FirstDay Cottage
Wow, has it been that long since I worked on this site!? Well, this is my attempt at finishing.
We are fully moved in and now at the point of repairs (rather than building). The finished house looks like this:
Please check through the picture galleries for more updates. Thank you all for stopping by!
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And Finally, on June 26, 2006, there was only one. For those of you who have stopped by several times, yes, the house is done. I've been meaning to update this page for a long time now, but life gets busy.
As you can figure, we had moved in by the time the old cottage was down, but still had to finish the basement, get grass growing in my yard, add the side porch and expand the front deck to the proper size, working hard to finish before my extended building permit ran out of time.
Please take a look at the updated Picture Gallery for the full story.
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YES, some good news to tell! 10 months after a bad roof job (If I knew then, what I know now)... We have just gotten the issue resolved. We had to give up resolving the issues with the original roofers, as they proved to be completely untrustworthy, but we were able to find a good local metal roofer who was willing to take it all down and put it back right. We're close to finishing the project now, as the electrical and plumbing were held up by the leaks, as was some of my finish work. (Electricity and water - bad mix - and the plumber only wanted to put the waste pipe through the roof once). Next week the we take on the next steps, and move forward to completion.
Here is how the roof now looks - there will be metal rake boards added next week, that will tie the ends of the roof down to the sides as we get a lot of wind off the lake.
I've also updated the picture pages - we made a lot of progress inside, even while dealing with the leaks :)
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Ok, finally, an update to the site! To all those that graciously stopped by, here is what I've been doing around the house all Winter:
Storm after storm has come through - but today (April 7th), the lake has thawed, and we're back at the project, without shoveling out daily.
Please stop by the Picture Gallery for updated progress photos.
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Hello, just a note to let you know who we are, and what this site is all about.
We are Anne-Marie and Phil Fontaine, and we are building our FirstDay Cottage.
My wife spent her summers at her Grandmother's cottage on the shore of Lake Attitash in Merrimac, MA. Six years ago, we had the good fortune to be able to move into the 100 year old cottage, and so we did. Soon after, it became evident that changes would have to be made, and after careful consideration, we decided to build fresh, as there were just too many challenges to overcome with the existing structure.
What a can of worms! Small house lots, the need to keep a roof over my family, zoning and conservation committees, EPA, and family history to deal with!!!
It took five years to make up our minds on what we liked / disliked in a home (I believe Anne-Marie has 900+ house plans printed off and notated). After careful scaling back of our dreams to match our reality, I stumbled on a newly created site for FirstDay Cottages. They had all the right things going for them, they were the same scale as my current cottage, they were all wood, flexible floor plans, very importantly, they could be built on our budget.
Please check out the picture gallery for our up to date progress, I've also added a timeline diary under What's New to keep pace with our progress, with links back to the photos.
This is the house we are building:
Thanks for stopping by.
Phil Fontaine