I've seen pictures of this cute little cottage for months now. Here is the story by the New York Times of how this fairytale came about. I can't wait for our house to be done! Ms. Foster you have inspired me!
This is a very special sort of dream house: the Victorian Ms. Foster has wanted since she was a teenager on Long Island and her middle-class family lost their home. It is a house that is as soul-satisfying as it was when she first imagined it as a 15-year-old, even with the ups and downs that grown-up life brings.
“My refuge,” she calls it.
After Ms. and Mr. Foster sold their Farm house, they found this wooded property, with the trailer and cabin, for $46,000. Ms. Foster, seeing the hunting cabin on the hill, knew it could be her dream house.
The cabin was then a 9-by-10-foot box with a peaked roof, five small windows and a sleeping loft over a small porch supported by tree trunks. Ms. Foster began work on it as soon as time and money allowed, in July 2009.
With her saw, Ms. Foster cut out spaces for windows. She found a tin ceiling on Craigslist for $200, and a wooden mantelpiece in High Falls for about $350. Many of the faded white book jackets came from Beth Neumann, at TatteredVintage.
Armed with a crowbar, hammer and electrical saw, she removed the front of the cabin and extended the floor and porch, using salvaged floorboards. She framed out the porch and found columns, a screen door and hardware at New York Salvage.
The only help Ms. Foster required from her husband was setting the columns and rafter over the porchFurnishings, which had to be carried across a shaky bridge over the stream and then up the steep hill, posed a challenge. So what appears to be a short, fat love seat is really a lightweight wicker sofa from Ikea, plumped up with pillows and embroidered Ralph Lauren pillowcases. Ms. Foster built the china closet using scrap wood and French doors she found at a yard sale.
Was she ecstatic when it was completed?
“Yeah,” Ms. Foster said. “I was. I remember the night I finished as clear as a bell: It was November 1st. I was listening to Rush at very high volume over and over, it was freezing cold, I was starting to paint and the moon was out. I looked up at the moon, twirling, with my arms out. I was ready to cry.”
Finally, it was time to go back down the hill and across the stream to the trailer, where her husband came through the door with a surprise: freshly baked rolls, still warm from the oven. He placed them in a basket and put them, with a bucket of margarine and cups of green tea, on the coffee table.
Good job Ms. Foster! Dreams can come true.
