Shagadelic baby ...

You know how in my last post I said that nothing unexpected had reared its ugly head yet? That wasn't completely true. Something frightening from the 70's was discovered lurking under our floor. Red. Shag. Carpet. 'Nuff said. What makes this discovery even more shocking is the fact that when two of the support posts and our fireplace hearth were installed they were put right on top of the carpet! Who does that?! Really. I couldn't imagine that it would be all that difficult to find a utility knife and cut out the material on top of the subfloor when you're about to install permanent structural stuff.


Our crooked cottage also has another throwback to the swingin' 70's. The hot tub room. Well, what was the hot tub room. Our familyroom is completely lined, walls and ceiling with cedar planking. It smells like a large sauna. Our real estate agent told us that the room in decades gone by also sported a hot tub. This place must have been party central ... hot tub, fireplace, door that locks from the inside ... all that's missing is the disco ball, but we're sure we'll find it here somewhere.

Cool finds ...

When you start taking an old house apart you expect to find a few nasty little surprises. *So far* we've been lucky and nothing unexpected has reared its ugly head. But we have found some cool little surprises. Here's my top 5 funky finds in the Crooked Cottage ...

1. Super Sweet Sconces!

We have a pair of these babies flanking the fireplace. While the bases are somewhat hideous I love the pressed glass shades. We will be rehabbing these little gems with new bases and wiring, and they will then return to the fireplace once we have our new mantle built.

2. The Shell Shade:

This is the light in our kitchen. When we first saw it we thought oh, gawd, that is really tacky. Who would put up that cheesy plastic, faux-tiffany thing?! Then we looked a little closer. The shade on the fixture is actually made of thin sections of shell! What is more suiting to a beach house than that? So, this too will be revitalized. We will replace the kitchen light, clean up the shell shade and give it a new life as a pendant fixture in a reading corner.

3. The Master Door

This is the door to the master bedroom. It is made of tongue and groove pine planks. The latch is similar to one you would put on a gate. It's cute. Not super private though ... it's only about 3/4 of an inch thick.

4. Reclaimed Shelves

We have discovered these shelves all through the cottage. It would appear that at one time all of the doors were like our master bedroom. It would also appear that at some point someone decided to chop them all up and use them for shelves in all of the closets (you can still see where the hinges were on many of them). Recycling at its finest, but what a shame to ruin all of those charming doors!

5. The Breathtaking View!

OK, so this was no surprise. In fact it's the main reason we bought the place. But I just had to share. The first one was taken from our front yard and the second from the rocks about 100' from our property. Whenever the going gets rough we will use this to remind ourselves why it's all worth it. We are so very fortunate.

So here we are. After only two years in a brand new house we have packed up the kids and moved to an old house by the beach. Are we crazy? Probably. But life is an adventure and we are up for the challenge. This will be the journal of our journey in restoring this diamond in the rough.

The picture in the blog header was the original cottage. We were told that in the 1970's it was jacked up, a foundation put underneath and an addition built on the back. The cottage was then used as a year round family home from that point on. This is what our home currently looks like.

Why the "Crooked Cottage"? Because it is! Due to some questionable structural work our house sags slightly in the middle. There is also a hump in the livingroom floor because of a poorly supported post that has dropped. The first order of business is getting crawl space specialists to jack up the support beams under the cottage.

Well, that's actually the second order of business. The first was tearing out some retro ugly that had to go. We're talking wall-to-wall ceiling tiles. Before we even had a box in the door Mike had the livingroom ceiling torn down. The kitchen was next. The carpets also found their way out the door relatively quickly.

It certainly has been a chaotic move-in!