The Start: The Future Whimsical Modern English Cottage

Today we are going to discuss one of our latest projects: our Whimsical Modern English Cottage!! And by “our”, I mean it is for our family. Yes, we typically do new builds, but this house has always been one of our favorites, and we just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to create a home for our family here.

A note about this house: a lovely family lived here with their kids, and the house was very warm and inviting. However, we are in the business of houses, and we felt that this was a wonderful opportunity to create a dream cottage for us. This house was not in terrible shape, nor aesthetically displeasing, but we needed to make some major adjustments to make it work for US.

All that to say–we are PSYCHED about this house.

Sarah got this shot of me and the big kids while we were doing a few progress photos. Ugh–love them.

So here are the things that we have been thinking about these past few weeks. We were not expecting to do this house, so much of the design has been on the fly…andnso has much of our discovery. Additionally, we unexpectedly moved out of our house into a rental. Life aint perfect, but it is NEVER boring. I wish I could show you guys perfectly  planned designed boards…but I can’t. I wish I could say that on this one, like most of our projects, we have got our timeline perfected, our orders ready and queued up, and the MINOR DETAILS just dying to be attended to. Heck, I am praying I can get my tile here in time! But so many thoughts are happening. So, soooooo many.

There is this.

Me, contemplating the case of the big OLD flue…this one was tough.

On the one hand, it added original character and charm. On the other, it was preventing us from opening up the kitchen into an overly large dining area.

And what are we going to go about this master bathroom? It is long and narrow…

And while this kitchen has decent square footage, it was dark and closed off from the living areas.

Here are the other areas that we will be gutting:

Harper, in her room. We discovered that there was very little insulation in her walls, so we had to strip the paneling–which DEVASTATED me. I love me some wood paneling. It’s gonna be really good after all this, though. REALLY good.

This overly large room, that I believe was used as a game room at some point, will be divided into two reasonably sized bedrooms for the boys…which they are STOKED about. They will share the bathroom that is open on the far right…more on that later too.

I know this is a snippet…and I promise so much more. This is going to be a fantastic project, and a fantastic home for our family. Can’t wait to show you alllll the progress and details!

Stay tuned!

***If not denoted, most of these pictures were taken by my wonderful friend and colleague, Sarah Baker Photos.