By Riley Murphy

Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

In 2013, local industrial designer David Reale was driving north on Highway 10 through Caledon when he noticed a For Sale sign on the side of the road.

What he discovered he phrases as a very vacant log home.

“It appeared to be abandoned by everyone. Yet, what I saw was an unpolished gem stone, an unfinished antique,” says Reale.

What Reale soon found out was that he would be putting in an offer for a cabin that was part of the original Caledon Ski Club. 

According to its heritage report, this ski cabin was built in the early to mid-1930s, after the Toronto Ski Club was founded in 1924.

Although it had been moved from its original site and turned into a home, the consultant shared in the report that, “this log cabin has a direct association with the development and early years of recreational skiing activity in the Town of Caledon by area residents and ski enthusiasts from Toronto and more distant locations.”

The cabin was likely to have sat beside the Credit River, near Thunder Bridge on Forks of the Credit Road, east of the hamlet of Belfountain, it was shared.

It was primarily a lodge for early skiing activities in Caledon Township, seeing thousands of skiers over time.

In 1963, it was estimated to have been dismantled, sold, and moved to its current location for housing.

Now, going back to 2013, Reale and his wife, Tina, decided to purchase the home and immediately applied for, and received, heritage status.

“With such a unique history I wanted to save the home and preserve its heritage,” says Reale. “This also was a prerequisite to my final goal of designing and building a second home on the property.”

As the property is within the jurisdiction of the Niagara Escarpment Plan, its protection under municipal designation and easements under the Ontario Heritage Act are necessary if the dwelling is to be retained and a second dwelling permitted on the property, as shared in the report.

Reale originally had big plans to design a second heritage home on the property that he and Tina would eventually call home, but now, almost 13 years later and thousands of hours put into the log cabin, the two are saying goodbye.

Over those 13 years, Reale has started, finished, and started again hundreds of projects that now fill their home, including but not limited to his crafting of handmade doors, he's designed and built much of the furniture, and even salvaged a yoke he found in the field and transformed it into a mantle for a stone fireplace.

More than half of the custom light fixtures that hang from their ceilings are handmade by Reale, including a massive chandelier made from more than 500 pieces of silver-plated flatware, salt and pepper shakers, jewelry, trays, and pie lifters, all collected by Reale – everything from reclaimed old barn beams to curtain rod finials featuring Reale's vintage salt-and-pepper shaker collection.

Walking through the now-renovated log cabin, the two can explain the meanings and hidden aspects of the various items around the house; every piece has its own story.

One of the seemingly patterned wooden walls is actually more than 650 pieces of 100-year-old barn board that Reale spent days cutting and gluing together. 

“I love everything,” adds Tina. “Each piece is unique and it's different.”

When they first moved in, the cabin required a lot of work; there were holes in the floors, storage closets and walls that took up most of the room, and they shared a lot that had to be done to make it comfortable.

And Reale was more than ready to take it all on.

Over the years, Reale's added rooms, ripped out old bathrooms and replaced them, replaced the original red tin roof for another heritage roof, fixed numerous holes and crevices, and much, much more.

Now, the cabin has twice as many bedrooms and bathrooms.

They reflected on a time when Reale's drill was more often than not sitting on their coffee table, or when the table saw was in the middle of their living room.

But little by little, project by project, it became the space it is now.

“I have to understand how to contain my ideas and make them so that I can build something in 20 hours and not a hundred or 200 hours,” he says. 

For him, the saying “God is in the details,” means everything.

“If I can create details that make something that to me is everything. It's the smallest little thing that other people wouldn't notice that I spent so much time on. That's everything. God really is in the details.”

To Reale, preserving the home's heritage and getting it designated were vital.

“I can't preserve the things that I did inside it,” he says. “All the unique little pieces of lighting, the furniture, the details, the doors. I can't guarantee that's going to be preserved, but they can never tear this log house down again. It's here. I'm proud to think that it's saved because I saved it.”

He shares everything he's done; he wanted it to “feel good” in the home, “there's something special about preserving the history of a home,” he adds. 

Over the years, he's worked to help preserve it, and when walls had to be torn down, he made sure to save the wood.

“For two years, people came in and out of this home and no one wanted it. Everybody saw how much work it was,” he explains. “There were holes in the floor and they saw that, and I'm sure they thought, way too much work. I saw it and I said, what an opportunity for me to do something so cool to this place,” says Reale.

As one of 12 kids, he says his skill and ability to do things himself in unique and creative ways come from his upbringing and being “different” than his siblings.

“If you asked me when I was in kindergarten what I wanted to be when I grew up, I wanted to be a designer, I wanted to build stuff.”

For 45 years, he worked in industrial design, 40 of those spent working for himself. Even if he spent eight hours at work, he was sure to come home and spend another eight hours working on their cabin home.

“All the houses I bought required a lot of work. But this one, it was everything. Everything needed to be done on it, and it was something I've never enjoyed doing anything more. Thankfully, Tina allowed me to do it,” says Reale.

He jokingly adds that without Tina's ability to anchor him, he'd likely be up on “the moon.”

This designated heritage property will stand tall for decades to come, thanks to Reale and Tina, and hopefully will always contain some of the Reale home-made charm.