Tuesday, July 4, 2017

Thoughts on the cottage

7.3a

Someday that wall will be painted a pale green called seaglass, the couch will be different - either covered, or possibly replaced.  But for now, we're rolling with it.

I didn't mean for all of last week to pass by with only one post from me.  It was the first week we'd spent a significant period of time on the Cape and I filled most of my downtime with cottage cleaning.  I made the place habitable and then I needed a break.  The kitchen was a big project, and obviously important as we needed a useable space.  That took several days of fitting in small projects here and there.  Now that it's all set, I feel much more comfortable using it - more than I thought possible.  I don't prepare meals like I do at home but we get by.  (I need to take some pictures - after I hide the chips and cheese balls.)  

We're already into July and I've fully accepted that any and all painting will have to wait until September.  When we first bought the cottage, I had a list of projects and Rich sort of dismissed them as unnecessary.  It's just a cottage.  Now this is what I hear from him:  "That kitchen is coming out sooner rather than later."  "These floors would look so nice sanded down and redone."  "I wonder why they didn't put a baseboard on these walls. That's a simple project."  Um, who came up with these exact projects months ago?

We currently have a landscaper taking care of the backyard and adding a patio.  The backyard was a mound of sand from where the new septic had been installed, and was basically useless.  We've decided to hold off on the front yard for now until we decide what we want to do with it.  We have definitely decided to extend the fence between our cottage and the one to the right.  That cottage is strictly a rental and now we understand why everyone in the neighborhood asked us if we planned to rent.  The resident owners have tried to create a sense of community and you can't really do that with transients.  Rich and I pretty much agree we could never open up this place to the general public for rent.  Last night, there were six cars at the rental next door.  That cottage is slighter smaller than ours - three bedrooms and one bathroom.  An older middle-aged couple showed up on Saturday and they were quiet the first night.  The next morning, their college-aged children and all their friends arrived and it became a party house with "family packs" of beer.  They actually haven't been too bad but I'm an old lady.  For curiosity's sake, I've been browsing rental ads for the area and I've seen some with the clause that you must be 26 years old to rent.  Well, the situation next door shows that this doesn't really work.

I've taken a boatload of photos this extra long weekend but haven't had time to go through them all.  I posted a photo the other day on IG and I wasn't really happy with how it turned out but I was tired so I went with it.  Someone I follow posted a very similar photo the next day (I am in no way, shape or form suggesting copying) and hers was 10,000 times better than mine.  I don't know what happened but I've been so focused on other things.

I hope to share more of what we've been up to this week soon.

Happy 4th!

3 comments:

Bree at Clarity Defined said...

I took tons of photos on the long weekend too and have barely looked at them. Somehow though, I didn't take a single "real" photo yesterday.

Unknown said...

Looking forward to seeing you're photo's sarah, for what it's worth I've never seen you post a single bad photo on IG, i think we're our own worst critique sometimes

Melanie said...

That sounds just like my husband. We just moved into a new (to us) house and I have a very long list of updates I want to do which he nixed 80% of until we actually moved in and suddenly he has seen the light.

I very much enjoy your blog and the cottage transformation is especially fun to follow!