Couple spend 27 years building off-grid £1 million island house with a dance studio, candle factory and lighthouse
A COUPLE have spent 27 years building their own floating man-made island home, living nearly entirely off the grid,
Wayne Adams and Catherine King have spent over £1 million building Freedom Cove, located on the coast of Vancouver Island in western Canada.
The island home began life as a much smaller wooden cabin, and over the last three decades has been expanded using entirely recycled materials, they recently told the Youtube channel.
Features of the island include workshops, a dance studio, living quarters, a beach, and a lighthouse.
Describing how he became interested in handiwork, Wayne said: “I did my boyhood in Australia. I had early training. At grade three I started working at sheet metal work. So making things and building things has always been part of my life.”
The pair began building the home, on which they are largely self-sufficient, so as to be closer to nature.
He added: “The idea that the two of us wanted to be somewhere out in the wilderness, and do our art, and be immersed in nature, because that’s where we get inspired.
“Freedom Cove gives us all the protection we need.
“We have the colours magenta and green throughout the whole place because they represent to us rebirth.
Among the recycled materials that make up the island are recycled fish farms for decking and a pair of whale ribs to form an archway.
Catherine also grows enough vegetables to feed them both all year round.
Other features include an outdoor dance floor and a window in the floor of the living quarters to the water below.
She said: “We’ll have the otter and seals stick their head up there from time to time.”
Both Wayne and Catherine have workshops where they produce carvings in cedar wood and walrus tooth, headdresses that incorporate genuine bird feathers, and beeswax candles.
On how the building of the island was achieved, Wayne said: “Learn by doing. There are two types of schools, and I’ve been to both. One’s the institution, I say go.
“But also when you step out, choose your teachers, travel, experience, get out of that little nest and do things. What you see here is what you can’t learn in school.”
It isn’t easy during stormy weather, however: “The floating structures are tied down with large ropes, which help it survive against strong winds and storms.”
They explained that this instead “moves back and forth in once piece” which they learned after spending two years with the buildings bumping together.
When it comes to water, they have a waste water system, which microbial purifies everything, while power is made through
solar panels and a back up generator.
The area is heated by firewood from the beaches, thanks to being surrounded by forest.
To reduce their waste, everything is is either composted or burned, so they take as little as possible to town to recycle.
They only go to land for mail – and for candy, Wayne admits.
They admit it isn’t easy, as it is hard work, but “work of choice”.
Catherine explained how they have managed to stay happy during their nearly three-decade-long project: “Because money has never been the important thing to us, we have never given each other grief over financial situations.
“We have often been down to our last 20 cents but we just say we will work on some art or a carving and go to the local town to sell it.
“And because we believe it, it works.”
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