Weekend carpenter builds custom cabins, furniture too, on the Washington coast

Vancouver

Toby Friesen figured out as a young father raising three kids that he needed a beach rental. Not just to have as a getaway for everyone, but as an income-producing investment for his family’s future.

That was nine years ago. One by one, Friesen found less-than-perfect, but unique coastal properties in southwest Washington’s Long Beach. By putting in long weekends after running his fitness consulting business in Vancouver, Washington, the self-taught craftsman now has four vacation rentals a short walk to the Pacific Ocean.

The latest rental, named Lewis, was constructed from the ground up. Inside are ceiling beams and furniture made from lumber milled by his childhood friend. A post-and-beam glass wall in the second-story bedroom overlooks a great room with a towering stone-face fireplace.

“I didn’t just want to buy a regular home and fill it with basic furniture and rent it out,” said Friesen, 48, who grew up building with lumber, not Lego pieces or Lincoln Logs. His first real construction project was a two-story treehouse.

Friesen modeled his one-of-a-kind vacation homes, in style and feel, after the vintage West Coast beach cottages his parents rented over the decades.

His jazz musician father, David Friesen, was also invited to the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, north of Oregon’s Lincoln City. Here, artists in residence stay in cottages wrapped with board-and-batten cedar siding, a traditional style Friesen adopted for his homes.

His goal: To recreate the experience of discovering a new place, its hidden treasures and “deciding which bed would be mine,” said Friesen, owner of the boutique vacation rental company Beachhousewa.

Before he could afford to buy an investment property, Friesen would take his children to Long Beach, where they would drive to a secluded spot, set up chairs, fly a kite, wade in the water and hang out all day.

He likes the beach and boardwalk on the Long Beach Peninsula, a two-hour drive from Portland.

The area where explorers in the Lewis and Clark expedition marked their arrival on a pine tree in 1805 is today a wildlife refuge and pedestrian and bike friendly resort community.

At 28 miles long, Long Beach, which is promoted as the world’s longest drivable beach, has space for “setting up and staying all day, and it’s so family friendly,” Friesen said.

He looked for years before he found his first property, which he calls Beach Cabin. And it wasn’t pretty. The house was partially remodeled, a frozen-in-time, do-it-yourself home improvement project. Some rooms were just studs and plywood.

While other potential buyers passed, Friesen made an offer that was accepted. “That allowed me to squeak into the market on a barebones budget,” he said.

He did a lot of the finishing work himself, then furnished the house with cozy spots to play board games and assemble puzzles as his family likes to do.

After a few years, when he could better afford it, he did a more comprehensive second remodel and landscaped the 1.2-acre property. He installed a pergola, fire table and seven-person hot tub. He also created corn-hole and ladder golf courts and a path to take a wagon filled with supplies to the beach.

Repeat customers allowed him to expand.

Now, he rents Beach Cabin ($422-$600 a night for six guests), Seagrass ($590-$810 for 10 guests), Ocean Trail ($699-$925 for 10) and Lewis ($400-$580 for four).

Three of the homes have a game room. Seagrass’ is serious, with a tournament-size pool table, 18-foot-long shuffleboard table, table tennis and foosball as well as more than 1,000 retro arcade games.

Ocean Trail, which overlooks the sea, has a large outdoor stone fireplace.

“It’s fun when you do a job and people are happy,” he said.

But it wasn’t easy.

Weekend carpenter Toby Friesen builds beach rentals on the coast of Washington.David Blaydon

The economy has been a rollercoaster since Friesen started looking for an investment property right before the housing crash of 2008.

A few years later, he bought an oceanfront property in a gated community for less than the original price. The seller also agreed to finance the loan at an interest rate higher than the seller could have received from a savings account.

Then, as now, experienced workers were hard to find.

The contractor left town halfway through framing Friesen’s second vacation rental. Friesen strapped on a tool belt and completed a lot of the work. He said he relates when he listens to business owners talking about finding their way out of a “trough of sorrow.”

When he wasn’t onsite, Friesen was hiring and scheduling tradespeople. “If the electrician doesn’t finish, the drywall contractor can’t do his job, then they can’t set the doors, do the trim and it goes on and on,” he said.

He kept moving the projects forward. “It’s a powerful motivator when you have your whole life savings in a project,” he said.

He said he didn’t compromise on his goal of creating homes with character, but he did watch every penny. “It took every effort and I’ve been near the edge financially, but when I put a rental home on the market, it does well,” he said.

In 2020, the coronavirus pandemic halted vacation travel, the economy plunged and then there were wildfires.

“Every day was a challenge,” he said. “I just didn’t give up.”

Friesen is working on a cabin next door to Lewis called Clark, and will then start on a home honoring Lewis and Clark’s invaluable Lemhi Shoshone guide, Sacagawea.

The trio of custom houses will be together in a compound with an arched entrance. Friesen is naming his new development Fort Clatsop after the explorers’ encampment.

He jokes that he has learned the importance of bed sheet’s thread counts and the different types of down comforters, feather bed toppers and pillows.

Most of all, he has enjoyed working with talented craftspeople who are executing his vision.

A logger friend selected cedar trees and milled them locally to make live-edge slabs, siding and beams for the Lewis rental. Half of the furniture was designed and commissioned for this home. And a welder who built ships in the Long Beach area also contributed to Friesen’s projects.

“You can’t spend the time for fancy details that won’t pay off if you plan to sell the house,” he said. “I’m not doing this for a fast return.”

Instead, his custom projects allow him to create experiences for his family and guests that he remembers so well from his childhood.

— Janet Eastman | 503-294-4072

[email protected] | @janeteastman