Habitat: This sustainable Nova Scotia home is a coastal refuge
(Photography by Meghan Tansey Whitton)
Teri Appleby and Nova Tayona met in 1995 while waitressing together as students at Dalhousie University. Two decades later, Appleby was a homemaker and mother of two sons, and Tayona was a successful architect. When the pair met for coffee in Halifax to catch up, Appleby happened to describe the cottage she’d been dreaming about for her family, inadvertently setting in motion a joint project for the long-time friends.
Appleby wanted a summer escape from her century-old home in downtown Halifax, with direct access to water and an open-concept living main floor. She and her husband, Keith Dwyer, had already toured the South Shore of Nova Scotia in search of the perfect property, but none of the cottages for sale had appealed to them: the lots were too small and the buildings too run down. None of the options felt like home. Tayona, who specialized in contemporary architecture and loved working on coastal projects, decided Appleby’s story sounded like a challenge to design her friend the perfect home. “If you’re up for it,” Tayona said, “I want to make this idea come to life for you.”
They spent the next months scouring Nova Scotia’s southern peninsula for vacant beachside land. The family eventually bought a three-acre property shrouded in tamarack and spruce trees in Shelburne County, two hours southwest of Halifax. Located barely 100 metres from the Atlantic shoreline, the lot peers over the secluded Louis Head Beach and its miles of white sandbars. The building process took nearly three years, as heavy snowfall in the winter months made it impossible to drive to the site, which sat a mile away from the nearest paved road. Given the limited supply of labour in Shelburne, there were only a few people ever available to work on the house at one time.
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By 2018, their vision had come to life as a 1,500-square-foot modern summer cottage with a cantilevered roof, perched on raised helical piers to prevent flooding. The front view features floor-to-ceiling windows and a black cedar façade. Inside, 12-foot Douglas fir ceilings tower over locally crafted birch cabinets and concrete floors stained to look like marble. The 550-square-foot chef’s kitchen has already hosted countless family dinners.
On the north side of the cottage, there are three bedrooms with backyard views, including a stunning guest room with a 12-foot cedar door. The master bedroom, meanwhile, is sequestered across the hallway. “We thought we might want to make it a rental for part of the time, and just lock away all of our belongings in the primary room,” says Appleby. “But we’ve grown so attached to it that we never want to leave.”
The family has lived in the cottage from May to September every year since 2018. Parting ways with the convenience of the city comes with challenges: the nearest grocery store is a half-hour’s drive away, which forces them to buy in bulk and plan meals ahead of time. They bring as much food as they can from their visits to Halifax, and when they crave fresh produce, they travel an hour to their favourite farmer’s market in Bridgewater. The Wi-Fi is also unreliable, so they use Starlink satellite internet for a faster connection. Appleby says those minor lifestyle shifts are well worth the serenity: she has never encountered more than 15 people at the Louis Head Beach at once—and that includes her own family.
Despite its remote location, the house has gained fame for its sustainability, winning a Canadian Green Building award in 2017. The roof is strategically positioned to provide shade for the interior during intense midday sun; it also captures rainwater, which funnels into three large cisterns with a capacity of 12,000 gallons each, and then through a UV filter to make it drinkable.
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The home has quickly become an extended family hub. The couple’s parents, who live an hour away, come for frequent visits, while their brothers and sisters, many of whom are in and around Halifax, join them for weekends. Those days are filled with late-afternoon low-tide strolls on the beach, boisterous family meals and explosive intergenerational game nights.
“It came to us perfect,” says Appleby about their coastal house. “There is truly nothing like having a morning coffee on the deck under the roof—you feel the sun’s warmth.” She and Dwyer are already deep into this year’s summer routine, which involves daily trips to the beach with her boys, now 15 and 18, and more family nights making s’mores over a bonfire.
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