this project.”

The kitchen is clearly a cherished spot, as was evidenced by the heaping plate of cookies and big pot of spaghetti prepared by Hughes in anticipation of brother Jim and family’s arrival later in the day. “I love to cook, to experiment with food,” said Hughes. “I love to host. Big parties or just a couple of friends over.” Nearby, Cooper, a gigantic (or perhaps simply very fluffy) 15-year-old Belgian Shepherd, snoozed peacefully under the built-in dining nook.

Altogether, Yates said that there have been six renovations to the house, the latest being the upstairs, which they just finished last year.

“Everything up here was a lot of work. Everything was a mess,” said Yates. “The

walls twisted this way and then would twist that way from one end of the hall to the other. I don’t think the people who built it had a level or a plumber. I think they just eyeballed it. It was totally exasperating for the carpenters.”

The wonkiness didn’t end at the walls. “The floors upstairs creaked,” he said. “We had a cat—and it was not a big cat—but when it would walk across the floor, you’d hear creaking. The boards were that loose.”

Yates said that Bainbridge-based Isley Construction did a great job over seven months of extensive problem-solving. Now that the project’s complete, the couple are in the process of moving back into the lovely (and now non-creaking) space.

Their bedroom has a painstakingly constructed barrel celling, there’s a refinished modern bathroom, and their kids’ old rooms have gotten a facelift as has Yates’ drawing room, though he said he only uses it for personal projects now that he’s retired.

Hughes is just glad that the cabin is still a cabin. “All the logs, all the wood.”

Down on the beach is a boathouse which Yates built over a year and a half, putting in about 2,000 hours. “When I get started on a project, I don’t quit,” he said. Inside the boathouse are museum-worthy boats that he also built himself. “We built the kayak, the rowing shell, the rowboat, and then a sliding-seat wherry,” he said. Despite their stunning good looks and gleaming finishes, Yates is quick to emphasize function over beauty. “That they work really well is the important part. They’re not furniture.”

The boathouse’s only decoration is a shelf lined with carved ducks from the Great South Bay on Long Island, gifts from a good friend. “They’re all easily 100 years old. And they’re his grandfather’s ducks,” said Yates. “So, I built a duck shelf.”

Just offshore is a buoy from which Yates said the kids used to jump. “We call it the tower of death.”

During the nearly four decades since the couple moved in, a lot has happened in their lives. Adorning the cabin’s walls, framed photographs of the family’s adventures and expeditions tell a pulsing, rolling-stones-gather-no-moss sort of story. Among the memories are numerous

mountaineering trips, white water rafting excursions and kayaking voyages that span rivers in California, Canada, Central America, South America, Tibet and China. “It is kind of what we’re all about,” said Yates.

Today, first-born Adam is a commercial pilot, while daughter Michelle is an architect. Adam and his wife have one child—Yates’ and Hughes’ first grandchild—and another is on the way. A smattering of toddler toys is evidence of the growing family.

Though the 100-year-old cabin has served as backdrop to their lives, perhaps its most important role was as a place to return home.

In March, Hughes suffered a ruptured aneurysm while on her bike. Luckily, Yates found her within minutes and in less than an hour she was airlifted to Harborview Medical Center, where she spent the next 84 days.

After Hughes’ hospital release in June, “Michelle took three months off from work and lived here,” Yates said. “Plus, Kathy comes from a family of eight kids and it’s just one big bundle of love. She has made a miracle recovery.”

Hughes said that returning to the cabin, and to Bainbridge, has been a priceless part of her recovery. “It is so quiet and peaceful,” she said. “We lived outside as much as inside. My community was so touching, so humbling with all the love. All the food, all the cards, all the requests for a small visit. I truly felt half the island was involved.”

Through it all, Hughes and Yates have kept laughing. Her parting advice? “Life is fun if you’re determined to make it that way.”