Year-end wishes

Hello all. We wanted to send off 2021 on a high note. We may be biased but think the Cottage wears the weather of the season well.

Wishing you all the best in 2022. Until next time.

A game of musical cabinets

Hello all. With the smelly carpet out of the way we turned to the kitchen. It had a good basic configuration but still there was some customizing we wanted to do. 

The cabinets were in a L-shape with an island in the middle. We didn't plan to alter that general layout. What we would change was to move the refrigerator from the far left to the far right, remove the dishwasher (we've never used one) in favor of additional cabinets, and double the size of the island.

With the refrigerator gone we took down the small cabinets that were above it, the narrow base cabinet between it and the oven, and the fan/hood and cabinet above the oven. That left us with a clean slate.

Thankfully the cabinets were in good shape, and we moved the two that had been over the dishwasher to the new space.

 

We decided not to include the fourth cabinet on far left because it crowds the hallway. The final step was the move what had been the island below this new row of cabinets. Now we just needed to tackle one last item before everything would fit in place.

Until next time.

Out with the old

Hello all. The very first thing we did, on the afternoon of the day we closed, was to have a couple guys tear out the old carpet. With the house empty this was the best time to do this. 

As you can see from the setup photos the house had carpet in most of the first floor and on the stairs. Aside from not loving the color, it had 20 years of lived-in funk plus, as we discovered, the previous owners put mothballs in the vacuum bag. We'd never heard of this but there is conflicting information about whether this is an effective method to fight fleas. Regardless of whether that's true, it served to spread the smell of mothballs throughout the carpeted parts of the house. Out it goes!

Aside from the pad shredding as the guys took it up, the first part of this was fairly straight forward.

Every carpet has tack strips along the edges to hold it down. What we were not expecting was for the installers to have used somewhere on the order of a bazillion staples to hold the pad in place. This was one reason for the shredding and left us a tedious mess to clean up. 

In good news there are a ton of models of staple removers. In bad news, we had to take each of them up one-by-one to clear the floor for installing hardwood. Each stair alone had 40-50 staples. You get to really know your house when you spend hours of quality time kneeling or sitting on the plywood subfloor.

Until next time.

Setting the stage, part two

Hello all. After our survey of the first floor, we'll move upstairs and outside.

Consistent with its use as a getaway/vacation house for the previous owner, there were many places for kids and grandkids to sleep, including a pair of bunk beds in one of the rooms upstairs.

In the other bedroom you can catch a glimpse of a little door on the right. It's one of four that lead into some storage under the roof that is typical of cape cods.

The upstairs bathroom, like the ones below, was in working shape. As we started the renovation it became clear that this room wasn't finished when the house was built. It has a pocket door, and the plumbing and drywall weren't done as professionally as the others. We have a theory that this may have been a big closet because there are none in either of the upper bedrooms.

As we turn outside the house there was one thing the owners tackled and one we would need to. The oversized garage (part used as a workshop) was like the house and full of stuff. Thankfully this was all gone by the time we moved in, except for a couple ladders and a wheelbarrow they offered to leave behind (and which we gladly accepted).

The yard isn't large (the green space beyond is owned by someone else that is supposed to remain undeveloped) and that meant the couple trees we have dominate the sunlight and view. They would need to be addressed, along with the homemade fire pit.

One last quirk of the house is that even though it has a new furnace there are electric heaters in every room. There were two different models for downstairs and upstairs, which reinforces the idea that finishing the upstairs came after construction. We have no need for these heaters and will tackle at some point.

Until next time, when we start to make a mess.

Setting the stage, part one

Hello all. In this and the next post we wanted to give a sense of the challenge ahead of us.

The cottage was in no means in bad shape. It's only about 20 years old and had only one owner. It was, however, designed to their tastes and not ours. Here's a survey of the first floor.

The kitchen reveals several things. Heavy use of window treatments and wallpaper molding. We like that it's nice and big with tons of windows facing the lake. The island is a great idea but not the right size.

The living room, well, needed no carpet and again lower key window treatments

There are two full bathrooms that are in reasonable shape. They'll mostly need cosmetic work, that includes a new floor.

Two nice bedrooms will need new flooring (replacing the carpet) and a host of other design changes.

Finally, the laundry/mud room will be getting some updating and refreshing, including new appliances to replace what likely migrated from the owner's primary residence.

Stay tuned for more!

Our new adventure

Hello all. If you cast your mind back you will recall that we embarked on a tear-down renovation of our house. We catalogued the highs and lows of that odyssey in parts one and two.

It seems every decade Hollywood reboots a classic for a new generation of fans. So have we.

We have found a new little place that we will be overhauling during the next (insert timeframe). 

Behold, The Cottage!

Among the many things that we fell in love with about this little place is the proximity to the water. The place where we took these sunset photos is about a five-minute walk away.

We hope you enjoy taking this journey with us.