Our Mountain Cottage Retreat, One Year Update

It's hard to believe that we've had a whole year of enjoying the beautiful view on the porch at our mountain cottage. Time has flown by so quickly. We've learned a few lessons in the past year about having a house in the mountains and all the trials and tribulations (and blessings) of owning a house in a truly rural setting.
A year ago this week, we set out to transform a tiny little mountain cottage into a lovely little retreat.

What's it really like to own a second home retreat?
Well, today, I'm going to show you the good and the bad- the pretty and the downright ugly.
I'm going to keep it real and show you that owning a 2nd piece of property isn't always easy.
We haven't accomplished as much as we would have liked, but things take more time when the house is two hours away, you can only visit on half of your weekends, do nearly everything yourselves and have a pretty small budget.
Having said that, we've worked on quite a few projects, which I would like to share with you today.

But first, here's the view from the back porch where we take our breaks and where Mr. DIY and I share meals when the weather is nice.
We never tire of the scenery and our view of the Blue Ridge Parkway makes it worth every sore muscle.

Where to begin...
Oh, yeah, at the beginning...
I shared this photo on Instagram on the day we made the offer. We have two porches at the mountain cottage and we call this one the View Porch. Mr. DIY confusingly calls it the front porch, which makes sense if you look at the house plans, but the house was placed on the land a little strangely and you enter from the porch on the other side of the house through the laundry room. I call the porch in the photo the Back porch or View porch. To clarify things, it really isn't a back porch, since there isn't a backyard- the house doesn't face the street either and sits kind of sideways on the land.
Confused yet?

Taking down wallpaper in the upstairs and downstairs bedrooms was our first project.
Grrr. I hate removing wallpaper and therefore I hate wallpaper.
I will never. EVER. install wallpaper in my home.
Here's what the bedrooms looked like before.

Upstairs Bedroom

Downstairs Bedroom
Getting these rooms to this point was no easy feat as we suspected the previous owners were smokers and the gunk on the walls made it seem like they never cleaned the house. The walls had to be washed down with vinegar and primed with an oil base primer before painting.

Soon after we finished painting both rooms, we realized that we HAD to have a bathroom upstairs and started ripping out the closet.
The closet before:

Remodeling the bathroom took us 11 months to finish, but in our defense, we took 7 weeks off from Thanksgiving to January, plus we did a whole bunch of projects in between.

Whenever you purchase a home, there are always a few not so pretty projects that eat into your budget like replumbing the whole house after a few pipes burst and sprung a leak after one of the coldest winters.
We didn't take precautions to prevent this from happening because Mr. DIY wanted to replace the old plumbing anyway. Still, it took up a whole weekend (thank goodness the house is small and there's access in the high crawl space beneath the house.

Then, there were the gutters...
Would you believe that the previous owners never put gutters on the house in the 27 years they owned the house, when a good rain left standing water in the high crawl/storage space under the house? Installing gutters took care of that problem immediately.
We had a local contractor install the gutters on the house since it only cost about a hundred dollars more for him to do it and he had it done in an afternoon.

Now the really un-pretty part of owning a piece of property where people didn't clean and had no regard for their neighbors...
We spent some time picking up garbage that the previous owners threw in the woods. The problem was that we could see the garbage from the house and it was ugly. We picked up this junk, piled it in the trailer and took it to the dump. We estimate there are at least 5 more loads this size that still need to be retrieved from the woods.

A big chunk of cash was spent grading the driveway, installing a big, new drainage ditch and spreading some new gravel. Then, after a couple of huge rains, a bunch of it ended up at the bottom. It still needs some work. We're hoping to do a little more grading, add a little more gravel and if we're really lucky, next Spring we might even put some asphalt down. This is not a diy project!

In late Winter, we planted several fruit trees; apples, pears, plums, peaches, almond...
...we also planted some black raspberry and blueberry bushes.

Oh, did I mention we had to have a few big trees cut down , mulch around the trees and put up 3 layers of defenses against critters before and after planting said trees???
Just to give you some perspective, the fencing around the trees is 5 feet tall.

We were so sad to see the big oak tree by the view porch cut down. It nearly broke my heart when the guys arrived to cut it down, but it was 5 feet from the house and was starting to crack the foundation. When I looked outside and saw that the trunk was rotted out in the core for several feet, I was a little relieved that we ended up cutting it down. Several of the trees we cut down were like that too. Better to bring trees down safely than for them to fall on the house during a storm.

Springtime brought more work outside. I cut down a bunch of little pine saplings along the edge of the woods. I have a feeling I will be fighting these for many years to come...

Meanwhile, we kept one foot in front of the other and continued working on projects upstairs...
There are more projects upstairs than in any room we've done EVER!

The Worlds Smallest Half Bath inside the upstairs bedroom and those projects include installing rough and final plumbing, rough and final electrical, the tile floor, the Pottery Barn Inspired Medicine Cabinet, the Faux Plank Wall, the Custom Wood Countertop, the steamed apron front for the countertop and the Skirt for the countertop.
Whew!!!

Projects inside the upstairs bedroom include the Pottery Barn Knockoff Storage Bed...

...the storage shelves, the closet (which we are just about finished with)...

...oh, and the decorating.

I have to show you a few last outdoor projects.
One weekend we were so tired of getting cut on some prickly holly bushes, we just cut them down with a chainsaw. On our next trip to Lowe's we purchased some soil amendment, mulch and plants.

Mr. DIY finished two last outside projects- and that will bring you up to date.

Just a few weeks ago, Mr. DIY built this HUGE 16 x 6 foot Woodshed for all the wood from a few of the trees that were cut down. (he still has to rent a log splitter to split all the wood and has to rent a stump grinder)

The final outside project I have to show you Mr. DIY did was to install a gutter along the front of the workshop about a month ago.

That's about as far as we've come. While I'm finishing some painting upstairs, Mr. DIY already started on the reno-ing of what should have been the front closet (had the house been placed properly on the land). We are reworking it as a Vintage Style Pantry with beadboard backing, built in shelving with a wood countertop and space for a rolling kitchen cart. After that, we will start ripping out the Worlds Ugliest Kitchen.
I CAN'T WAIT!!!
Here's why:

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I hope you've enjoyed the Mountain Cottage One Year Update. I am really looking forward to what comes next because a lot of it is going to be pretty, now that a lot of the not so pretty stuff is finished. I hope you'll come back often for a visit.
Pam

PS: If you'd like to see the whole Mountain Cottage (Before) House Tour, you can click HERE
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