Recent work on the cottage

This is our bedroom. Aint she gorgeous?

Well, we’ve had the old girl painted. And we ripped up the carpets and refinished the lovely old oak floors underneath. She’s coming along!

Chris is in Paris and I’m going to join him tomorrow, so I won’t be thinking about much other than food and wine for the next week or so (like that’s somehow different from my normal life…) We’re moving to the little cottage the weekend after we get back. Can you say YIP!!?

See more pics on the Flickr feed at the bottom of this page.

Fuck you, Butler!

Isn’t the cottage looking lovely? Spring has sprung!

We spent last weekend in Richmond. We haven’t moved in and have no furniture, but that’s ok. There’s so much to do in Richmond, we didn’t spend much time at home.

We went to a great little dive bar, Bamboo Cafe, where we got a surprisingly great meal and watched the VCU/Butler game. Gotta love a town where ladies feel free to shout out shit like “Fuck you Butler!” repeatedly, both in the bar and on the street after VCU lost. We also saw this spray painted on a sign outside someone’s apartment. Love it. Not really loving the jean hotpants dark stockings look we saw everywhere. However, this look does make me, queen of the sweatpants, feel like I’m kinda dressed up.

Just loved the weekend down there, though it was quite exhausting and I slept most of the day on Sunday when we got back to the shack. There’s quite a bit of work we want to do to the cottage. We’ve decided to refinish the floors (oak under that there carpet) and also to hire someone to do the interior painting (just really tedious work that neither of us has time for right now). So all that should be done by the last weekend of April and we’ll probably move down then (after our long-awaited “honeymoon” in Paris!)

So April’s a busy month. But we should be down in Richmond fulltime in May and just in time for the Carytown 10k!

All you’d ever need, nothing more

Sometimes I think I’ve spent a great portion of my life pursuing an environment similar to this. This is the faun’s little tree hovel that is in “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe”. I remember looking at this drawing for hours and falling into deep and comforting fantasies about having such a place to be. It’s why I made a little reading nook for myself inside my closet when I was a kid. And why I loved our little hiding place under the stairs in the basement. And it’s why things like Dan Price’s little hovel and Deek’s Gotta-get-away appeal to me so much. Look at how sweet it is, to have all you’d ever need, nothing more, right there next to you. A fire, a friend, some books, a little something to eat and drink – that’s it.

Gotta get a Goddagidda-way

First project for the new place – building a Goddagidda-way. We’re gonna need this little thing, mostly because it looks like Chris’s daughter is going to live with us from about May till September this year. To put it simply, I’m gonna hafta get away!

This cute little thing is from Relaxshacks.com, created by my new crush Derek “Deek” Diedricksen. You can see this guy in action on his YouTube channel where he talks about all sortsa cool little house stuff.

Shed dreams

I gotta have a shed. A brand new, wooden, cottage-style shed. I gotta have it. We’re going to the shed place tomorrow to drool over stuff like this:

and this:

I have been developing an increasingly compulsive fetish around small buildings, mostly driven by this amazing dude who built a hovel that he lives in. He wrote a sweet book, Radical Simplicity, that I got at the library book sale a few years ago. He also writes a little zine called Moonlight Chronicles.

Anyway, getting off point a bit. Dan Price is a little extreme for me (well, he’s too extreme for Chris) but his life is just part of my ever-increasing fascination with living smaller and smaller. This is also partly a result of the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company and by what looks to be a rapidly growing subculture of people like me as evidenced by blogs like this and this.

Also, in my crazier moments  (shh, don’t tell Chris!), I fantasize about having a life like this.

Anyway, for now, I’d really like to have a livable “shed” in the back of my house – a place for storage but also a place to put guest overflow if the need arises. This is what I want – this is what I shall have!

Plans for the Little Cottage

We close on March 25. I want to do a load of stuff to the little cottage before we move in.

 Here’s my short-term wish list:

• Interior paint
• Poodle-proof back fence
• New garden shed
• Small garden
• New furniture
  • Futon/chairs for living room
  • Small desk for back bedroom
  • Futon for back bedroom
• New house stuff
  • Dishes
  • Cutlery
  • Pots/pans
  • Grill

And my long-term wish list:

• New siding
• Parking area in back
• New flooring in kitchen and bath
• Hardwood floors in living room and bedrooms
• A little firepit out back
• New railing on front porch

This is the little cottage

This is the little cottage. A little cottage I’m buying in Richmond, VA. It’s little – very little – but not really little enough for me.

The little cottage is about 720 square feet. It has two small bedrooms with a little jack and jill bathroom in between. The living room is little, too – 15′ x 11′. The kitchen is 11′ x 11′ but is updated, clean, and cute. It also has a gas stove – big plus. There’s a little mud room out behind the kitchen where there is a stacked laundry unit and room for pantry shelves. A little dog door is in the backdoor, which leads out to the main reason I bought this house – the backyard.

I have big plans for the backyard – a new shed, a garden, a fire pit. Already, the yard is pretty great. All sorts of plants – I have to figure out what’s what in the spring. A lovely stone pathway leading to the shed. Fully fenced so great for the pups. I’m soooo excited about having a yard finally!