Birdhouse Cottage

Once we found this lovely piece of land overlooking a beaver pond, we originally set out to build our tiny home in the woods! Unfortunately local jurisdiction would not allow anything under 700sf, SO, we designed a cottage that is slightly larger, maxxing out at 863sf! It took many weeks of designing, editing, sketching through numerous iterations until we came up with a design that was efficient in its massing and in its use of space. The result is a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom retreat with a 'large' room that includes the kitchen dining and living areas, as well as a little nook with pullout sofa for watching TV! The surrounding landscape is primarily granite and limestone so it was decided to put the cottage on stilts rather than disturb the surrounding land by blasting a foundation.

We bought windows from a company west of Toronto that specializes in selling windows that have been 'discarded' by buyers of suburban developments. The cottage was designed to suit the windows we had purchased!

For the exterior cladding we approached a local company, Blackwood Siding, that specialized in creating Shou Sugi Ban, acquiring cedar products from local mills. Our contractor is also local - Brent Jones Construction from Tweed, ON.

We pride ourselves on having bought very few items that were new and relied on local finds and old bits of furniture we had that were well suited for a cozy cottage.