A beach hotel worth bringing back.
It started with a Facebook post.
While visiting Ocean Shores with his family, our friend Matt came across a beach hotel and posted a question on Facebook: did anyone want to “go in on a hotel”?
Greg saw it and said yes. Before long, Matt and Greg had put in an offer.
Anyone want to go in on a hotel?
A beach escape within reach of Seattle.
We loved the idea of having a hip, stylish place to stay at the beach, just a few hours from Seattle.
Ocean Shores sits on Washington’s Pacific coast, southwest of the city. Here was a chance to create the kind of place we wanted to escape to ourselves.
They saw a rundown hotel. We saw what it could be.
On our first visit, we looked inside the units. Some were rough. We asked a guest staying there how they liked the place. They loved the location, they told us, but the units were run down.
They were right. But we saw the glory of its 1960s beginnings: a mid-century beach hotel with a character all its own. We were in love with the potential.
Originally known as Gray’s Chalet Village, these A-frame chalets had been welcoming beachgoers since the 1960s. We wanted to honor that original vision of Ocean Shores—a stylish, modern place to go to the beach.
We couldn’t do it alone.
Seeing the potential was one thing. Bringing it to life would take more than the two of them. Matt was a designer and Greg was a product manager; they knew they needed help with architecture and marketing.
Greg’s longtime friend Nate joined to help with architecture, and Matt brought in his longtime friend Michael to help with marketing. Matt’s wife, Kim, also gave tremendous support in those early days.
That was the original team: friends bringing different skills to a place they believed in.
One chalet at a time.
Over three years, we remodeled the place unit by unit. The work went far beyond what guests could see: in year five, we were still replacing roofs and electrical panels.
Unit 4 tells that story. Its roof was leaking badly. We wanted to preserve as much of the wood paneling as possible, but ultimately the chalet needed a full gut renovation.
Unit 4, then and now.
Tidal House today.
Nine individual A-frame cottages. A new chapter for a place we fell in love with.
I’m in.