We’re at the beach house this week checking out progress. The house is definitely in its ugly stage. Before the mega-storm last week our contractor covered most of the windows. Add black paper on most of the walls, and you see why we haven’t been super inspired with the view. Except do you see all the pretty trees to the south? I love our little micro-forest.
There’s hope for the house too. The siding was dropped off Friday. Windows (crossing my finders) should come Tuesday. The roof is on. And we have the most darling bit of roof over what will soon be a tiny balcony for the master bedroom.
Our original plans (many moons ago) called for an ocean-facing upstairs master. When reality set in and the plan was downsized a bit, we opted to make all the upstairs ocean-facing windows be part of the public space, relegating the master bedroom to the east side of the house.
But then we realized that the jut-out in the east wall was the perfect place for a little balcony that looks south toward Alsea Bay and the bridge. A lovely little consolation prize indeed, and the perfect place to sit in the quiet and enjoy an early-morning cup of coffee.
The real balcony hasn’t actually been built, but since a temporary scaffold was necessary to build the roof, there’s a place to stand. You can see the scaffold and roof in the photo to the right. Saturday morning John and I got up early with cups of coffee and enjoyed our very first sunrise in the house. What fun!
Inside the house with the windows boarded up, it is a little harder to imagine the space, but here’s the view west through the living room. I think you can still tell that there are five big windows all in a row. Then there will be three shorter windows about the three center windows. Should be loads of light coming in, even on a grey day.
Below is a view looking into the kitchen where the biggest change to my original vision is a corner pantry. (Woohoo!!!! See it there in the corner on the left?)
Since there aren’t going to be lots of upper cabinets, this is going to be a huge help in fitting food and lots of the bulkier items that take up so much space in a kitchen. I am planning on leaving at least a couple shelves in that pantry completely empty so that guests will have a place to stash all the food that they bring to feed the crew for their stay.
On the right side of the photo you can see the framing ready for the 6 foot sliding glass door that leads to the deck on the south, as well as the space where there will be a window above the door. We are going to have light streaming in everywhere.
Another addition upstairs– we decided to turn the upstairs powder room into a bathroom with a shower. You can see the shower on the left. The window is covered with black paper at the moment and the space is not huge. But when you’ve got a bunch of people in the house, it’s going to be great to have one more place where someone can shower.
We also have the full bath with a zero-entry shower in the upstairs master, a tub bath in the downstairs hallway, and two shower baths in the two master en-suites downstairs. Plenty of bathrooms for all.
It is exciting to think of all the projects that our builder has planned for the next month, including windows, siding, and sheetrock. Our ugly duckling house is going to be a swan soon!
And as we move towards the install of all the pretty parts of the project, I’d love to hear from you. What kinds of things do you look for when you travel with friends and family? What do you think makes a home function well for a large group? I’d love to hear your ideas, and I can’t wait to give you another build update in November!!
I used to live in Waldport–and would love to come back and stay at your place someday!–and I think visitors could use help understanding things like how the tides affect watching waves come in vs being able to visit tide pools (and how to be safe doing both). Maybe also some ideas like spots to check out upriver if the coast is chilly and how big a temperature difference it can be. Just a thought!
Thanks for the great ideas!!
Mary
I love the idea of leaving open areas for renters to have their own food. Every time we stay in a beach house, we end up cluttering up the counters and/or rearranging kitchen cabinets to fit in our food. Having just had a family reunion this summer in a single big home (vs staying in 4 small condos), what seemed to work well was having more than one living space, so you were not on top of each other the whole time. It also gave the kids somewhere separate to play so the adults could talk. We also loved having a campfire area to do s’mores outside.
Yes, most of the places we’ve stayed in the past we’ve ended up cluttering the counters with food, since there wasn’t space in the cupboards, so those open shelves are a priority for me too.
Lots of outlets. We have a vacation cabin and there are usually 22 of us at a time….. With 1/3 of those being teenage girls. With cell phones and other charade devices…. There are never enough outlets. The other thing is towel dryers (racks for towels that dry). I have only seen these once at a beach house but with our large crew…. They were awesome.
I would agree with the racks. If you don’t provide racks, people will hang their wet towels on stuff that isn’t meant for wet things – like wood staircases/banisters, etc. I’ve seen this in the condos we’ve stayed in. They finally figured it out and covered the banisters with plastic covers to keep them from being wrecked further.
I second the comments about places to hang wet things. I’ve often wished for a wall of pegs or towel bars to hang wet swim suits and towels in the summer, and wet gloves and snow pants in the winter.
Great feedback– thanks!!