We bought the farm in October of 2020. It was a pandemic, we had lost our minds, and now we owned a 7 acre farm. We knew renovating the cottage was our number one priority. We planned on our podded parent’s ability to live there and help care for our 2 year-old.
Although the Main house and the Cottage had been rented monthly throughout the entire summer, we weren’t sure how anyone had stayed in the cottage in the condition it was in. Sure it wasn’t falling down, but it was infested with spiders and squirrels! (More on that later…)
It doesn’t look bad, you say! That’s what we thought too. These are the photos our realtor took for us when we first saw the property. We figured there wasn’t too much to do, just some paint and a few appliances!
The first thing we did was hire professional hard-core cleaners to clean everything from top to bottom to prepare for painting. Then the exterminators to deal with our squirrel issue, and the gopher hole our little one found!
We found out we had a particularly pesky breed of red squirrels using the cottage as their nut storage. Because of the old foundation, most of the cottage and attached shed had to be trenched and wire mesh secured around the bottom. Around the fascia and metal roof line had to be caulked and sealed. This was an immediate $4k expense, on what was supposed to be a simple repainting job. After having seen the whole process done by professionals, next spring I’ll do the same thing around the old sunroom/office attached to the main house. Only this time it’ll cost more like $200.
Back during Hurricane Irene the farm flooded, and the cottage had a new floor and 4 feet of drywall redone. The seams of the new drywall were quickly filled and so every room needed more mudding. I was also doing a quick job, trying to get the place ready to be lived in. So it still needs a good couple coats to be perfect, but we weren’t going for perfect…. yet! The floors also got sanded, because the stain was really dark, and we wanted to lighten and warm the cottage up!
The previous owner had installed pine boards and used Masonry nails to mimic a really old plank floor. Which is exactly what I would’ve done, so we were happy to see the floors cleanup nicely!
The first room I really started painting and working on was the kitchen. I loved the old white cabinets so I took them apart to sand and repaint. I removed all the hardware, boiled them and scraped off the layers of old paint. We went with a light blue for the walls and “simply White” for the trim. I removed the sink cabinet to make way for a new layout with more cabinetry. The fridge that was left for has a chewed up wire and was pretty gross. So we removed it and got a new small vintage replica from Unique Classic.
Here are the after photos of the kitchen close to completion.
The small office completed! This is the only room that really did just need paint and a few more pieces of trim.
I could not wait to restore the clawfoot tub in the bathroom. It felt like such a gift. I’d restored a tub like 15 years ago, and was excited to get the chance to do it again. We went with a camel color in the bathroom, because it’s light and warm and goes great with the blue in the kitchen and the blue we chose for the office. The tub was painted a slightly darker camel then the walls.
After many hours/days of sanding the tub came out pretty good.
We needed more sink room, as this is the only bathroom in the cottage. So we went with a double basin sink. All the bathroom fixtures were changed to gold. The mechanical closet had just a sheet and rod covering it. So I built a simple plank board door.
I left the wood slat and shelf above the tub, which was done by a local craftsman, who has used planks from an old Silo that had once stood on the farm.
Here is the nearly completed bathroom.
The living room got its most dramatic upgrade with stone facing on the old cinder block chimney and a new wood stove.
partly aesthetic and party practical. The cottage is headed by electric floorboards. Since we planned on renting it out in the winters, the wood stove provides a much cheaper alternative.
The completed living room.
