‘GARAGE MAHAL’ KEY IN THIS CUSTOM REBUILD
A ‘Garage Mahal’ was key when car buff Bob Dales and wife Mary Dales remodelled their 1950s home
Mary and Bob Dales purchased their water-view house in Victoria’s Uplands neighbourhood in early 2013 and moved in a few months ago after remodelling it from top to bottom.
One of the biggest draws is what Mary calls “the Garage Mahal” and its contents, which include a scissor-door Lamborghini Aventador with factory upgrade.
This car has 760 horsepower and a 12-cylinder engine, can hit top speeds of 370 km/ h, accelerates from zero to 60 in “well under” three seconds and is worth half a million dollars.
Parked beside it are a gleaming Ferrari 458 Spider with removable hardtop, and two collectible Corvettes: a 2006 high-performance 505 horsepower racer, and a 2015 Corvette Z07 racer.
Bob won’t say which is his favourite, but the Lamborghini’s emblem of a raging bull seems to tell it all. He acknowledges it’s the only car that has actually terrified him once, thanks to its speed and power. Pound for pound, he says, it delivers “the best growl and scream” of any car he has owned.
At first glance, the garage looks like an intensive-care unit with four cars on life support. But the Calgary oilman explains the cords hanging like IVs over the cars are trickle chargers, necessary because the vehicles are constantly drawing juice. “These cars have more computer capability on board than your average house and if you kill a battery, it’s not as simple as getting some jumper cables.”
Bob is full of car stories, but one of his greatest thrills was joining a gathering of about 400 Lamborghini owners in Nice for the 50th anniversary of that carmaker. “People came from all over the planet and I shipped my car over for the event.”
Owners took part in a Grande Giro Lamborghini Anniversario rally through southern France, where he said the police were a pain about speeding, but when they headed into Italy, it was a whole different story: “like a national holiday.”
Streets were jammed with screaming Italians who encouraged drivers to go faster and faster. They drove into Rome at “triple the speed limit” with a police escort and cruised around the sights, through Vatican City and past the Colosseum.
Having swanky cars in this Victoria garage is nothing new, Bob said.
The original home, built in the 1950s, didn’t have one, but in the late 1980s, a large garage was added by then-owner Murray Gammon, who built the Hotel Grand Pacific and opened the Classic Car Museum in 1971. His fleet of 40 vehicles included ones used by royals and owned by movie stars such as Clark Gable and Errol Flynn.
The next owner converted that space into a professional woodworking shop, and in the mid2000s, more changes took place when the CEO of an oil and gas company, Cequence Energy, bought the house.
The current owners spent six months planning their extensive renovation, which went far beyond the garage.
Many of the rooms were gutted and today, the interiors have plenty to intrigue visitors, including many pieces by Northwest Coast artist Jason Hunt.
Project manager Darren Wark of DBW Contracting said time was the biggest challenge. “We worked here for two years and during that time, we averaged 10 to 15 guys on the job every day. It was a huge amount of work.”
The deck alone took six workers five months to finish, said Wark, who was previously maintenance manager at Delta Victoria Ocean Pointe Hotel, but got into building and high-end renos in 2006.
The enormous deck, located above the garage, is one of the home’s most impressive features, with its glass guardrail and fire pit.
The previous deck’s membrane, guardrails and rotted flooring were removed and replaced with a new membrane and an intricate, geometrically patterned wooden floor.
“This is the kind of structure that can be used year-round,” said Bob of the outdoor covered kitchen with gas barbecue, dual-oven gas range, wine fridge, disappearing large-screen TV, custom lighting, heater and music system.
Changes inside the house were no less major.
The front entry was pushed out one metre and etched-glass win- dows were installed on either side and above the door, commissioned from Charles Gabriel Glassworks.
A subtly curved stairway — of rock, wood and glass-bowed handrails — was custom-made by Dave Huyck, who also did all the extensive new woodwork inside the home.
The staircase is lit from beneath by pressure-sensitive lights that turn on when the treads are about to be stepped on.
Mary designed the new kitchen, which was moved forward into the living space, totally restyled, and given a large butler’s pantry, which can be closed off behind another etched-glass door.
Floor-to-ceiling cabinets in this room slide out to reveal massive amounts of storage, and behind one door is a rolling cart fitted with all her large appliances.
“The old configuration was very odd, and I wanted to have more interaction with family and friends during meal preparation,” she said, adding cooking is her passion now that she is retired from her job in finance.
Glancing at her new custom cabinets, lighting and island topped with one vast, solid piece of granite, she joked: “I am a simple woman, now living an un-simple life.”
She explained the previous countertop was pink and orange, “like tiger ice cream,” and she went for a starker, sleeker look.
The couple turned a lower-floor bedroom into a gymnasium, added a spacious office and gutted the master suite. A two-person jetted tub and large steam shower with custom lighting, music and aromatherapy capability is now the centrepiece of the ensuite, along with Italian wall and floor tile with fossils.
The bones of the 6,000-squarefoot home (not counting the 2,000-square-foot garage) were good, but the Dales didn’t care for the finishing, so they worked closely with interior designer Brian Shuckburgh and late, great lighting expert Lowell Barnhart.
The two previously Hawaiibased experts came here to retire, but got involved with this project, “and loved every minute of it,” Shuckburgh said.
He chuckled about how the project evolved.
“It started when Mary called and wanted some help picking out a chandelier for the entry. It was so cramped, we thought about creating more space, adding some architectural lighting, new stairs, some wall space for art ... it grew from there.”
Needless to say, the garage is a highlight, with its refitted custom cabinets, multistage lighting system, epoxy floor, giant-screen TV and mural.
Wark brought in a huge boulder, too, that he found on the site and placed in front of the mural. “You can’t have a man cave without a rock,” he explained.