Part Four: A Year in the Life

The Cottage Makeover

2005: We had our commitment ceremony in front of the cottage.

A lot of back story here…. If you want to skip this part, scroll down to Start Here (not a link).

When I moved into Laurie’s house in the summer of 2005, a lot of changes were under way. We added two rooms to the house: a sun room on the main level and, after some skillful excavation under the house, a moon room (our bedroom) and a big walk-in closet downstairs. This new construction connected with the existing unfinished basement. The old part of the house was 99 years old.

The expansion of the house made it much easier for us both to live here (though combining kitchens was a challenge!), but there was still the issue of having four babies here during the day and all the noise and chaos that goes along with that. (For those of you who don’t know, Laurie is a family childcare provider.) Fortunately, Laurie had long ago converted her dilapidated garage into a studio cottage; she’d been renting it out for years. We agreed that I would occupy the cottage as a music studio and escape pod from children, essentially renting it from her in addition to contributing to the household.

This little 240 square foot space has been a haven for me, and it’s gone through many iterations over the years, depending on what I’m into. The cottage became a smaller version of the apartment I moved out of after 12 years. I hauled the family piano with me  – a full-sized upright that dominated the room (my nephew Paul now has custody).

I made a baked Alaska for Chelsea and Eva during my baking frenzy.

Over time the cottage has been a music studio, book and reading haven, art studio (collage and photos), meditation space, bakery, writing nook, teaching space, rehearsal space, guest room, nap room, recuperation area….   There is a lovely loft at one end that used to be my meditation spot and which, for obvious reasons, I can’t use anymore, so the big ladder leading to it was removed which opened up a lot of space. The cottage sits under a big old apple tree and our neighbors' huge English walnut tree, and it gets just a little morning sun, so on hot days, it stays very cool - a summer refuge.

Start Here if you skipped the back story.

It’s been a self-contained little space for the most part, with a kitchenette and running water. The one thing it has lacked is a real bathroom with a flush toilet, working shower and bathroom sink. (I used a composting toilet for many years, and lately have used a commode in a pinch; now I often have to go into the house to use the bathroom, which works alright when toddlers are here – it becomes a bit of a game for them when I wheel in - but doesn’t work so well with infants, which is the demographic now.

The other piece of this long-winded tale is that it has become extremely difficult for me to get to the downstairs bathroom off of our bedroom; there are a couple of steps up into the bathroom - and that’s also where the shower is.

So we decided to upgrade the cottage and have a real bathroom built. It involves a bump-out, adding about 20 square feet to one end of the cottage and includes a flush toilet, a roll-in shower and a sink, all accessible. We’ll also be widening the entrance, which is barely wide enough for the wheelchair now (I’ve managed to rip the door off the hinges a time or two), and hopefully upgrading the kitchen to make it a little more wheelchair friendly.

We hired an architect, who took precise measurements and drew up some plans; and we called on our contractor Neil, who with his wife Martha have done all our major projects. We love having them around – it’s the construction noise and dust I’m not looking forward to and will be escaping from for part of it (see Part Two).

It took a very long time to get the plans approved and permits obtained from the city. We had hoped to have the project completed by September when the new group of infants came, but because of the permit delay, it hasn’t started yet. Next week, we’ve been promised, they will begin.

Teaching voice; the upright piano was replaced with a more modest one.

Because everything needs to be moved out or stacked in a corner, the whole cottage will undergo a re-do. This will be the fifth or sixth in the 12 years I’ve been here, each iteration requiring a different configuration depending on what the focus is – music, baking, or art. It means being creative with space when you’re only working with a couple hundred square feet. 

So with luck, in a month or two the cottage will have a brand new bathroom; I'll be able to roll into it without smashing anything. As usual, I'm so grateful to Laurie for her skill in envisioning such things and then making them happen.

We're considering a bathroom-warming party. Want to come christen the new toilet??