My Secret Project Revealed

Last winter, before I even considered the possibility of renovating my big house, I needed a project.  Because I love the beach and have always wanted a cottage on Nantucket, I decided to make one in miniature.   This is just one of my inspiration photos.  How much would I love to live here???????


You've all probably seen that laser cut beach house kit?  I thought I wanted to do that, with a few changes.  I even bought the kit and scrapped it.  Again.  No more kits for me, ever!


See all those wood shingles?  I put every one of them on myself.  Over 1500 on the whole house.  What a nightmare trying to keep them straight and lined up all the way around!  The wood trim on the edges helps disguise the worst of it.  Bill McGuire weathered the shingles.  All the windows open and the roof with its skylights comes off in two sections.

This is a partial side view.  My parents' beach house has a bay window that looks down the beach to the inlet at Ocean City, so that's why I put one here. See the sign pointing to the beach?  I got it on etsy.



This is the back-- my favorite part of the exterior of the house. Elfi & Hans Meier made the fully functional umbrella and the folding table and chairs.  That's the bathroom that the wooden boat and all the fishing, crabbing, and lobstering supplies are arrayed on along the back wall.  Most of those items were made by Amy Robinson.


In the cooler there's a lobster on ice--right next to the trap in which he was caught.  Of course, if you know anything about lobsters, they aren't red until they are cooked but what can you do?  Suspend disbelief.


There are burgers and brats on the grill along with Anne Caesar's fabulous crab feast table.  I don't' usually do kitsch, but when I saw that grill on the Doll's House Emporium website I had to buy it.  There's a battery in the bottom and a switch to make the coals glow.


This is the other side of the bathroom wall--where there's an outdoor shower.  When I was in college I would go to Chatham, MA on Cape Cod with my best girlfriend, whose parents had a house there with an outdoor shower.  I loved showering in the open air.  That shower offered a little more privacy than this one, though.  Again, suspend disbelief!

In case you're wondering...it's a long way to Ocean City from Nantucket.



Isn't this fun?

Next time I will show you the interior.