Inspiring Cabins & Cottages
(Page 2 of 3)
June/July 2006
By Jim Tolpin
What seems to be constant is the idea of the cottage as a retreat, the place to go to get away from it all, be it a beach cottage overlooking the ocean, a mountain hideaway, a pastoral retreat nestled in the woods or even a thoughtfully built cottage in town. It's a place for lounging, for curling up with a good book or for doing absolutely nothing. It's small enough to personalize and make your own: If you want to hang lobster pots from the ceiling or carve snail shells for drawer pulls, who's going to stop you?
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The cottage as a weekend/vacation getaway is only one aspect of the contemporary cottage. There's also the cottage as a permanent residence — a perfect home for young marrieds, empty nesters or retirees. The appeal is a house that's easy to live in and easy to maintain; a house that encourages informal living while offering unpretentious comfort; a house that's small enough to allow you to spend more on fine details, quality materials and craftsmanship; a house that's expressive about who you are and how you like to live your life.
You may still be wondering what exactly makes one house just a house, while another is somehow a cottage. Admittedly, there's no hard-and-fast answer: One person's cottage may be another person's hovel. But in selecting the houses that appear in my book The New Cottage Home, I looked for certain attributes, features that in some way evoke those spaces of childhood. Of course, no single house offers all of these attributes, but all the houses share many of these qualities:
