Almost a year after it was uprooted and moved, North Vancouver’s 1908 Copper Cottage is now taking pride of place in the Grand Boulevard neighbourhood.
In March 2020, Tony Dean and Yvonne Perrault paid a developer $1 for home (and a whole bunch more to move it from its original location at 336 East 9th St. to its new home three blocks away).
Since then they’ve been working away, with the heritage project nearing completion. The exterior has been redone in a colour palette consistent with what would have been used 117 years ago. They’ve installed period-correct double-paned wood-framed windows. They rescued the shrubs from the original property and transplanted them to the new one. Many of the home’s original interior features are still intact and refurbished including the doors, baseboards, window trim, and grates. The basement stairs were milled from an oak tree that had to be felled for the project.
Decidedly newer is the electric vehicle charger in the garage.
“It's pretty darn close to what we had in our plans a year ago,” Dean said.
“All in all, I’d say we’re very satisfied,” Perrault added.
For project-oriented people, it’s kept them busy through the pandemic. The bureaucratic hoops to jump through have been significant, Dean said, but they have taken the heritage restoration seriously.
“We haven't had a day off since we started this project. There's always been something that needed to be taken care of,” he said.
Still remaining to be done is the restoration of the original 1916 home at the rear of property, which will become a coach house.
Alex Jordan, a commercial drone pilot friend, has helped document the revival, including a recently shot fly-through video that takes the viewer in and around the entire home all in one smooth take.
Copper Cottage update February 2021 from tony dean on Vimeo.
