Posts Tagged backyard cottage

Upcoming Projects

Here’s a list of smaller projects we’re contemplating for the near future. No particular order.

  • Finish work on hallway
  • Clean and organize basement
  • Build pergola roof
  • Seal up south shed windows and doors, run electricity to it, set it up as workshop
  • Wall in north shed rotted-out garage doors, replace rotted-out and falling-off person door
  • Run temporary lights and sockets to basement
  • Waterproof leaky parts of basement
  • Till and seed south raised area

Larger projects:

  • Replace the roof (we already have a contractor and estimate, just need to pull the trigger on it)
  • Build porch and re-route front entrance to existing closet (turning it back into a foyer/mudroom again)
  • Turn addition into master suite (this can be done in stages with the bathroom coming last)
  • Bump out back wall and enclose basement stairs into building envelope
  • Smart wire the house and create tech hub
  • Gut and refinish the library and living room
  • Retile the fireplace

“Someday” projects:

  • Finish basement, create laundry/plumbing room
  • Redo all the supply plumbing with PEX and a manifold system
  • Knock down the existing sheds, extend the foundations, and rebuild as garage & cottage
  • Replace forced air heating with radiant
  • Add a second story to the addition
  • Build a better patio
  • Redo the kitchen

Not that I’m going to be starting any of these right away, except maybe cleaning and organizing the basement. I really need a break.

Jen adds Yard Projects:

  • Clean out top bed and ready it for arborvitae planting
  • Continue building up the raised beds
  • Set the initial plans and start building my perennial garden
  • WEED! Oh goodness I need to weed. My beds are horrifically overgrown
  • Cut down strange bush/tree covering the library window

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I Can Haz Backyard Cottage?

Proving that Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels doesn’t have his head completely up his ass, he has proposed extending southeast Seattle’s backyard cottage ordinance to the whole city.

Our property is perfectly suited to having a backyard cottage — we could demolish the south shed, widen the foundation slab by eight feet, build a 20’x20′ house to one of many many plans on the internet, and privacy-fence off the southeast corner of the property. Voilà! Backyard cottage with parking space and (small) lawn!

I’d happily use it as a guest cottage, a mother-in-law (in the unlikely and hopefully far-off event that any of our parents need to live with us), a semi-independent living unit for our daughter when she’s sixteen or so, or (most useful in my mind) a rental unit that could offset our mortgage payment by 33% or so.

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