NW view. Walkout b'ment on W side of cottage.
W side of cottage. Retaining walls are done.
SW angle. Note bathroom window and HUGE picture window on ground floor.
SE view. Large picture window on S, window and door on E side of house.
View of Timber Lake from kitchen window on W side of cottage.
View from picture window (S). Denny and Barb's homestead with vineyard to the left.
View from bathroom window (S). Once again much progress was made during the week ending last Saturday. Or is it because we drive to the cottage once a week that it looks like a lot has been accomplished?
So the retaining walls have been poured and the framing on the main level of the cottage is up. This week we expect the rest of the framing to be up. Some footers (concrete columns) were poured for the front porch/4-seasons room. This will be on the front (east side) of the cottage, will not be over the basement, and will add some interest to the appearance of the cottage by changing the roofline. This room will be heated, have nice, large windows, have the main entrance door to the cottage, a small closet, and will probably be where the dogs and bird will be contained. As pets cross over The Rainbow Bridge, better furnishings can be put into this room and it can be converted to a much nicer living room.
The main level will have a cathedral ceiling because of the sleeping loft. It will be fun to watch this come together.
The well should be drilled next week, perhaps even on Monday.
We bought our paint last Sunday while it was on sale. When we got home we realized that we forgot to purchase the 3 gallons of paint for the majority of the walls! Bonnie will pick that up soon.
Decisions have been made about several items.
Water softener and reverse osmosis drinking system: Unfortunately we will not be able to afford Kinetico during this stage of building and can, perhaps, upgrade one day. Bonnie chose a Morton space-saver, on-demand regeneration water softener that we will purchase from Menards, while the reverse osmosis brand she chose is made by Whirlpool. She is hoping to use a whole-house pre-filtering system with replaceable cartridges to filter the water before it gets to the water softener and water heater.
Air conditioner: We will not be doing central air in the beginning, choosing, instead, to order a through-the-wall (not set in a window), 12,000 BTU, 230 volt, remote-controlled, Frigidaire AC that will be installed in the loft since cold air settles.
Water heater: Bonnie won the battle here and is ordering a Takagi tankless on-demand system which will need to be dealer-installed. With the average mean temperature in the area of the cottage being close to 50 degrees, to raise the water temperature to 120 degrees, it would produce 3.3 gallons per minute. We never have two water-use appliances going at the same time, so having enough hot water should not be an issue. To put this into perspective, Bonnie wants our readers to understand that the newer faucets and showerheads sold today are set to a Federal standard flow of 2.5 gallons per minute. Greener yet would be adding a regulator that would set the flow 1.5 gpm.
Heat: Heat will be Hydro-sil electric baseboard heat. It uses silicon in it's copper tubes which are C-shaped and wrap around once inside the baseboard. Bonnie ordered a portable, digital unit to try out on our Blossom Ridge porch to see how it does compared to the electric baseboard heat currently in the 4-seasons room. This unit will be used in the basement of the cottage. Other non-portable units will be purchased for the cottage - one each for the loft, bathroom, living area and porch. Bonnie will be calling to inquire about some fully-warranted, never-used, scratch-and-dent units offered by the company. Future heating plans call for radiant floor heat in the basement and, maybe even other rooms in the cottage. The tankless hot water heater is large enough to handle radiant floor heat when we are ready to install it - another reason that swayed Bonnie to go tankless.
Flooring: Bamboo, ceramic (Snapstone) tile, and cork will all be used in the cottage with bamboo in the main living area; some tile in the bathroom and, eventually, at the entrance to the porch; and cork up the stairway to the loft and in the loft.
Bonnie wants to remind people that we are using cork and bamboo because they are renewable resources. Bamboo is a grass that grows 3' per day and you can actually hear it growing. The graining in the bamboo we are getting runs horizontally within the plank and each plank has strips that are joined similarly to fine hardwood furniture using resins.
A decision was made to drywall and paint the porch even though we would rather go with knotty pine or cedar or some other type of tongue and grooved wood. That floor will be unfinished to begin with since the 3 dogs will be out there, and will be painted with floor paint similar to our current 4-seasons room on Blossom Ridge. The basement floor will also be unfinished for now and, perhaps, it will be painted also.
Studding will be put up in the basement and the decision was made to go with a vapor barrier and fiberglass batting insulation. Finishing of the stud walls is yet to be determined.
Additional framing will be done in the basement near the same area as what will be a small utility room. Bonnie plans to enclose another small portion of the basement for use as a wine cellar and it will include some bare wall on the north side of the cottage under the stairs. Cool and dark is the hope. This will also be left unfinished, to be completed at a later date.
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