You guys. I am having a lot of fun designing this house (our guest cottage). We don’t even know what it will be used for, but I have some thoughts on future work that are informing our decisions. So if you want in my brain (I’m not sure I’d recommend it), here’s what’s floating around in there:
- My home office (and a place to hold meetings outside my home). I’m still not interested in creating an “office” where everyone essentially has to be present every day (which is why neither of us chose typical office careers), nor do I want the expense (our office in LA was $5k a month). But no one on the Portland team likes “working” in my private family home (this is unsaid, and no one complains, but the novelty has worn off). Of course, we’ll have to be inside for the photo shoots, but as far as meetings, writing, editing, etc., it would be great to have a non-kid mess/dog barking area (right now everyone works from home except for prep and shooting). Before everyone else has achieved varying levels of success, I spend most mornings busy preparing breakfast and school lunches. So upstairs there will be an office, downstairs might be our “break room”, and then the “canning room” might be a potential podcast space (just throwing it in there and slowly unfolding it).
- Band/Game Room. Charlie plays drums and Elliot plays guitar, so this would be the perfect place for them to rock out together. We love being “the house” where all the kids come, and I don’t take the responsibility of hosting lightly. So creating a room that they can live in as teenagers (ideally in an analog way) feels good and safe to this mom. Do the neighborhood children and teens need this space? Obviously: no. But when not piloting a helicopter, it’s a “if we make it, they’ll…be safe” situation. (We’re big fans of Jonathan Haidt here – Free rein with safe boundaries).
- Potentially aging parents (or us) to survive. This can go a few different ways. If we ever need care for one of our parents, we want to make sure there is at least a bedroom and shower on the first floor with stairs. This means a walk-in shower, not a bath/shower combo.
- Plus (and this is my true lifelong fantasy that I’m already manifesting), should either or both of our children want to raise their family here (our grandchildren), Brian and I could move into the guest cottage and we would have the inter-generational family compound of my dreams!!!! Brian laughs when I talk about this, but I’m very serious. While I want our kids to fly, live in a big city, have meaningful independent lives, etc., and ultimately I would love nothing more than to be so close to them and their kids. I’ll be very helpful, I promise! (Trying to be low-key about my enthusiasm so as not to scare them off or make the effort painfully rude or silly, but so far, they both want to do it, LOL).
- A place to rent during a photo or film shoot. We recently rented out our entire house (every room was used) for a large commercial shoot, and frankly, it’s a great way to make money (with almost no real costs or overhead). I’m really proud of this house and property, and I love sharing it with other people (strangers, even) more than most people. So I would love to rent it out for photo/film/commercial shoots without completely displacing my family (we stayed in a hotel with our dogs in the middle of the week, which wasn’t easy for anyone, but totally doable). This is our third time renting it out to others (I’m not into this at all), and it is 100% worth it.
- Selected entertainment programs. Although we would never turn it into something too commercial, if a friend’s kid wanted to get married here or if someone wanted to rent it out for a 50th birthday party, we would totally consider it (unsure about its permitting or legal liabilities, BTW, we’re in no rush, so we haven’t researched). So more space to sleep (and a bathroom you can access from the outside) is something to consider. I’ve also considered ADA designs.
So, can I design this guest cottage to work for all of the above scenarios without knowing if any of them are actually going to happen? Yes. But doing this exercise has made our decisions informed. Know the biggest change here…
New bathroom space on ground floor
We were originally going to make the easiest and cheapest bathroom possible under the stairs – teeny, teeny teeny, but I’d make it beautiful. Sewer and water connect in the corner of the kitchen, so getting it down the stairs to the house, say 10-12 feet, is pretty easy (our foundation repair team was going to dig up to make room for the plumbing). But man, it will be short. The shower will be a maximum of 30″, which is doable and legal, but very, very small. ok… but Then…Additionally, using the existing kitchen footprint (before the invention of the refrigerator and dishwasher), the kitchen will remain significantly smaller. Trying to fit a small fridge, sink, range or cooktop/stove and dishwasher in that corner was impossible. To make it work, I removed the range and dishwasher, and we were going to build a 2-burner cooktop and countertop toaster oven as the “oven.” Again, all well and good and still better than most of our apartments in New York, but then… we realized we had no idea what we were going to do with the “garden shed” or the blue former prop room. So basically, we were trying to cram the two most functional and important rooms into the smallest space, compromising both of them significantly. Meanwhile, we have two empty rooms that have no real use? If we move the bathroom elsewhere, I can use the area under the stairs for fridge and pantry space!
I brought up this idea a few weeks before the demo, and Brian rejected it, saying it went against our original mission for this house, which was to have low renovation costs and just “make it work.” BTW, I’m probably doing some pretty cool design stuff, so this doesn’t mean this is a budget or cheap project – we really want to work with what we have, rather than opening up all the walls, rearranging the house, and spending the money where we’re excited to spend it. But while we were demoing (more on that soon), I brought up the idea again and with the help of my brother, Ken, (who is a contractor) we were able to convince Brian that bringing an additional 10 – 15 feet of plumbing to the former gardening shed through the newly repaired foundation really isn’t that expensive (getting quotes now) and would make the house look much better.
Brian was worried that the bathroom would be too far from the main area, but I wasn’t worried at all. People will find out. And I love that it will have a door to the outside since we have a lot of big family/neighborhood/school events here, and it’s great to have a dedicated party bathroom so people don’t have to come inside.
But you want to know what really sold it? I promised them a urinal in this bathroom. You guys, man, you are very simple. Next time, I should just tell him it’s our sex bathroom, and he’ll get over it a lot faster. She’s very excited about the urinal, and I’m really excited to make it work (I’ll post soon how I make the urinal not look disgusting).
Finally…we’re putting the toilet up
Going through this exercise of potential future use also helped us decide to put the toilet and sink upstairs. Originally, we thought we would keep it simple with the downstairs bathroom and finish the upstairs one, which would not require the same amount of permitting since we would just be swapping “one for one” (not adding). Sewers often result when you add more water/toilets. But when we rebuilt our house we already had to upgrade our sewer to basically make it the largest possible, so although it requires additional permitting, we think it’s important to have a powder room upstairs, should anyone sleep there. We have the space and it’s directly above the kitchen, so plumbing isn’t an issue (the line is already there, though unsure if it will be used or not). And hell, upgrading the sewer to the street was so expensive that I want to use it less and less 🙂
Over the weekend, after an overnight stay at a friends house with both kids, I started designing kitchens and bathrooms, and y’all, I’m having so much fun. I’m working on my own theory as to why it feels different to me, I can’t tell if you’ll hate or love (not the design, but the reason behind it). So stay tuned on that also. I’m finally in the flow and want to write about it and think about it every day, which I think is a great sign of real alignment. There will be more coming soon!!
*by photos Caitlin Green
