Monday, November 11, 2013

Complete

Hello! Welcome back to my cabin construction blog.  It's hard to believe, but construction is complete enough to obtain the Certificate of Occupancy, which was issued last week.  It's been an amazing ride. Still a bit of trim painting to finish up, and a few other minor details, but the cabin is totally livable!  Actually, we've decided that it is not a cabin.  We've decided it's a cottage now, just so you know.

A few quick thank you mentions are in order, and then onto the photos.

*Our friends Tim and Pam who own a beautiful house in Margaretville, NY (about 30 mins from our cottage) were kind enough to allow us the use of their home for lodging the past couple of years throughout this whole process. When you combine the number of trips we made Upstate in the year leading up to construction for planning purposes, and all the trips up during construction, their kindness saved us thousands of dollars in lodging expenses.  Thanks, Tim and Pam!

*My dad, having a great deal of woodworking experience, was the guiding force behind the construction  of the kitchen cabinets.  We worked on them over the course of about a year, spread out over several different weekend sessions.  I would not have had a clue how to build them on my own.  It was a "sweat equity" project that saved us thousands of dollars worth of custom cabinetry, but more importantly, it was a lot of fun working with him.  And the cabinets look amazing!  Thanks, Dad!

*Our General Contractor and building crew (three people total) were the most skilled, professional, and pleasant people we could have ever hoped to work with.  Seriously, they were amazing.  One anecdote:  In August, I was up there for a couple of days by myself doing some work and our contractor, who was also onsite doing some work one day, asked me if I had plans later that night.  I didn't, so he invited me to the county fair with him and his family and crew to see a demolition derby in which he sponsored a car being driven by one of the crew members.  It was my first ever demolition derby and it was a lot of fun.  I won't mention the contractor's name here, but if anyone is in search of a contractor in the Western Catskills area for construction, renovations, etc, please feel free to contact me.  You won't find anyone better.

Here's some pics:

The front of the cottage.   The deck runs the length of the house and is 12' deep.


The dining area.  


The living area.


The reclaimed barn board living room wall with Tracey stylin' & profilin.'


From the living area looking into the dining and kitchen area.


From the kitchen looking into the dining and living area.




The kitchen with open shelving and soapstone countertops.   My dad and I built all the cabinets.


View from couch with Mom and Dad in foreground. 




The round Morso 7648 wood stove.  This thing is awesome!  It has a very large glass viewing window and it heats via convection (as opposed to radiant) which allows for an extremely low clearance requirement to combustibles.  It heats the entire cottage, upstairs and down, so we don't have to turn on the electric heat when it's fired up.


This is the downstairs half-bath, tucked cozily under the stairs.  The vanity is only 9" deep and 18" long.  It's slightly bigger than an airplane bathroom, but don't worry, guys, you'll only have to duck when standing at the toilet if you're  taller than 6', 6."  




The downstairs hallway that leads to the beginning of the stairs (barely seen in this pic to the right of  the window).  The barn board wall is the reverse side of the living room wall.


The first few stairs in the back corner lead to a landing, then...



Then the stairs turn and lead to the upstairs hallway.


The upstairs hallway looking into the two bedrooms (the bathroom door is on the right).  We decided to go with carpet in the upstairs for noise reduction (and we probably wouldn't have had enough of the reclaimed floor boards that we used for the downstairs floors). 


The upstairs "master" bedroom.


The upstairs guest bedroom.  Just imagine an air mattress in there.  


Here you can see the built-in shelving beside the closet in the guest bedroom.  Because of the size of the guest room, it will be difficult to comfortably fit a dresser in there.  The shelving (which will eventually contain woven baskets, or something like that) is meant to provide storage for clothing items that would normally be stored in a dresser.  


We had originally planned to do the built-in shelving in the master bedroom as well but we decided against it, as you can see in the left corner.   Since we have plenty of room for a dresser in this room,  we decided that open space would be ideal for a hamper.


Upstairs bathroom pedestal sink





The upstairs hallway window, looking at the wooded hill at the back of the house.


The back of the house is where the parking area and main entry door is located. With the parking area in the back, cars are not seen from anywhere in the house, though if you wish to, you can see you car by looking out the windows at the top of the door.    


From the road.




From the deck, looking into the living room



From the deck, looking into the dining area.


I love this picture.  In the final weeks, the crew moved all dirt-producing work outside on the deck. Not exactly a cubicle.



And finally; Our trusty, dependable 1999 Subaru Forester which has served us remarkably well over the past year.  She already had a lot of miles on her when we bought her and we put a lot of miles on her in a relatively short period of time. She has not complained once.  We call her, Rhoda.


Well, thanks for taking the time to read this and thanks to all who have expressed interest throughout this process.  It was a lot of work but it's hard to believe how fast and relatively smoothly it all went.  For those of you who know me well, I don't have to tell you, I have had a burning desire to build a cabin, or cottage, or whatever it's called for a long, long time.  I'm not sure why, nor do I care to think too much about, "why."  But, THANK YOU for putting up with the endless talk of this for years.  I promise I will talk about other things now.