Original subtitles

We started coming out here every Labor

Day, together, when I was probably 16 or 17.

The original cabin here was 20 by 20.

It was really sweet, actually, because that cabin

was built by a dad and his son for the mom.

And so it was always kind of like a mom's retreat.

This is our family cabin.

It's called Hood Cliff.

We're in the Northern Kitsap Peninsula

in the state of Washington.

It's a beautiful, beautiful location.

I think that this is a story of actually a lot of Americans.

My husband and I are from Central Illinois.

We met in college at an ecology field trip,

and we went to graduate school together.

He's a forester by training.

You're a soil scientist.

I'm a soil scientist by training,

although I would call myself an environmental scientist.

At a point in time, my husband said to me,

you love being at the cabin.

When he said "the cabin," though,

he meant a cabin that I would rent in northern Michigan

with the kids for several weeks every summer.

He says, why don't you look for a cabin?

I started thinking, well, I really like the West.

I'm going to see what I can find out there.

I started looking for vacant land

because I thought maybe I'll find something

that's got an old structure on it,

which is what I really wanted.

And lo and behold, there it was.

I was-- I was totally sucked in immediately,

you know, and then I saw the setting, and I saw the trees,

and I saw the mountains.

It's the only thing I thought of when I went to bed at night.

I mean, that's how special it has been to me.

The original structure was probably 55 years old.

I mean, I knew something had to be done.

I just didn't know what.

There were just little scraps of paper everywhere,

and all the time, you were sketching

on napkins, on pieces of paper.

Like, how do you take the original 20 by 20 footprint

and make it make sense?

And I think it was like a couple of years if you,

like, leaving sketches around various locations.

That's exactly right.

And I think we were,

like, maybe we should ask somebody,

because Mom's going to keep sketching.

I ended up being very lucky in being recommended

and architect, Matt Whitman of Whitman Estes,

who heard what I wanted and, I mean,

had a deep respect for the site.

We would work through what it was we were

trying to accomplish with this.

It's so much fun to wake up in the Murphy bed

and look out at the water and to have a space to be together.

It's hard to find time to be together.

But you come out to the cabin, and you

know that's what you're doing.

You know what the routine is.

Yeah.

It's breakfast, and then it's hanging out.

The idea of the cabin is kind of being able to step into it

and letting it kind of reveal itself to you.

When you walk into the cabin,

you walk through the connector--

these two buildings are separate--

and you come into the old main cabin.

You walk through the coat racks and storage.

You have all these warm wood tones.

And then you see the windows, and you see all of it together.

You get the fireplace going.

Everything is very welcoming, very cozy space--

but still bright.

Everything is kind of really functional

because we can't have things here

that aren't multi-functional, like the pass-through window

where you can be grilling out there,

and you can be passing things in and out

from the kitchen to the outdoor space really easily.

You can have these big windows where

you can just come out onto these pretty expansive porches,

actually.

They're low, and they just continue the line.

The ducts and the overhang

are shelters and a place to sit.

It's like a real natural transition,

and it's easy to relax there.

And we have them on both the main cabin

and the bunkhouse, and it's kind of nice, too,

having multiple spaces, multiple retreats.

Different people can hang out doing different things.

Hood Cliff is special because it's not busy.

It's quiet.

It's the retreat and a place of peace.

The original cabin here was built by a dad

and his son for the mom.

And so when you found it, it just made total sense.

It was just like, oh yeah, you're just like the next mom

to take over the mom's retreat.

Good

This place was designed

to allow us to feel as connected to nature as possible.

The way to do that was windows.

Whether it's the window overlooking the water

and often the mountains and the trees,

or whether it's even the clear story windows

up near the top of the ceiling, what you're seeing

is you're always connecting to nature.

I think working on it together has just been--

it's been really special.

To help it be what you want it to be, like,

I actually found a lot of meaning in that,

and it was just clear from the beginning of the project

that it was going to be so phenomenal,

and the cabin was going to be such

a beautiful space, that it was going to be a place

where we could be together--

as small families, as a big family, as how

we wanted to do it.

It's, like, amazing to be a part of a story like that.

And I love the fact--

I love the fact that it has always been a mom's retreat,

and it's always been about, like, kids

in the rest of the family showing up to build it for mom.

And then, if you're lucky, you get invited.

And I just love it.

Yeah.

That's one of the reasons that Hood Cliff

is really, really special.

It's just magical.

It's-- it's magical.