Backyard cottages are
a great option for many seniors allowing them to live close to family or
perhaps have a family member live close to them. Three generations of Mary K's family live in the Wallingford
neighborhood of Seattle. She now lives a number of hours drive away but
hopes to move closer to her great granddaughter. How much closer, into her
daughter’s back yard. We worked with her to design a comfortable place to
live where she can be a more prominent part of her family’s life. Her new
kitchen window looks out on a garden shared with her daughter and her cottage
features a loft for her great granddaughter to play in. While the cottage
is still under construction, She looks forward to taking her great
granddaughter to the nearby woodland park zoo.
No doubt her family will appreciate the extra help as
well. Raising a child is expensive in no small part due to the cost of
child care. Many parents scramble to keep up a juggling act of work and
child care schedules that result in children being raised by caregivers outside
the family. In this day and age it seems the lucky exceptions that have family
close enough to help out on a regular basis.
Her backyard cottage will have another benefit as well. She
will pay to construct the cottage from her savings. It will be her home
but will also be an asset for her daughter’s property. When she no longer
lives in the cottage it will become a source of rental income for the family,
or perhaps her great granddaughter’s college apartment. Because the cottage is
being funded with her retirement savings cost savings were crucial.
To save money we worked with Mary K to make the cottage as
efficient as possible. Because Mary K at one time lived on a boat she is
familiar with living in small spaces. In
preparation for moving she has calculated the exact number of inches of
shelving for her bathroom and the width and height for her closet as well as
all of her other storage requirements. She is designing the kitchen cabinets
herself.
We used a couple of strategies to make the cottage feel
larger. Our primary strategy is
incorporating the landscape into the project through the abundant and careful
placement of windows. We have also added
a vaulted ceiling over the main living space and exposed the ceiling joists in
the bedroom and kitchen to make those ceilings seem higher.
The cottage has been designed to be accessible for Mary K as she
ages. Because it is small grab bars and surfaces will enable one with mobility
impairment to navigate throughout the cottage with a degree of comfort. In the bath we again took the approach of
making things smaller rather than larger so that grab bars are always within
easy reach. The shower is incorporated
into the main space so that one can bath while sitting down on the toilet.
