After purchasing a weather-worn, ant-infested cabin on an Oregon beach, a Seattle couple hires a regional team to transform it into a stylish weekend retreat.

By Melissa Dalton December 29, 2025

When architect Andrew Montgomery first pulled up to his clients’ house in Arch Cape, Oregon, there were logs in the driveway, courtesy of the sizable swells that come with the coast’s king tides. At just 28 feet above sea level and as close as you can get to the water without being on the beach, Montgomery could tell the home had enviable views. “I do mainly coastal homes, and this is one of the most spectacular sites,” he says. The only problem? The house could still be encroached by larger waves.

The owners, Seattleites who had been married two hours south in Salishan 20 years before (and visited the coast regularly), had bought the small cabin on 2.3 acres in 2012, but eventually tired of the immense wear and tear it suffered over time. “It was a cute little cabin, but it was like it was built out of Lincoln Logs,” says the owner. “There were water stains inside. There were ants that lived in the walls. They would swarm occasionally in the summer on a warm day, and we’d have thousands of little black flying ants coming out of the walls, and we had to vacuum them all up.”

The couple reached out to Montgomery at the Portland-based firm Terraforma Architects for a rebuild plan, with the idea of expanding the footprint and making the house more durable and resilient. Additionally, they wanted the next incarnation to prioritize an unfussy, natural palette and capture the incredible views offered in so many directions, from the ocean’s horizon line to the tangle of coastal forest.

Working with I&E Construction, Montgomery delivered a 4,200-square-foot, two-story design with a stepped façade that comes to the point of a ship’s prow at the front, all atop a pass-through foundation. “The whole house, except for the roof, is… Read More

Original Article From: Seattle Magazine