A 2,000 square foot garage and a 2,500 square foot home are going up together for a local family in East Braintree. Read more about the project.

As Lumber One's lead in-house designer, Jamie has been turning cottage dreams, additions, and full custom builds into working plans, and one thing quickly becomes clear: his designs are considerate, personal, and like nothing else built in the region.

There's a particular kind of quiet that settles into a room built with real wood. Walls and floors rarely get the credit decks and docks do, but together they're the backdrop to every morning coffee and rainy-day card game.

The Martins cottage began as a straightforward lake property and has become something more layered: a home fluent in two architectural dialects, modern and cottage vernacular, speaking to each other across a single roofline.

Drive from Winnipeg toward Kenora and you can feel the moment it happens. The prairie gives way to the Canadian Shield, rock breaks through the soil, and water starts showing up between the pines.

Some job sites you arrive by car, but with Jeff Bobrowski of WHL Custom Framing, you get there by boat. He starts each day hauling lumber and trusses out to water-access sites on West Hawk Lake.