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Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Cottage Progress and My 2017 Summer Garden

Past few weeks has seen major progress made to our cottage construction. Not only did we have a roof (woohoo), the interior drywall was also hung and mudded. So this was what our cottage looked like as of last Friday. 

The interiors: guest bedroom door overlooking the dining room: imagine to walk out of the room every morning with that view! The bigger hole in the ceiling to the left is our central AC vent - I specified that location so we wouldn't have cold air blowing over our heads while lounging or sleeping. 

My favourite feature of our cottage has to be this cute loft! Or is it the screened-in porch? The loft can be used as a bedroom but I haven't decided what to do with it yet. 

And this is the view from our porch, straight into the woods. All the photos were taken by our sweet neighbour. They bought the cottage next to us so they will be our cottage neighbour as well! 

Below is the final version of the porch design board. You can see the previous versions here. I took advantage of a summer clearance sale and picked up this navy outdoor Allen + Roth rug from Lowes Canada. The vintage style patio table is from Wayfair. 

I've been searching for stylish nightstands for our cottage master bedroom, but decided take it upon myself to hack the ever-popular Ikea Rast dressers. I am so in love with them!!! The paint colour is BM's Pigeon Grey. Brass bin pulls are from Martha Stewart via Home Depot. 

And the Florence Knoll style sofa was finally delivered last weekend. It was every bit I was hoping for and more, so comfortable and timeless! 

Now onto my 2017 summer flower garden. You can read about what it looked like in the past seasons here. While this constant rain has slowed down our cottage construction, it has been good to all the flowering shrubs around our house. That's just life. We win some, we lose some. This Blue Satin Rose of Sharon grew by at least a foot upward and outward this year! 



See what I meant? 

I failed to turn the LA Dreamin Hydrangea blue this year. I applied the high-phosphorus fertilizer after flower buds came out - maybe that's already too late so I will need to try early in the season next year. 

Not only did they not turn blue, they were pinker than ever, in this vibrant hot pink shade all summer! 



I can always count on my Limelight Hydrangeas to bloom non-stop into the late fall. I kept trimming them so they can focus on growing upward. Both of them are now about 8 feet tall. 


And this was my backyard in mid August - I admit I photoshopped the sky to appear bluer - other than that, everything else you see was what the real thing looked like. #greenthumb

This weekend we are going up to the cottage to do our pre-completion inspection, so I hope to post more progress photos afterwards.