Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Welcome back to Ontario lakeside. this episode is about design, Ive always had an interest
in architecture and I have been sketching houses and cottages for years. Now that we
have land I finally have a chance to put my ideas into practice. My first thought was
to design that place like a summer camp with several sleeping cabins and a central mess
hall. This idea had to be abandoned after my first meeting with the local building inspector.
It turns out that in our county the minimum square footage for a building on out lot is
528 Sq feet.
The next that I had to consider was that this building would be entirely built by my family.
I have renovated kitchen and bathrooms but have never built anything from the ground
up. This building needs to be simple without being boring. Another factor is transportation,
everything from the roof to the footings will need to be hauled across the lake and 200'
up a 30 degree hill. This will be no small task and I estimate it will be 50% of the
job. So this eliminated any building method that requires very large materials like post
and beam and hopefully we can minimise the amount of concrete. 528 sq. feet might seem
small but I wanted to keep the footprint light and I am a big fan of the tiny house idea.
So I started laying with the 528 sq. foot model and went threw quite a few designs.
At first I though I wanted a more traditional cabin but after completing a few drawings
it struck me that I should really focus on a something more modern. I played around with
shed style roofs and settled on having to opposing roof planes to add a dynamic element.
This evolved into a building that appears to be two separate but connected buildings.
I think I was trying to get back to my original vision of a camp with several buildings while
still complying with the building code. The interior will be designed to be supper
efficient like a sail boat or an RV. There are lots of great ideas about living small
coming from the tiny house community. Because the site we have chosen is on bare granite
I decided to build on piers that are bolted into the rock. This minimizes the need for
concrete and causes little disturbance to the site. Here you can see the final design
I submitted for the building permit. I altered the center section of the roof and added a
glass garage style door. In this rendering you can see how the building
will relate to the site. eventually I will add decks and a screen porch and perhaps some
stone work around the piers. Finally I hope to gather the water we need
from the roof. This design will allow me to collect the water into a 500 gallon tank at
the back and distribute it to the kitchen and bathroom. As you can see the to sides
of the cottage are angled toward each other this allows for excellent views to the lake
at the front and the beaver pond at the back. The first stag of construction was to build
the two floor platforms and to construct the shells and to try to get the roof on and get
weather tight. Then we will work on the exterior cladding and interior finishes. I expect this
project will take two years to get to a useable state and two more to finish.
this is our building site as you can see the cottage will have a very stable foundation.
And there is lots of rock for a fireplace. We will not be removing any trees the building
will sit between the two that are in the area and some others will get pruned. I cant wait
to sit on the porch and look out at this view. I'm excited to show you what done so far and
to get into the details of our methods and solutions. stick around and see the progress
at Ontario lakeside.