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Tybee Island, Georgia
One of my favorite magazines bit the dust with its December 2008 issue. Cottage Living, launched with fanfare in 2004, is gone.
I don’t think I ever missed an issue, though in recent months — probably in a desperate grab for advertising dollars — the cottages had grown bigger and fancier and hardly deserved the name (can a 4BR house be called a ‘cottage’?)
What I loved most about the magazine were the ‘before and afters,’ makeovers of decrepit vintage homes. I spent happy hours poring over the remodeling of California bungalows, log cabins in Virginia, freedman’s cottages in Charleston, S.C.
But those were easy clean-ups: charm, however soiled, begets charm.
Before
After
Left and right: Unique to Charleston, ‘freedman’s cottages’ were built by and for freed slaves after the Civil War. They were two rooms deep and one room wide, with a side porch the length of the house.
The magazine also had an architect, Hoyte Johnson, take on the tricky business of suggesting fix-ups (in renderings, not reality) for dank 1960s ranches, boring brick boxes, and asbestos-shingled, aluminum-windowed 1940s American four-squares.
These were not always successful; in my view, they went a little too far “adding personality” in the form of pergolas, sundials, weathervanes, chimneypots, etc. (there’s a Yiddish word for that, but I don’t know how to spell it).
But these were fun to contemplate, and I learned a lot about balancing awkward proportions by shifting placement of windows and doors, and the usefulness of shutters to enlarge the look of meager windows. And I totally agree that single-pane windows look ‘empty and sad,’ and that replacing them with divided-light windows — real ones — has a dramatically positive aesthetic effect on the facade of any old house.
Left and below: Would you believe this is the same house? They took a dull brick ranch and clad it in board-and-batten siding; the asphalt shingle roof was replaced with a higher-pitched tin roof, and the ceilings were raised inside.
Cottage Living, I’ll miss you. (The publisher, Southern Living, offered to replace the remainder of my subscription with Real Simple, probably my LEAST favorite magazine — obvious, repetitive advice on how to spend more money in a quest to live more simply — but that one’s still publishing, so what do I know?)
In the meantime, there are some copies of Cottage Makeovers, the final “special edition” ($10.99, no ads) compiling 20 makeovers from the defunct magazine, on newsstand shelves. I say, get it while you can.
This article appeared today in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
A Worthy Blog
by Trudy Whitman
I’ve had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the blogosphere. In the Sunday, January 11, issue of The New York Times, Gabriel Cohen, the author of four Brooklyn-based novels, summed up the “attraction” of neighborhood blogs by writing that they are “a lot like New York itself: brash, snide and willing to turn the most trivial topic into an ideological free-for-all.” Of course, to remain on top of things, I’ve had to follow neighborhood news blogs, and I have found some that are sincere and informative. My mouse does, indeed, nibble on these for tidbits. But I do not seek out the brash and the snide — alas, they find me all too frequently — and I most certainly don’t have the patience for Internet triviality, not to mention poor grammar and lack of style.
That said by this fuddy-duddy, allow me to turn you on to a neighbor’s new blog — http://casacara.wordpress.com. Cara Greenberg is an old-house aficionado, who emphasizes that she is not a real estate agent but admits to owning five old homes in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and Dutchess County.
Love old houses? Check out this woman's new blog.
All are filled with tenants. A longtime resident of the Hills & Gardens, she is a veteran freelance writer who has published articles on interior and furniture design, architecture, real estate, antiques and collecting, gardens, and travel. Greenberg’s work has appeared in Metropolitan Home, Garden Design, The New York Times, and Home Miami. She has also written several books, including Mid-Century Modern: Furniture of the 1950s. In addition to the writing, Cara Greenberg is a location scout for several interior design magazines. Ms. Greenberg gets around.
Greenberg recalls that the idea of sharing her passions on a blog came to her as she was assessing “the load of ideas, written content, and photographs that, for one reason or another, have not found their way into print. By self-publishing a blog, I can get this worthy material ‘out there’ and not have it go to waste.”
If you love antique houses and enjoy nosing around new neighborhoods, surf on over to http://casacara.wordpress.com. The blog is well-written (and punctuated!) and plucky without being the least bit snarky, and Greenberg’s text is illustrated with abundant color photographs of her real estate and design discoveries.
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© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2009
IT HAPPENS TIME AND AGAIN. I get suckered in by the pretty language in real estate ads. “Diamond in the rough” never fails to excite me, serial renovator that I am.
Here are a few classic real-estate euphemisms and what I now, in my growing cynicism, suspect they mean:
- “magical cottage”(ramshackle dump)
- “mature specimen plantings”(horrifying weed patch)
- “endless possibilities” (given enough cash)
- “quaint country kitchen” (formica & linoleum)
Fortunately, I’ve found that you when you call for more information, most brokers open up.
The magical cottage? That one “is really about the property.” The “walk to bay beach” takes you past an auto body shop or two. If you’re looking for privacy, that “hideaway cottage” is not for you — it’s cheek by jowl with other hideaway cottages.
Here’s one I’m planning to check out next time I get out to the East End of 
Long Island. The cheery write-up begins: “A couple of nails, some paint, and voila!”
If only!
What are some of your ‘favorite’ real-estate come-ons?
A snowy Sunday on Long Island’s North Fork, doing drive-bys and walk-arounds of vintage properties under $500K, with mixed results. It looks like half a mil is not enough in these parts to get a great house in a great location; you might get one, but not both.
But hope springs eternal. I’ll be checking out more promising listings in days and weeks to come.
Here’s some of what I saw yesterday. For more info on these houses, go to the Multiple Listing Service of Long Island website; search on town and asking price.
Greenport disappointment, $449K (right) 
An 1890 brown clapboard village Victorian with front porch, in need of much work, on too small a lot, too close to downscale neighboring houses, for too much money.
Thrilling house, misleading listing (below) Late-19th c. Italianate gem in Southold needs tons of work – but who cares? It’s a rare find in a classic North Fork setting, with long farmland views, a small barn, a side porch, and a fair amount of interior detail, enough to suggest what a delightful home this could be.
Listed at $499K on one acre, it will be sold only with 22 adjacent acres for an additional $880K, or $40,000/acre. The farmland is ‘protected’ in perpetuity by a Suffolk County farmland preservation program; it must be used for agriculture and cannot be subdivided or built on. But it could work for the aspiring nurseryman/woman, vineyard owner, or organic farmer.
Wow location, not much house (below). Fantastic wooded acre in Southold, mere yards from Great Pond, and a hop, skip and jump to Long Island Sound beaches.
The house itself is an uninsulated 2BR blue cottage from around 1950 in good shape, in an old-fashioned-feeling compound of cottages, with a tasteful shingled McMansion next door. Permits are in place for a dock and expansion of the house.
A brick fireplace is the only heat source. As is, this is strictly a summer place, or three-season for hardy types. Worth 499K? So far, no one seems to think so.
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