You guys. The design of this house (our guest cottage) is so fun. We don’t even know what it will be used for, but we have some ideas for future features that will help us decide. If you want to take a peek inside my brain (which I’m not sure I recommend), here’s what’s going on there.
- My home office (and where I hold meetings outside of the house). I still have no interest in having an “office” where everyone has to come to work every day (there’s a reason we all chose typical office jobs), and I don’t want the expense (our office in Los Angeles was $5,000 a month). But no one on the Portland team likes to “work” from my personal family home (this is an unspoken agreement and no one complains, but the novelty has worn off). Of course you have to be indoors for photo shoots, but for meetings, writing, editing, etc., it would be great to have an area where the kids don’t make a mess or the dog doesn’t bark (we’re all currently working from home, except for prep and shoots). Most mornings I am busy preparing breakfast and school lunches before everyone arrives with varying degrees of success. So the second floor could be an office, the second floor a “break room”, and the “canning room” a potential podcast space (just throw it out there and slowly make it happen).
- Band/game room. Charlie plays drums and Elliott plays guitar, so this is the perfect place for them to rock out together. We love being “that home” for kids and we don’t take the responsibility of hosting lightly. So for this mom, it seems nice and safe (ideally in an analogue way) to create a room that she can decorate as a teenager. Do your neighborhood tweens and teens need this space?Obviously not. But while the helicopters aren’t flying, the situation is, “If we build it, they’ll be…safe.” (We’re big Jonathan Haidt fans here. Feel free to do so with safe boundaries).
- The chances of our elderly parents (or us) living. This could play out in a few different ways. If I ever need to care for one of my parents, I want to make sure I have a bedroom and shower on the first floor with minimal steps. This means a walk-in shower rather than a combination bath and shower.
- Plus (and an actual lifelong dream that I’ve already realized), if one or both of our kids want to raise a family here, for example (our grandchildren), Brian and I can move into a guest cottage and have the intergenerational family complex of my dreams!!!! Brian laughs when I mention this, but I’m serious. I want my kids to fly, live in big cities, and build meaningful, independent lives, but ultimately nothing makes me happier than being close to them and my kids. It will help, I promise! (I’m trying to tone down my enthusiasm so as not to scare them or try too hard or be uncool, but so far they both want to do this, lol).
- This is the place to stay while taking photos or renting a movie. We recently rented out our entire house (every room was used) for a big commercial shoot, and frankly, it’s a great way to make money (with very little actual cost or overhead). I’m really proud of this home and property, and I love sharing it with others (even strangers) more than anyone else. So we hope to continue renting for photo, film and commercial shoots without having to move the family completely (we were staying in a hotel with our dog mid-week, which wasn’t easy for everyone, but was totally doable). This is the third time I’ve loaned it to someone else (I had no involvement whatsoever) and it’s 100% worth it.
- Carefully selected fun events. We don’t want to make this too commercial, but if a friend’s child wanted to get married here, or someone wanted to rent this house out for a 50th birthday party, we’d totally consider it (we don’t know about permits or legal responsibilities, by the way, we’re not in a hurry, so we didn’t do any research). Therefore, having more places to sleep (and a bathroom that can be accessed from the outside) is something to consider. Just to be sure, we also considered the ADA design.
So, can we design this guest cottage to accommodate all of the above scenarios, although we don’t know if they will actually happen?Yes. But doing this exercise sealed our decision. This is where the biggest change has occurred…
New downstairs bathroom location
Initially, it was planned to create the simplest and cheapest bathroom under the stairs. It’s very small, but I wanted to make it cute. The sewer and water lines are connected in the corner of the kitchen, so it’s very easy to get it up to the bottom stairs of the house, which is about 10-12 feet away (our foundation repair team was planning on excavating to make room for the plumbing). But it will be small. Showers are up to 30 inches, which is viable and legal, but very small. Okay…but after that…Additionally, the kitchen will remain much smaller, using the same existing kitchen footprint (before refrigerators and dishwashers were invented). It was impossible to squeeze a small refrigerator, sink, microwave/stove, and dishwasher into that corner. To make it work, I was going to get rid of the range and dishwasher and use a 2 burner cooktop and countertop toaster oven as the “oven”. Again, all is well and still better than most apartments in New York, but then… I realized I had no idea what to do with the “garden shed” or blue ex-prop room. Essentially, we were trying to squeeze the two most functional and important rooms into the smallest space, compromising both significantly. On the other hand, do you have two empty rooms that aren’t actually being used? You could put the toilet somewhere else and use the space under the stairs for fridge and pantry space!
I pitched this idea a few weeks before the demo, but Brian shot it down as going against the original mission of the house: low renovation costs and just “making it work.” By the way, I’m not saying this is a budget or cheap project, as I’ll probably end up doing some extravagant designs. We really just want to work with what we have instead of opening up all the walls, rearranging the house, and spending money where we want it. However, while demonstrating (more on this in a moment), I resurfaced the idea and, with the help of my brother Ken (a contractor), was able to convince Brian that running an additional 10-15 feet of plumbing through the newly repaired foundation and into the original garden shed was actually not that expensive (I’m getting a quote now) and would make the house much better.
Brian was worried that the bathroom would be too far from the main area, but I didn’t have that at all. people will understand that. And we have a lot of large family/neighborhood/school events here, so we love having a door to the outside. It’s great to have a private party bathroom so people don’t have to go inside the house.
But do you want to know what really sold him? He promised to put a urinal in this toilet. Guys, men are very simple. Next time I should tell him this is our sex toilet and he would have given it a thumbs up right away. He’s really excited about the urinal and I’m really excited about making it work (I’ll post soon on how to make the urinal less uncomfortable).
Lastly…the toilet is located on the second floor.
Considering potential future uses also helped inform the decision to keep the toilet and sink on the second floor. Initially, we wanted to keep the first floor bathroom simple and eliminate the second floor bathroom. This is only a “one-for-one” exchange, so the same amount of permissions is not required (not additional). Adding water or toilets often affects sewer lines. But when we rebuilt our house, we basically had to upgrade our sewer line to the biggest one possible. So, although this requires additional permits, we believe it is important to have a powder room on the second floor in case someone wants to sleep there. There’s space, and it’s directly above the kitchen, so plumbing won’t be an issue (the plumbing is already there, but I’m not sure if it will be used). Also, it would have been very expensive to upgrade the sewer line to the road, so I would like to at least take advantage of that 🙂
Over the weekend, my kids and I stayed overnight at a friend’s house and started designing the kitchen and bathroom. Everyone is having a great time. I’m working on my own theory as to why this feels different to me, but I’m not sure if it will make you hate or love it (not the design, but the reason behind it). Please look forward to that too. Now that I’m finally in the flow, I want to write about it and think about it every day. I think this is a great sign of true alignment. More will be released soon!!
*Photo provided by: caitlin green
Source: Emily Henderson – stylebyemilyhenderson.com
