Living in a new house
- Sylvia Cooley
- 22 hours ago
- 3 min read
As I move through my house daily here in Massachusetts, I am also already living in the Vermont house. I have studied the plans so thoroughly that I know where everything will be. I am pleasantly surprised at how many similarities there are between the house we have now and the house we will be living in by 2028.
The house design in Vermont was mostly determined by what was there in the past, in the old house. I can’t claim that the design was created simply by copying the house in Massachusetts. But I did use comparisons from the start. I did things like- “size of kitchen in MA vs VT” and went on to compare the dining room, living room, etc. I know what I like here (and don’t like) and wanted to make sure the space was not too cramped in Vermont.
But surprisingly, the layout of the original house in Vermont and this house where we live now in Massachusetts is similar. The main living areas have a lot of southern exposure. You can sit at the dining room table and look straight out to the south. The same will be true in Vermont (except I will be able to see the barn and horses from here).
The kitchen window looks east in both places, the stove and the island will be in almost exactly the same spot.
The living room here has windows to the south and west. This will be the same in Vermont (see floor plan below).
But I can also walk around this house in western Mass and say- “the stairs will be here in Vermont, the front door will be over here, the wood stove will be moved from that south wall to this spot here. Instead of a garage on the other side of the living room, there will be a bedroom. Where the guest room is here, will be the mud room/laundry room in Vermont. The bathroom is in basically the same place but it will be larger and moved more to the outside wall (the front of our house here).” It’s fun. It helps you visualize living there.
The upstairs (here) however bears no resemblance to the Vermont house. In Vermont there is the beauty of the Cape Cod style simplicity- two matching bedrooms (one of either side- south/north) with a bathroom in the middle on the east side. The most glorious difference (from our Massachusetts house) will be the two windows in the front where Danny can have his desk and look out over the Green Mountains to the west.
This house (in Mass) has no views at all to the west as it is attic space. This sitting nook in Vermont (as named by Sara Tucker) used to be a tiny ‘3rd bedroom’ upstairs.
Now it will be open to the stairwell and hallway to let light in. It will have two built-in bookshelves tucked into the dramatic slopes of the roof lines. There will be a bookshelf banister along the top of the stair well. There will be some shallow closet space in this hallway (built around the chimney area on the left in this photo above) and the little door preserved from the secret passageway of the old house will go here. I am visualizing the kids playing hide and seek.
I am guessing other people who build houses have had this experience- you live in the house before you even move in.
