They say much of life is determined by the way you view things. The glass is half full? Or is the glass half empty? I’ve always been a glass half full kind of girl, but this was about to be put to the test.
We weren’t looking to buy a cottage. It was always a long term goal, but with COVID never-ending, lockdowns and quarantines on the go, cottage prices were skyrocketing. It seemed like this goal wasn’t happening anytime soon.
So I had been just curiously looking in the north, north of Muskoka when I stumbled upon a place listed for a rather reasonable price. From the very outset, the place showed a nice big front deck, close proximity to the water, and a great view of the lake. The inside pictures looked a bit rough. The place was obviously old and very very small (850 sq ft). The carpet was old, the bathroom was tiny (a 3ft long tub), but, despite the fact that it was dated and looked like work, you could tell it had been loved.
I had my sister, who was nearby, go check it out. She took some pictures and a video, and called me afterwards. “The place is kind of a dump”. The driveway was barely driveable and all chopped up. The bathroom was a compost toilet and the aforementioned tiny tub. It was non-descript and needed some TLC. I had one question. “How was the view?”. “Awesome”. That night we decided to put in an early offer, site unseen.
I’ll spare the details, but there were 3 of us bidding, and early offers were declined. So on offer day, we submitted our offer, knowing the place was going to go for well over asking, and 10 minutes later our realtor called and congratulated us on owning a cottage!
So that’s the story of how we landed here. We had 2 visits before closing. The first one, my husband and I looked at each other, with our 5 month baby in my arms, and gave each other the look of “what did we do”. This site is dedicated to the vision we saw in the place. I will blog about making our newly purchased property into our cozy little cottage. And not by huge, expensive changes, but by creative ideas, taking on projects one at a time (they aren’t over yet!), and at the end of the day, taking a work in progress and stepping outside to see things from our fabulous new point of view……
