Williams Lake Log Shelters Restored: Cedar Brought Back from Years of Sun

Some of the best-loved structures in a town aren’t houses at all. In Williams Lake, BC, the city maintains several large cedar log shelters where the community gathers for concerts, charity events, and graduation parties. After years of standing out in the open, those big cedar logs had taken a beating from the sun — so the city called Team Frontier to bring them back. Here’s how the project came together.

The Project: Public Gathering Shelters in Williams Lake

These shelters belong to the city of Williams Lake, and they earn their keep. Through the year they host live concerts, charity events, and graduation parties — the kind of open-air structures a community actually uses. They’re built from large cedar logs, with heavy post-and-beam frames and full log rafters carrying the roofs.

That constant public use is exactly why the finish matters. A structure the whole town passes through needs to look after itself and look good doing it.

The Problem: Brutal Sun on Exposed Cedar

Cedar is a beautiful wood, but left exposed it doesn’t stay that way on its own. Over the years, these shelters had been subjected to brutal sun damage. Ultraviolet light is hard on any unprotected wood — it breaks down the surface, pulls the colour out, and leaves logs looking grey, tired, and weathered instead of warm.

On a public structure that’s on display every day, that faded, sun-beaten look is the whole reason to restore. The cedar was still sound; it just needed to be taken back to a clean surface and given a finish built to stand up to the exposure.

Media Blasting Back to Bare Wood

The first job was to strip every log back to bare wood. Frontier did that with media blasting rather than chemical strippers or sanding the whole structure down.

Frontier’s media blasting uses crushed-glass media — recycled glass that’s 100% silica-free. It cuts through old, failed finish and sun-greyed surface wood without the toxic runoff of chemical stripping, and the spent media simply dissipates back into the soil. On this project, the crew blasted all of the cedar logs — posts, beams, and rafters — down to clean, bare wood before any finish went on.

Working on shelters this size meant getting up into the roof structure on lifts, tarping off the ground and surrounding area, and blasting every log surface overhead and at grade. It’s methodical work, but it’s the step that makes everything after it last.

Four Coats of Sansin SDF in Autumn Gold

With the cedar back to bare wood, the crew rebuilt the finish with Sansin SDF in the Autumn Gold colour — four coats of it.

Sansin SDF is an eco-friendly, UV-resistant wood finish that penetrates deep into the wood rather than forming a hard film on top of it. That’s what you want on exposed cedar: a finish that soaks in, protects against the same UV that caused the damage in the first place, and lets the wood breathe instead of trapping moisture and peeling. Building up four coats gives that protection real depth on structures that live outdoors year-round.

The Autumn Gold tone is where the transformation shows. It brings the cedar back to a warm, rich amber — the natural beauty the wood had before the sun got to it — and puts these community shelters back on display the way they were meant to look.

Why This Approach Works on Public Cedar Structures

The thinking here is the same on a city park shelter as it is on a private log home: strip back to bare wood, prep it properly, and build the finish back up with materials made for the job.

Media blasting gets the cedar clean without harsh chemicals near a public space. A penetrating, UV-resistant finish like Sansin stands up to the exact exposure that wore the structures down in the first place. And the finished result isn’t just protected — it looks the part for the concerts, fundraisers, and celebrations these shelters were built to host.

Have a Log or Timber Structure That Needs Restoring?

Whether it’s a private log home, a lodge, or a public structure like these Williams Lake shelters, Frontier travels to you. We’ve spent 25+ years bringing cedar and log structures back from bare wood up — media blasting, repair, and staining, all in-house.

If your logs are grey, tired, and ready for a refresh, get a free quote and we’ll talk through what your structure needs.