After more than 30 years working as a Victoria-based architect, Sid Chow wasn’t ready to stop pursuing his passion for design and take up golfing after retiring.
“When you retire, you need to find things that are meaningful to you and to keep your mind active,” says the soon-to-be 70-year-old.
“Some people golf, or go boating. I do projects.”
Chow, who designed custom homes, commercial buildings and many senior housing facilities during his career, retired 10 years ago but kept his hand in design, albeit for less stressful clients — his own family.
“My clients are my family. They trust me. It takes a lot of stress away from design. And when you do it for yourself, if people don’t like it, too bad,” he adds, with a smile.
Luckily, Chow says his wife Lisa has yet to give him any negative feedback on the designs he’s done for the family, which includes his 37-year-old-daughter Natalie, her husband Stephen and their two-year-old son Max.
The couple is also expecting their second child and live in New Zealand.
Sid and Lisa still live in the same Gordon Head neighbourhood they have called home for nearly 40 years, and in the main house that was designed by Chow and built in 1987.
Sid recently finished one of his favourite architectural projects to date that has brought the family together and works for all three generations — a contemporary garden suite in their backyard.
He recently completed his most ambitious house project to date on their property — an impressive 620-square-foot garden suite surrounded by thoughtfully considered landscaping. This project was a win-win for the entire family, providing a functional and sunny space for their daughter and her family to stay when they visit and a possible retirement home for Sid and Lisa in the future, allowing both families to live side-by-side on a single property.
“Our whole concept is to age in place and to look after each other,” says Chow, explaining as Natalie’s family grows, they could move into the main house and he and his wife Lisa could live in the garden suite.
He adds Natalie has told them she is willing to help them as they age and they are happy to be on-site babysitters for the young family. Right now Natalie and her family are enjoying the garden suite this summer, with plans to likely move back to Victoria in five years.
“Having witnessed my dad’s years of experience designing luxury homes and commercial buildings for others, it brings me a lot of joy to see him pour his expertise and creativity into this personal project for the benefit of our family,” says Natalie. “The suite truly embodies his unique and contemporary style, while offering us a special village where we can live, play and spend time together as an extended family in space we truly love.”
Natalie adds it’s also special to be able to share her childhood home with her son Max, recalling the backyard was once just a grassy area but it has been transformed into an oasis with lots of fun areas for him to explore. One of his grandfather’s projects was creating an outdoor playhouse for Max that mimics the same contemporary design as the other structures he built on the property, such as the adjacent greenhouse for Lisa to undertake her gardening activities. He also built a shed that is contemporary in design.
The couple not only designed the soft and hard garden landscaping they also did much of the manual labour themselves, such as installing the rock features and doing the plantings. A lovely Japanese garden with an overhead trellis for hanging plants and a wooden boardwalk connects the greenhouse and shed to the garden suite, which is tucked in the back corner of their large one-third acre lot.
While the main house and garden suite are angular in design, the garden is the opposite with many curves and flows easily from one setting to the next. The result is an interesting contrast between the buildings and the landscaping.
Since the property is so large, Chow could have built a two-storey garden suite but opted not to do so.
“It would be much more of an intrusion in the neighbourhood, and from a maintenance and ongoing cost view, it makes sense to have something around the size we built. The residual leftover space gave us quite a nice outdoor space for the existing house and the garden suite,” he says.
Although the footprint is small, the one-bedroom garden suite is light-filled and feels spacious thanks to its open plan concept, high sloped ceiling (the ceiling heights range from 8 to 14 feet) and skylights in the bathroom and the kitchen.
Large folding doors provide for an indoor/outdoor lifestyle, with an attractive timber deck just off the main living area, ideal for outdoor entertaining.
The suite has a solar-panelled roof, an EV charging station in the driveway, and even drought-tolerant plants. These are just a few of the many choices Chow made reflecting the family’s commitment to sustainability.
The well-insulated suite’s energy consumption is significantly lower than the average home and the couple has yet to pay a hydro bill since their excess energy generated from the solar panels goes back B.C. Hydro and they get a credit.
The suite also has its own private entrance with a separate path leading to the driveway so there’s a sense of division from the main house. The result is both homes enjoy a sense of privacy although they share the same garden.
The 2,300 sq. ft. main house has also aged well since Chow first designed it. In 2019, he added a sunroom to the main house, and did an ensuite renovation as well as designing and building a floor-to-ceiling wall unit and liquor cabinet for the main living room.
The main house exterior is a low-maintenance stucco, that has an Elastermeric paint coating that allows it to breathe and not crack.
“Because stucco is stucco, we wanted to add warmth so we added cedar soffits to the house — horizontal undersurface. The presence of it is there, but it’s not exposed to the weather. It weathers very well so we get the warmth of a wood building without having it as a high maintenance,” says Chow.
The couple also swapped out the electric baseboard heating and added a heat pump to the main house.
Another smart choice was creating a rainwater system around the house that doesn’t seep into the ground and empty into the municipality’s storm system.
“When people build homes, they put in a perimeter drainage system and it goes into the municipal storm system. But Saanich is requesting people consider other forms because when it rains hard that system gets overloaded. When we made the addition, we let the new roof surfaces drain into the trench that leads to the rain garden. It sits there as a pool and slowly dissipates into the ground so none of it goes into the storm system,” he explains.
“It’s amazing with my dad’s design there’s a lot of consideration for the space,” says Natalie. “ It’s really nice to experience that first hand. We feel pretty lucky.
“It’s like a luxury Airbnb.”
Garden Suite’s builder/trades
Contractors: Ricky and Frank Vickery
Electrical: Dave Tyson of Baldy Mountain Electric
Plumbing: Kieran McMullan of Drain Brain
Plumbing Fixtures: Splashes
Excavation: Wally Choo of Michel Excavating
Flooring: Sabit (Island Floor Centre)
Solar panels: Shift Energy Group
Folding patio doors and ensuite skylight: Redline Glass
Kitchen Counter: EuroCraft Marble and Granite Countertops
Ensuite shower base, walls and countertops: Island Marble
Closet Doors: Incredible Closets
Pavers/lawn: Nathan Choo (Victoria Garden Sprinkler)
