Kenney Cottage Update

Tom and I do not see well.

I'm not talking about the fact that I'm legally blind, I'm talking about our inability to see a house as it is. We look at a house, and we see what it was, and what it can be. We see how the house will be when we finish restoring it. We see the potential, we see how it was built, and we see the future.

On Friday, May 25th, we took possession of the Kenney Cottage. Although we have done a lot of work on it earlier (caring for the lot, removing stucco, etc), it was not actually our house. We had a handshake agreement with Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA), but we didn't actually own the house until Friday. But on Friday, we paid one dollar for the house, and it became our property.

Preparing to pay for the Kenney Cottage (at Sconehenge in Berkeley)

BAHA President Steve Finacom accepting payment for the Kenney Cottage

Today, we spent several hours clearing the lot of all the growth, and getting it ready for its next incarnation: the Kenney Cottage is going to be dismantled and put in storage until we can find a suitable location for it.

As part of the clean up, I went inside and reconnoitered. I know many people have been wanting to see the inside of the house, but to refresh your memory, here is the outside:

The Kenney Cottage, patiently waiting restoration

Here are some photos of the interior, taken today:

The living room, looking toward the back

The living room, looking to the two downstairs bedrooms

The front bedroom

 The back bedroom, looking under the loft through the door to the front bedroom

The back bedroom (with the loft ladder)

The dining room

The kitchen (seen through the dining room "wall")

The view up the stairs

The upstairs bedroom

Beautiful, right? But it's not only us: everyone who has been in it has been struck by its simple charm - even in its current dilapidated state, the Kenney Cottage is clearly a diamond in the rough. And when it arrives at its new location, and is reassembled and restored, it's going to be beautiful.

The plan is to lower the house down, and remove the roofing shingles. Then the various pieces of the house will be labelled, and we will begin dismantling the house, putting it onto a storage container. Once done, the container will be hauled to a secure location, where it will wait until we find a lot.

Ultimately, the Kenney Cottage will be on a new foundation, with a full basement below (probably a second unit), and it will have new wiring, plumbing, and heating. Many of the existing add-ons will be removed (such as the drop ceiling in the kitchen and dining room, the loft in the back bedroom, and the weird low wall around the front porch).  The house will have a wide set of stairs that leads up to the restored front door and porch, and yes, bathrooms will be added (the house currently does not have a bathroom.)

And the duplex and sixplex, and the Hercules Victorian, are all moving forward as well. More stories to come.