Reviving a Revival in Longbranch

Some people take cruises when they retire. I want to rebuild an old house.”

On his first-ever visit to the house on Whiteman Road in Longbranch last winter, Dave Minshall stood in the rain and watched water pour through the roof as fast as it was falling from the sky.

“It was raining inside as much as outside,” he said. “I turned right around and said, ‘Forget it.’ ”

But something about the house kept tugging at him.

Minshall, a recently retired Washington State ferry captain and lifelong sailor, found the home while browsing Zillow from his houseboat on Bainbridge Island. What he discovered was a dilapidated, Depression-era brick Tudor Revival tucked into 9.4 wooded acres only two minutes from Joemma Beach State Park, an 80-minute drive and a world away from ferry terminals and sea spray.

“It just had a cool vibe,” he said. “Most people would’ve walked away from it. But I like bringing things back to life.” After Minshall cleared away the towering blackberry brambles, he revealed a house that is a textbook example of 1930s Tudor Revival architecture: a steeply pitched gable roof, asymmetric facade, and a tall, prominent chimney. The brick exterior, still unpainted after nearly 90 years, has aged with character and grace. Though it will require some masonry work, its structure remains sound. In a region where lumber was easily accessible, a brick home like this is a rarity, making it both a local landmark and a frequent subject of neighborhood curiosity.

Minshall learned quickly that the community had been watching closely.

“They were worried someone would knock it down, clear-cut the trees, and flip it,” he said. “Once they heard I was planning to fix it up, people started stopping by and offering to help.”

Minshall said he is a history nut. For the past 10 years, he’d been living on and restoring a 90-foot wooden fishing boat built in 1912 — the same vessel featured in the logo for Olympic Peninsula Seafood. Before that, he worked for NOAA, served in the Coast Guard, captained coastal freighters, and ran a custom cabinetry business. He plans to do much of the house remodel himself.

The exterior will stay true to its original design — a new roof, repaired brickwork, and restored windows — but Minshall is transforming the 2,300-square-foot interior. Though the plaster walls with soft rounded transitions look the part of a vintage house, he’s reimagining it in the Craftsman style of the same era: exposed beams, wide wood moldings, built-ins of his own design, and natural finishes. Originally listed as a four-bedroom, two-bath house, Minshall expects to finish it with three bedrooms and one and a half baths, an arrangement that better suits both the space and his vision.

Based on some wiring and plumbing configurations, Minshall said he thought the house underwent an update in the 1970s, and remnants of yellow shag carpeting suggested he was right. Otherwise, most everything is original.

The place had sat vacant for nearly 20 years, and some parts had caved in. The back addition collapsed and had to be torn down. Layers of linoleum and flooring hid rotted beams.

“From underneath, the joists looked fine,” Minshall said. “But as soon as we started pulling up flooring, the tops just crumbled.”

The core of the house has sunk nearly an inch and will need to be leveled. Apart from a few rodent nests discovered between wall studs, there was no insulation, so the house would’ve been sweltering in the summer and bitterly cold in winter. And with lumber dimensions having changed significantly over the last 90 years, Minshall will need to get creative in making modern materials work within a vintage frame.

Even so, he’s managed to find beauty beneath the damage. While clearing out the basement, a friend discovered a 1936 Fiji penny, minted the same year the house was built. Likely placed there as a modest stand-in for the traditional mason’s token, it serves as a historical footnote and small treasure.

“Masons traditionally used to leave a silver dollar in the foundation, but I guess this was all they could afford during the Depression.”

He’s also found relics among the brambles: an antique McCormick’s horse-drawn sickle mower, a handmade dog-training trike, and even remnants of a long-forgotten orchard. “There’s apple, cherry, hazelnut, and even golden plum trees,” he said. “My neighbors used to come over and pick fruit when the place was empty. I want to bring all that back.”

Eventually, he hopes to grow enough to sell what he doesn’t use, maybe even take part in the local farm tour. “Everything I plant will be edible. I like the idea of creating a food forest,” he said. “And what we don’t sell, we’ll donate to the food bank.”

Minshall knows the project will take a while — he’s aiming to move in by fall 2026 to celebrate the home’s 90th year — but he’s not in a rush.

“This is fun for me,” he said. “Some people take cruises when they retire. I want to rebuild an old house.”

Minshall joked that he’s following in the old maritime tradition: when sea captains retire, they often buy farms to get as far from the water as possible. He’s halfway there. While he plans to trade in life on the water for life in the orchard, he’s not giving up the sea entirely. His century-old fishing boat, which he still lives aboard during the remodel, is fully operational and Coast Guard-certified.

He plans to turn it into a working charter boat, captaining occasional trips. It’s the best of both worlds — a grounded life surrounded by trees and history, with just enough salt air to keep his sailor’s soul intact.