Hi and welcome to Acorn Cottage, a casual Florida rental cottage. Enjoy browsing our cottage.

Entry/Office Progress

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In the last post I showed some hideous pictures of what we started with in the entry.  I hope it didn't really scare you too bad. 

Hubby did all the deconstruction and reconstruction.  I had the pleasure of doing all the fun stuff.  Painting and decorating.  Here are a few in progress photos.

 

 

This is what it looked like behind all those fallen mirror tiles.  The previous owners just put up some thin, cheap paneling over these windows.  We would love to tear out all the old windows, but that is not in the budget right now.  So we will cover them up just like the previous owners.  But this time we will use something a little more substantial than thin, cheap paneling. 

After adding some insulation, hubby put up heavy duty plywood.  Then he applied a texture so it would blend in better with the other walls.  Not exactly builders standard, but much better don't you think?

Do you like that worn hunk of wood?  Will tell you more about that soon.

Getting Started

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Although it has been a while since I last posted, progress on Acorn Cottage has been wild and furious.  We've been working like a mad woman getting the place somewhat ready for our first guest, our friend Karen Erickson.

There is still a lot of work to do, but we did manage to make a cozy, comfortable cottage for Karen.  So why don't I shut up and show you some before pictures of the entry.  But first a warning…..this is ugly!

Talk about an ugly wall.  Why, oh why do people put up this stuff!

You can see what is left of those swirly mirror tiles.  Austin Powers anyone?

And they all came down.  My daughter would come home to another mirror tile crashed to the floor.  Oh joy!

What's left of wallpaper.  Hubby will have great fun scraping this.  Check out those ceiling tiles at the top of the picture.  UGH!

 

Lots of work to be done here, but you will love the outcome.

What’s In A Name?

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One day while thinking about the plans for our Florida vacation rental, I realized we needed a name for it.  So I spend many days racking my brain trying to come up with some cut name for our little cottage.  But not something too cute, you know.  I was stumped, wasn't coming up with anything that appealed to me.  And that was driving me crazy.  So I left it alone, putting it on the back burner of my mind.

And then one day, while heading to the studio (which is below the cottage apartment) as something went 'crunch' under my feet it occurred to me.  Acorn Cottage!  The one thing we seem to always have an abundance of is acorns.  So at that moment Acorn Cottage was born.  Well, not exactly born, but you know what I mean.

With 3 oak trees on a small city lot, at times we become over run with acorns.  So the name seemed quite appropriate.  Then I decided we needed a logo.  I like to keep thing simple, so I sat down with a graphics program and designed a few logo ideas.  After some input from hubby, the Acorn Cottage logo was created.  Now there may be some minor tweaks, but I'm liking it.

And that is the story of how we choose the name Acorn Cottage.

The History of Acorn Cottage

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Before we get too deep into the making of Acorn Cottage, I want to go back into history a bit.  We live in a historic neighborhood full of awesome bungalows and cottages.  A lot of them have apartments above the garages; some just have a little apartment instead of a garage.  A few of these garages are attached, but most are detached.  We bought our little house (the ugliest house on the block) because of the 3 car garage studio potential and the apartment.  The house itself—-butt ugly!

The home inspector said that a lot of these homes were built by winter snow-birds.  They would build the garage and apartment first (at the back of the lot) and live there during the winters.  When they could afford it, they would eventually build the house.  Is this true?  Don't know, but since there are a few lots in the neighborhood that only have the garage/apartment and no house, I'm inclined to believe it.  Guess the snow-bird resident never got around to building the house.

Either way, true or not, I like the story, so that is what I'm telling.

The Making of Acorn Cottage

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I'm so glad you are here.  I've started this blog site to chronicle the making of our little Florida vacation rental cottage, Acorn Cottage.

Acorn Cottage is our small (approx 520 SF) apartment above my 3 car garage studio.  When we purchased this home in 2005, we intended for the apartment to be a full time rental.  But, our daughter, who had flown the coop, came back home to roost and being the sweet, kind, loving parents we are, the apartment became hers.  She actually moved in with us while we were still living there and remodeling the hose.  Every now and then she would make comments like, "when are  you guys moving out of my apartment."  KIDS! gotta love 'em.

We eventually moved into the house and she became firmly entrenched in the apartment.  Just recently out baby girl left for Army boot camp (with our blessings) and now we have the chance to fix it up into a rental.  We decided on a vacation rental so when our soldier girl comes home on leave, she has her old space again.

There is quite a bit of work to do, most of it cosmetic, but a few rooms need some real serious work.  Some of the previous work was quite shoddy, and while we don't have a big budget (zero budget) we can make some much need improvements and fix a lot of the shoddy work.  Now you may be wondering why didn't we do this while soldier girl was still living there.  Well, the agreement was we would do the work out of the monies she paid for rent.  Need I say more?

Luckily hubby and I are extremely handy and know how to do most of it.  What we don't already know, we will figure it out.

So follow along with us as we turn a tired, dated apartment into a casual, laid back, kick your shoes off Florida vacation cottage.  Check out the floor plan of the cottage.