Cottage owners everywhere are capitalizing on the cottage core trend and planning a modern cottage renovation for their rental and personal properties. Whether your cottage is your primary residence or you plan to launch a business that rents the property to guests, making plans for how you’ll make your cottage feel even cozier while still having a sense of modern design sensibilities can be a fun challenge for those who love to spend their free time thinking about interior design and decorating.
When you’re deciding whether to do a modern cottage renovation with cozy features, there are a few ways to decide if it’s right for you. Firstly, you should think about whether you have the budget to invest in a renovation project since labor and materials tend to be expensive if you don’t do most of the work yourself. Secondly, you should consider whether you have the time and space in your schedule to work around renovations. After all, if your kitchen or bathroom is being remodeled, you may need to spend that time outside of the home or take more time cooking using other appliances if your stove is out of commission until the remodel is complete.
When’s a Good Time to Renovate a Modern Cottage?
For any home improvement project, planning your timeline for starting and completing the project is as important as making a budget for the project or deciding what features you’d like to see happen as a result of this work. Renovating a cottage is no different than renovating any other space in that you’ll need to consider if there are any pressing maintenance needs like calling an appliance repair service to fix a broken refrigerator before you can focus on the fun, cosmetic renovations that aren’t necessary for maintaining the integrity or function of your home.
While no one can tell you whether it’s a good time or a bad time for a modern cottage renovation, there are some general rules for what may be a less convenient time for this type of project and what timing might be more ideal. In general, it’s a bad idea to try to renovate your cottage when you have a lot of other obligations such as training a new puppy, bringing home a newborn baby, or working from home at a job that would be disrupted if you had contractors working on your cottage all day. If you use your cottage as a vacation home, the ideal time to renovate it is before you intend to live there or right after you’ve moved back to your primary residence so you have the most time to get work done without it interfering with other tasks that you accomplish in your cottage.
Do You Need Training to Renovate a Cottage?
While you might be able to find videos online or workshops that teach you the basics of completing tasks in a modern cottage renovation, you’ll need specific training to tackle certain parts of the renovation process and you’ll need more manpower than yourself to do certain tasks in renovating in general. Although someone who has a lot of knowledge in DIY home improvement techniques could probably apply those skills to renovate the cottage with minimal professional assistance, someone who has never repaired anything in a home or done any home improvement tasks may have a steeper learning curve that would require them to take more classes and enlist more professional help to safely renovate the cottage. Although contractors can be expensive in some areas or aspects of home improvement, they’ll be worth every penny you pay them if it means that they don’t need to complete a job more than once and they know how to navigate a situation if the renovation goes wrong.
Depending on the task, you may also need to hire professionals even if you know how to do something. Since countertops are heavy to lift, you’ll want to have countertop contractors on your team if you plan to renovate the countertops even if you’ve worked in that area of construction for decades. When it comes to home remodeling, safety is as important as the outcome of the project and it’s more difficult to ensure that your cottage remodeling job will be safe if you do it by yourself.
Bring Professionals into the Picture
As we mentioned above, you should call in professional help when you’re renovating your cottage for safety reasons. In addition to staying safe and completing the job correctly, professionals can help you plan your cottage remodeling so you don’t end up figuring out that your renovation ideas don’t translate well when you try to apply them to the real world. To come up with a cozy, practical kitchen design, you can consult with interior designers who specialize in kitchen renovations.
When you’re deciding which interior designer to hire, you should interview several interior designers and quiz them on their experience in modern cottage renovation. Just because someone has the background and education to pull off interior design in general, it doesn’t mean that they’ll have the skills and refined tastes that will match what you want for your cottage so you need to ensure that you’re finding someone who is specialized in your area of design. To find an interior designer who aligns with your values and goals, you can look on social media to see if any designers in your area are looking for work and review their portfolio of designs that they post on social media to get an idea of whether they’d be a good fit before you speak on the phone or meet them in person.
A Fresh Coat of Paint
While it might seem too simple to count as a modern cottage renovation, choosing a new color for your walls or your cottage’s exterior can be all it takes to make this space feel cozier than it did before. If your cottage has a lot of cool or sterile colors on the walls and trim, it may feel clinical compared to warm tones. When you’re painting your cottage, you can either complete the project yourself or hire a professional. You can also have professionals complete the painting tasks that are more complicated and do the easier tasks yourself to save some money on the renovation process.
If you have experience painting, you may wonder if it’s necessary to hire a painting contractor for this job. Although you’re the only one who can decide that, there are some perks and drawbacks to having contractors complete a paint job. As a plus, they may have access to professional tools and training that allow them to do better work than you could with your tools or experience but as a drawback, painting professionals will cost money that you could use on other things.
Let the Light In
One of the easiest ways to make your cottage feel cozier in a modern cottage renovation is optimizing your windows to let natural light flood your space. In the evening, having the right windows can let you bask in the moonlight from the comfort of your cottage’s interior and there are very few cozier feelings than that. If you rent a cottage, you may not be able to change the windows so you might have to rely on making other choices for the window coverings like blinds and curtains in that case.
As long as you own your home and you’re legally permitted to make changes to the structure, though, installing window replacements after taking out the old windows can make a huge difference in your space for what seems like a small change in the cottage. If you’re trying to update an old cottage to fit more modern standards, it can be helpful to research modern window trends and have a professional evaluate whether the home’s structure would be able to handle a window replacement given the age of the cottage and other factors. When you want to replace old windows, you should have a professional take them out and install the new windows to minimize the risk of you getting injured or destroying your home on accident due to a lack of experience in this area of home improvement.
Make the Chimney Functional
When you have a chimney and a fireplace, you may just see these two aspects of your cottage as decorative elements. Still, if you call the right professionals to do chimney repairs, you may be able to have a working fireplace to add a cozy element to your home after the renovation process is complete. Although some chimneys and fireplaces are so old or damaged that they have no hope of working again without extensive restoration, others may simply need some basic cleaning and repairs to work again.
If you don’t have a chimney or fireplace in your home, you may be able to build one from scratch during your modern cottage renovation project. Before you set your heart on having a fireplace, you may want to make sure that it’s possible to install one in your home so you don’t get disappointed if contractors are unwilling and unable to do the project. Still, as long as contractors say that they’re happy to do the project and they can’t see any issues with completing it, having a chimney and fireplace can make your space feel more comfortable on a brisk winter night than it ever has before.
Unique Furniture Finds
When you’re renovating your cottage, it’s easy to get caught up in the home improvement and interior design side of the process. Once the cottage is remodeled, painted, and renovated, it’s time to fill your beautiful modernized space with furniture pieces that reflect your aesthetic like antique furniture from flea markets and estate sales. One of the most popular design trends today is “upcycling” old furniture, so you don’t have to let the paint color or look of a piece of furniture deter you from buying it if the general shape of it fits into your design plans.
While antique furniture might seem out of place in modern cottage renovation, the contrast could make your home seem elegant and cozy to guests. You can also purchase new furniture, of course. Some homeowners may want to mix vintage pieces with new ones, as well.
Explore Rustic Fence Options
When you have a modern cottage, you can add interest by incorporating rustic features. Using wood fencing instead of more modern materials is one example of this. Fences may be practical, but that doesn’t mean you can use them as an opportunity to reinforce your design themes and preferences in your home’s exterior.
Add Cozy Amenities
If you’re updating a cottage because you want to host guests as an Airbnb or vacation rental, you should consider what amenities may be appealing to potential guests in your modern cottage renovation. When your rental is a summer home, it can be a good idea to have amenities like a pool that will help your guests cool off. For those who have a cottage in an area that gets a lot of tourism in the winter, having amenities like a hot tub in the home’s interior or a covered, climate-controlled outdoor area can be a great option.
To purchase a hot tub, you can contact a hot tub dealer. If you already have one, you may just need to maintain it. You can either do this yourself or have a professional do it.
In short, the process of making your cottage cozier through a modern cottage renovation can be as involved or as simple as you want it to be. While you may need to follow laws and regulations that might indicate that certain parts of your cottage need to have certain features, you have a lot of freedom as a homeowner to make decisions about what you want your space to look like and how you want it to feel when you stay there. Even if you’re just daydreaming about renovating your cottage at this time, it can be fun to think about what your dream cozy cottage looks like and start picking up practical skills that will come in handy when you decide to make your dream cottage come to life.
