Three Summers, One Cottage

Wooden structure under construction in a snowy forest setting

Doug Plaxton built his cottage with patience - every shake hand-nailed, every interior surface finished in linseed oil, every detail thought through. Here's how it came together.

Most cottage projects don't take three full summers. Most aren't finished with raw linseed oil on the inside and cedar shakes on the outside either.

Doug Plaxton's cottage was a ground-up build, not a restoration - but he approached it the way you'd approach a 100-year-old house. The materials were chosen to last decades. The methods were chosen to do the materials justice. And the timeline was set by the work, not the other way around.

By the end of the third summer, the cottage was done. We asked Doug to walk us through it.

The Exterior

The outside of the cottage is finished in cedar shakes and shiplap, with traditional materials carrying the load top to bottom.

The shakes are SBC Sidewall Select, hand-nailed one at a time with stainless steel nails. Behind them, Doug used Ventgrid - a Canadian-made rain screen system that creates a continuous ventilation cavity behind the cladding. It's one of the small decisions that doesn't show up in photos but adds years to the life of the wood.

For the finish, every shake was treated with Lifetime Wood Treatment before installation. Then Allbäck Raw Linseed Oil and Black Pine Tar went on - the same combination that's been protecting Scandinavian timber buildings for centuries. Linseed oil penetrates the wood; pine tar adds depth and weather resistance. Neither forms a film, which means neither will peel.

The shiplap was fastened with 1¾" stainless hex head #7 screws from Armstrong - a detail Doug specifically called out. When you're working with materials that are expected to last fifty years, the fasteners need to last fifty years too.

The Interior

Inside, every wood surface was finished with Allbäck Raw Linseed Oil and the Allbäck Linseed Wax range - including the black wax, which Doug used over Douglas fir.

The Douglas fir interior is one of the more striking parts of the project. Doug experimented with two approaches: combining black wax with neutral wax, and conditioning the wood with raw linseed oil first before applying the wax separately. Both methods produced a near-identical finish. The second method was significantly faster.

That's the kind of insight you only get partway through a project. Doug found it after he'd already done the first half the slower way.

What Doug Took Away

We asked Doug what he'd do differently. His answer:

"As with anything, it's the prep work that takes time to ensure a solid foundation. I honestly can't think of anything we'd have done differently. That's in large part due to the advice we received from the Sage team throughout the project."