The cottage is now listed on www.vrbo.com, listing number 633042.
Please contact Teri or I if you are friend, family or in one of the groups that we have extended invitations to? Most of all with our cottage, we are hoping to share our artwork and enjoyment of our place with others so, we are pretty flexible when it comes to sorting out the details. If you do take us up on the offer, please don't feel obligated to entertain us. That's a little difficult to say smoothly but the point is, it's really okay to stay in the cottage simply because it is here and not necessarily because we are.
Here's some general information about the cottage.
Because we have small minds and try to find easy ways to hold things in them, we reference most things by the compass. North is toward the other house from the cottage. We call the other house (that we live in) The North House because that sounds a LOT better than The Mobile Home. South then would be a generally barnish direction. Also, coming from that barnish direction will likely be the smell of horse, and most days, horse poo. Just an FYI, some days we smell pretty farmy and the cottage is close to the source!
For invited guests, feel free to look around just do your best to leave it as you found it. The horses and dogs are all sweet and friendly, often obnoxiously so. Feel free to point sternly away and tell the dogs "GO!". They know this command well and will, more or less, comply. Don't bother with the horses. They don't know that command and will not obey anyway, but, after they've figured out you don't have cookies for them, will eventually get bored with you and might go away on their own.
The horses are very friendly and personable but they do weigh about 1200 pounds each so, even if the grass is greener on their side of the fence, our side is the better choice.
There are two wall hangings in the upstairs loft area that we found interesting. They are the photo of the bulls and horses hanging over the desk and the painting of the yellow horse currently hanging by the dining table. The bull photo was taken in the Lascaux caves of original art done there. The horse is a contemporary artists version of art found on those cave walls. The original paintings done in the Lascaux caves was done approximately seventeen thousand years ago. We find these examples, as well as all the rest of the artwork done there so many years ago, to be amazing and inspiring. Check it out online. There is some mind blowing stuff on those cave walls.
There are games, DVD's and some books on CD in the north cubby.
There is at least some non perishable food in the island. Feel free to eat, replace or suggest other items for keeping there. If you are really hungry, or it's the zombie apocalypse, there is tons more food in the music room. Access by using the key or asking where it is if you don't know. If you are a zombie, I guess you'll be after the fresh meat? Try the horses.
The island has wheels but isn't really intended to be rolled. Please leave it in place.
The wine above the quarter bath, if you have a hankering, drink up and try to replace. Please do not drink any of the bottles older than 2010. That's mostly the bottom two rows. They are from a variety of things and it's my intention to sit down and drink them, every one, all at once, when Publishers Clearing house check comes. I will.
There are blankets in the upstairs closet and might be some in the southwest cubby.
The house is all zone heating. Each room has a separate controller. It's a mix of propane and electric. Unless Enron is back in action, just do as you please with the various settings. The one exception to that is the floor heating in the entry and master bath. The controllers are programmed to cycle up and down with the day and night (or that's the theory anyway). I spent some number of hours (it's a secret how many) in front of it with the little booklet trying to simply make it keep my feet warm. I don't need for them to be 75 during the day and 70 at night. Anyway, my belief is that I have them set. Please don't dispel that illusion.
We have sleeping bags and pads in the gear room in the barn if needed, just ask.
The circuit panel is behind the cowboy painting on the north wall of the entry way. You shouldn't need that but there it is.
The Jacuzzi tub in the master bedroom is wonderful and relaxing but has some caveats. The blanket, cushions and covers come off easily and intuitively and are easily stored in the closet. Plan ahead a little, the tub takes literally 45 minutes to fill. The jets CANNOT be turned on before the tub is full. The two east most jets will hit the west wall and a LOT of floor will be soaked very quickly! And, in case you are wondering, that IS an empirical conclusion. There is an automatic in-line heater in the system. It is set to 104 degrees and cannot be adjusted or turned off separately from the jets, all on or all off.
There are extra blankets and stuff somewhere in the second bedroom (the SW one) they are probably in the closet. Just look around. There are clean sheets for the second bedroom in the lower closet in the mudroom/bathroom. If you are staying at the friends and family rate of nothing, feel free to change the bed and throw the used stuff in the washer and get it to the dryer if you can, if you can't, all is well, just let us know. If we've gouged you, we've got it.
Please take good care of the little house. We view the cottage, and our place in general, as our artwork. It's our living canvas. We have insane amounts of heart, soul, blood, sweat and money invested in it. It's only luck that kept our construction crew of two from incurring serious injuries along the way and despite serious effort. Teri and I joke that the daily bleeding placated the otherwise bloodthirsty spirits. And having been saved from actual, major limb and body damage by such obscure things as a coffee cup in one incident and long underwear in another, while still maintaining my agnostic status, I'm willing to credit whatever deity is appropriate.
For barn, horse and dog info, please check out the appropriate pages.
Some cottage and farm history: (kinda the read-by-bunnies version)
As far as we can guess, it was built in about 1997 by persons unknown. When we bought the place in 2005, Teri and I were specifically looking for a property with two dwellings and we had just backed out of buying a large farm in Bow that fit that bill. Oddly enough, our research encountered enough minds that were worried about the real estate bubble bursting and we didn't feel we could survive that if we were too far leveraged. The ten acres in Clear Lake turned out to be much more prudent. We felt that it would just be immensely easier on our collective kids if we had the two houses and were not in living under a bridge. And so settled for two houses and a property with a bridge, just in case. Hopefully it worked out for the kids to not all have to be melded into one big mash of family styles. Dunno, feel free to ask them.
Kasey and I lived in the studio upstairs for a bit and then I built him a bedroom downstairs so that he could fill it full of stuff and have pet spiders. Okay, he doesn't agree that was ever his goal and I think he is far too wonderful to really care about his housekeeping. My original thought was that the cottage would get rebuilt first of all of the buildings, bridges, barns, ditches etc. Life dictated otherwise and now it's last. My original thought was also that all of the work on the property would take three years, it's now almost the end of year nine. The Cottage came very close to being The Ash Pile.
The Cottage rebuild finally got started in winter of 2012. Not including the new septic system and drain field that went in in 2010 ish or the two rounds of re-plumbing that happened after the original crap failed and flooded us out. As of now, there is nothing of the original cottage except the foundation, walls and some of the roof so I don't know what exactly this project is really called, remodeling, rebuilding or really stupid.
There were a ton of scribbled plans that ended up wadded in the trash can and a lot of learning that happened along the way but we are happy with the end result, it seems to have worked out pretty good. There was also a lot of entertainment and the frustrating joy of the ever evolving idea. The process of going from idea to reality has always fascinated me. Around here it's usually something like "Hey Honey, ya know we could..."
We really hope you come and enjoy staying in The Cottage. Sharing the place just feels really good. We feel very blessed to have our little sanctuary in the foothills with our dogs, horses and two very odd cats. Come and see whatcha think.
If you do stay at our Cottage, please go to the blog page and leave a comment and we would really benefit from knowing about anything that you didn't find to your liking.
Thanks,
Chris and Teri Lynch
Please contact Teri or I if you are friend, family or in one of the groups that we have extended invitations to? Most of all with our cottage, we are hoping to share our artwork and enjoyment of our place with others so, we are pretty flexible when it comes to sorting out the details. If you do take us up on the offer, please don't feel obligated to entertain us. That's a little difficult to say smoothly but the point is, it's really okay to stay in the cottage simply because it is here and not necessarily because we are.
Here's some general information about the cottage.
Because we have small minds and try to find easy ways to hold things in them, we reference most things by the compass. North is toward the other house from the cottage. We call the other house (that we live in) The North House because that sounds a LOT better than The Mobile Home. South then would be a generally barnish direction. Also, coming from that barnish direction will likely be the smell of horse, and most days, horse poo. Just an FYI, some days we smell pretty farmy and the cottage is close to the source!
For invited guests, feel free to look around just do your best to leave it as you found it. The horses and dogs are all sweet and friendly, often obnoxiously so. Feel free to point sternly away and tell the dogs "GO!". They know this command well and will, more or less, comply. Don't bother with the horses. They don't know that command and will not obey anyway, but, after they've figured out you don't have cookies for them, will eventually get bored with you and might go away on their own.
The horses are very friendly and personable but they do weigh about 1200 pounds each so, even if the grass is greener on their side of the fence, our side is the better choice.
There are two wall hangings in the upstairs loft area that we found interesting. They are the photo of the bulls and horses hanging over the desk and the painting of the yellow horse currently hanging by the dining table. The bull photo was taken in the Lascaux caves of original art done there. The horse is a contemporary artists version of art found on those cave walls. The original paintings done in the Lascaux caves was done approximately seventeen thousand years ago. We find these examples, as well as all the rest of the artwork done there so many years ago, to be amazing and inspiring. Check it out online. There is some mind blowing stuff on those cave walls.
There are games, DVD's and some books on CD in the north cubby.
There is at least some non perishable food in the island. Feel free to eat, replace or suggest other items for keeping there. If you are really hungry, or it's the zombie apocalypse, there is tons more food in the music room. Access by using the key or asking where it is if you don't know. If you are a zombie, I guess you'll be after the fresh meat? Try the horses.
The island has wheels but isn't really intended to be rolled. Please leave it in place.
The wine above the quarter bath, if you have a hankering, drink up and try to replace. Please do not drink any of the bottles older than 2010. That's mostly the bottom two rows. They are from a variety of things and it's my intention to sit down and drink them, every one, all at once, when Publishers Clearing house check comes. I will.
There are blankets in the upstairs closet and might be some in the southwest cubby.
The house is all zone heating. Each room has a separate controller. It's a mix of propane and electric. Unless Enron is back in action, just do as you please with the various settings. The one exception to that is the floor heating in the entry and master bath. The controllers are programmed to cycle up and down with the day and night (or that's the theory anyway). I spent some number of hours (it's a secret how many) in front of it with the little booklet trying to simply make it keep my feet warm. I don't need for them to be 75 during the day and 70 at night. Anyway, my belief is that I have them set. Please don't dispel that illusion.
We have sleeping bags and pads in the gear room in the barn if needed, just ask.
The circuit panel is behind the cowboy painting on the north wall of the entry way. You shouldn't need that but there it is.
The Jacuzzi tub in the master bedroom is wonderful and relaxing but has some caveats. The blanket, cushions and covers come off easily and intuitively and are easily stored in the closet. Plan ahead a little, the tub takes literally 45 minutes to fill. The jets CANNOT be turned on before the tub is full. The two east most jets will hit the west wall and a LOT of floor will be soaked very quickly! And, in case you are wondering, that IS an empirical conclusion. There is an automatic in-line heater in the system. It is set to 104 degrees and cannot be adjusted or turned off separately from the jets, all on or all off.
There are extra blankets and stuff somewhere in the second bedroom (the SW one) they are probably in the closet. Just look around. There are clean sheets for the second bedroom in the lower closet in the mudroom/bathroom. If you are staying at the friends and family rate of nothing, feel free to change the bed and throw the used stuff in the washer and get it to the dryer if you can, if you can't, all is well, just let us know. If we've gouged you, we've got it.
Please take good care of the little house. We view the cottage, and our place in general, as our artwork. It's our living canvas. We have insane amounts of heart, soul, blood, sweat and money invested in it. It's only luck that kept our construction crew of two from incurring serious injuries along the way and despite serious effort. Teri and I joke that the daily bleeding placated the otherwise bloodthirsty spirits. And having been saved from actual, major limb and body damage by such obscure things as a coffee cup in one incident and long underwear in another, while still maintaining my agnostic status, I'm willing to credit whatever deity is appropriate.
For barn, horse and dog info, please check out the appropriate pages.
Some cottage and farm history: (kinda the read-by-bunnies version)
As far as we can guess, it was built in about 1997 by persons unknown. When we bought the place in 2005, Teri and I were specifically looking for a property with two dwellings and we had just backed out of buying a large farm in Bow that fit that bill. Oddly enough, our research encountered enough minds that were worried about the real estate bubble bursting and we didn't feel we could survive that if we were too far leveraged. The ten acres in Clear Lake turned out to be much more prudent. We felt that it would just be immensely easier on our collective kids if we had the two houses and were not in living under a bridge. And so settled for two houses and a property with a bridge, just in case. Hopefully it worked out for the kids to not all have to be melded into one big mash of family styles. Dunno, feel free to ask them.
Kasey and I lived in the studio upstairs for a bit and then I built him a bedroom downstairs so that he could fill it full of stuff and have pet spiders. Okay, he doesn't agree that was ever his goal and I think he is far too wonderful to really care about his housekeeping. My original thought was that the cottage would get rebuilt first of all of the buildings, bridges, barns, ditches etc. Life dictated otherwise and now it's last. My original thought was also that all of the work on the property would take three years, it's now almost the end of year nine. The Cottage came very close to being The Ash Pile.
The Cottage rebuild finally got started in winter of 2012. Not including the new septic system and drain field that went in in 2010 ish or the two rounds of re-plumbing that happened after the original crap failed and flooded us out. As of now, there is nothing of the original cottage except the foundation, walls and some of the roof so I don't know what exactly this project is really called, remodeling, rebuilding or really stupid.
There were a ton of scribbled plans that ended up wadded in the trash can and a lot of learning that happened along the way but we are happy with the end result, it seems to have worked out pretty good. There was also a lot of entertainment and the frustrating joy of the ever evolving idea. The process of going from idea to reality has always fascinated me. Around here it's usually something like "Hey Honey, ya know we could..."
We really hope you come and enjoy staying in The Cottage. Sharing the place just feels really good. We feel very blessed to have our little sanctuary in the foothills with our dogs, horses and two very odd cats. Come and see whatcha think.
If you do stay at our Cottage, please go to the blog page and leave a comment and we would really benefit from knowing about anything that you didn't find to your liking.
Thanks,
Chris and Teri Lynch
The Jacuzzi in the master bedroom. During installation, while leak checking, I discovered that the lower back jets will hit the far wall!
It's a little hard to make out but there is a skylight over the tub. The walk in closet is the door on the right side of the photo.
It's a little hard to make out but there is a skylight over the tub. The walk in closet is the door on the right side of the photo.
