Cottage Life

Yesterday, May 2, 2012, work on our cottage began in earnest.
Nothing was built or anything, but the boys (my husband with our contractor and his 2-guy crew) went up and cleared the trees off of the building site. On May 21 a fellow is coming to install our septic system (yes, this cottage will have a septic system due to our being way too by-the-book and sticking to the letter of the law) and clear an access road down to the site. He will also be flattening out the site a little bit, so our cottage doesn't have to soar up into the sky on its piers.
Soon after that, we are having the piers put in. We will be using these things called 'Technopiers' as our foundation – they are like big metal screws that are drilled about 5 or 6 feet into the ground, with metal posts welded on top. Then you put wooden posts on top of those. It's relatively easy peasy to install; apparently it should take two days due to the welding.
After that, the floors go in. Soon after that, the walls go up.
Sheesh.
A few months ago all of this was giving me a slow-mo heart attack, like how on earth can I set myself back another 100k or so in debt when we've come so far in clearing what we've already got? I find it crazy. I think it's a bit irresponsible. I think we're flying by the seat of our pants a little bit finance-wise. But what's life without risk? Other friends of ours have risked more on their projects, gotten themselves deep into holes for various passions and outcomes. It's our turn now to leap into the void.
This cottage we're building is not to be a palace. I estimate it will be approximately 800 square feet on the ground floor, plus a sleeping/playing/storage loft. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, a great room that comprises the kitchen, dining, living, and entry areas, a screen porch and a deck. Our floor plan is a sort of wide T-shape, simply because our hilly site makes it easier for us to go wide rather than deep. This plan was arrived at after I(and hubby) mock-designed about 658 different floor plans, finally made official by my architect brother-in-law, so if it works out I will feel a great deal of pride in my design. It will require a lot of elaborate stairs to get to, because of said hill, but it is my hope that we will eventually get to the point where one will be welcomed by lovely (natural, woodland – natch) paths and steps and plantings rather than just steep wooden stairs.
Hubby and I are not the kind of folks who enjoy clearing land and chopping down trees. On the contrary. We would have built a treehouse if it had been at all feasible. We want to leave a band of trees between us and the neighbors (our septic bed clearings are sort of beside each other) for privacy etc., but luckily the neighbors are family. The builders and septic-installers will need an access road in order to reach the site, so there will be some destruction there, but as soon as we move large furniture into the cottage (hopefully late July) I can start healing that land with small local tree transplants. We are fortunate in that no difficult decisions really have to be made with regards to trees; only one nice tree was taken down in yesterday's adventure: a maple that went super red every fall. Aside from that the forest in that spot is a dense mess of little trees that have choked out the light for so long that the only thing that grows there are mushrooms. We are trying not to clear too many trees overall but the reality is this: the trees we've got down there are kind of shitty. They are nasty birches – most of them dead on top – and a bunch of small hemlocks. Without some more cutting, that lot is going to be a nasty blackfly-and mosquito-infested mess and a safety hazard. The forest floor was just a pile of fallen branches and decades-old garbage from ancient campers. Once the building is complete, I am going to replace all that scrubby crap with some nice small white pines and junipers, abundantly available along the roadside that leads to the property, and lots and lots of blueberry plants. Near the water we have a stunning giant white pine tree that will be preserved (we aren't building at the water's edge) so as long as that's standing, I'm happy.
An interesting factor in all of this is that the cottage lot is off-grid. Not necessarily because we wanted it that way (though it is an advantage in my mind), but because nobody on our private gated road has power – the nearest hydro pole is 5 km away, beyond the gate. This impacts everything we do, both minor and major. All appliances we have to buy have to be propane, and man alive, propane fridges are freaking expensive. Hot water has to be supplied through a propane on-demand tankless heater, from water pumped out of the lake and stored in a tank. Lights will be propane, and we will read by the glow of solar lamps from Ikea. Eventually we want to invest in a solar panel to run some lights, at least 12v lights, but for right now the budget doesn't allow for that system. Having no power also means we won't be able to make normal decent toast, so we are currently looking into investing in one of these babies because we like toast with our eggs. There is, ironically, better internet and cellphone reception at our cottage than there is at our house.
The cottage will be an interesting construction project to watch: technopiers in the ground, then SIPS panels (dense Styrofoam/plywood sandwiches) become the entire floor, then on top of that go the walls which will all be interlocked square logs. They go up like Lincoln Logs – corners are simply chopped off with a chainsaw, windowholes cut out with a chainsaw and windows popped in – so my builder estimates the entire thing could go up in as fast as six weeks. The longest parts will be the roof and the ceiling, because the insides will all be tongue-and-groove and angles and this and that and it's finicky. My builder does fantastic work, though – he is a real wood artist. He's 26 going on 56 and I trust him to do a beautiful job.
So we are biting the bullet and building this thing. The idea is to have it paid off by the time I'm 45 or 50. It is to be Nora's inheritance and our Plan B, in case our everyday house crumbles into the ground or is carried off by ants someday. It is also to be a spot that we want our friends and family to enjoy, as the normal rigors of everyday living will hopefully be lessened – or at least that's the idea. It will need to be cleaned and maintained, secured and insured, like everything else but at least it's small, it's wood, it has no elaborate systems which can fail, it costs very little to run, and it's on a lake.
I want to go there right now. I have booked off two weeks in mid-August and our intention is to go there and enjoy ourselves. Some work will still need to be done, but hopefully by that time we'll also be ready to cook, eat, swim, play games, sleep, listen to the loons, talk, drink coffee, relax and stare at the water through the trees.