Backyard Cottage Ideas?

[clydethecat]

Coonley Gardener's Cottage

[SDR]

https://www.flickr.com/photos/stevenm_61/38493563796

[SDR]

Why must people enclose every last square foot of roofed space---before going on to additions ? Isn't a porch a delight, even if usable for only a part of the year ?

S

[Roderick Grant]

An open porch can be a delight for about a week in the spring. Even when temperatures allow, bugs don't. At least screens are needed, along with a lighting system that urges night-flyers to keep their distance, in order to use a porch comfortably. There are thousands of houses throughout the northern extremities that were built with porches that have subsequently been enclosed. But the true irony is that, while the enclosure was meant to make them useable, they still are, to a large extent, not used at all. We had a glass porch on the old house, facing due west. The afternoon heat made the room uninhabitable. Yet, if I owned that charming Gardener's Cottage at Coonley, I would remove the porch windows, and not even enclose with screens, just to enjoy that one spring week before summer heat and bugs, which northerners celebrate as the end of winter.

[dkottum]

For the most part, porches have been replaced by decks and terraces. Almost every house has one. With a good shade tree, little difference in function. Long retired, we spend nearly all day, every day outdoors doing projects, gardening, playing games with our grandchildren, visiting and having picnics almost every day with whoever shows up.

At our west-central Minnesota lake place the mosquitos aren't an issue until late June, and then only for a couple of hours in the evening, depending on wind, wind direction, and humidity. I will tolerate them rather the the chemical repellants. It is the flies of September I detest when dining outdoors, but we manage. Decks, porches, screen rooms, terraces or a shady spot on the grass, they're all wonderful and usable virtually all summer, and much of the spring and fall.