Entry #15. Cottage is Renewed.

Renewal is an experiment. What will life be like if we choose to live in this house, on this street, in this neighborhood, in this city, and commit to doing what we can to bring it (back) to life? And that impulse drives even the simplest of projects.


This was a piece of an old, broken-down piano. What sort of life can it have if we choose to commit some time, creativity, and effort to it? It lives on as a sideboard in the cottage dining room, still bearing proudly its original piano label, right there, dead center of the top. It's as though it is saying "I may no longer be a piano, but there is life in me yet".


Cottage is renewed. This is cottage.

Entry #13. Cottage is Renewed.

The turquoise shelf was a piano. The “R”-wall was some folding doors between someone’s kitchen and dining room. The lamp, well, that’s always been a lamp, but it was once cheapy brass with a terrible accordion shade.

What all these things have in common is that they were trash. And now they are here, in the cottage living room.

Cottage is renewed. This is Cottage

Entry #4. Cottage is Renewed


This door leads nowhere, really. Behind it is a broom closet not big enough for a broom. The door was originally a home-store louvered piece that was out of step with the rest of the kitchen. It worked, but it didn’t work.

It would have easily fit in the dumpster behind the cottage, but…

We cut out the two panels of louvers and replaced them with 1x4’s; the boards on the top panel were set flush against each other, the lower panel boards were spaced apart a half inch or so. And that’s Cottage; an ugly louvered door gets better treatment than it deserves, an insignificant door adorned with an aesthetic gift, beautified. And the trim around the door will eventually get painted, too. Give us a minute, seriously.

Cottage is renewed. This is Cottage.