Home Design Cottage

Cottage Home

Cottages of the past were always very much about porches, but putting the porches on the south side made these houses very dark. So the architect took the south porch and filled it with living space, but still expressed it in the roof line. This leaves just a corner of covered porch on the southeast where you can sit on a dripping day or stand out of the rain and check your boat on its mooring. Likewise the generous porch on the north is essential to really establish the entry and get the scale of the building down.

This house was featured in Christian and Christen Gladu's book, "Bungalow Plans". The Cottage is a shingled cabin designed for the shores of a beautiful harbor on the Maine coast, where it is important to have a house that talks the language of its 19th century neighbors. With its cottage–like appearance and features, as well as its compact shape, it would also work well on many other types of sites. This house was designed with the formal entrance at the opposite end from the view side, where the windows are located.

Cottage Design

Immediately inside the entry door is an entry hall with a high ceiling and the staircase. It gives one access to the downstairs bedroom and bath or the upper two bedrooms and their bath without traipsing all through the house. The main space of the house is a unified kitchen/dining/living space. The result is a sweep of space, yet there is also some separation with the dining area out in the front in what amounts to a bay. On the east side of the bay is a window, and on the west is a low wall that separates a small sitting area that could either be built-in seats or a small office. The 'living room' is a furniture grouping gathered around the fireplace and is focused on it. A lot of the action in most houses really happens around the dining room table, so why not put it in the view and let the living room look over it to get a view. The big deck that makes up the foreground of this plan is really dictated somewhat by the site. On this particular site it grounds this house to a rock ledge that slopes steeply down to the harbor, but your site might dictate something very different.