A Cottage for Mother Hubbard


A Cottage
The house that I presently live in was designed by me while in the Middle East some twenty five years ago. At that time I was not sure if I would build it, but since then I did and I am delighted with the design. It is a large home. However, over the past two decades the city has grown around it and over the past few years, I considered building a smaller cottage, for a farm, forest or the hills, just a small bed room and living room with a patio for the sun. However, I am quite satisfied with the home I live in and have given up the romantic idea of escaping into the wilderness. Perhaps if I was younger I would have but not now. Any building, even if it is a small cottage requires a lot of energy to build and the best time to do it is when one is in the thirties, forties or at the latest in the early fifties. At the present time it is just more convenient to rent or live in a hotel during forays into the hills or wilderness. Nevertheless, I shall post the design here in case someone else is interested.  If you click on the photo here, a larger view would be visible. Please free to use the design with or without modifications, provided they are professional modification or the design would likely get messed up. The front photo, an elevation that suits the proposed design eminently, provided upper floors are not being constructed, is a public domain image at http://publicdomainpictures.net 

Plan for a Cottage
The considerations that went into the design were to leave no side windows so that the cottage could be expanded into a row of cottages for a group of friends, set side by side and also to build single room sets with a bathroom on the first floor for visitors, or perhaps set besides a larger existing home for a granny or in-laws.. Since buildings are strong only when windows (and other openings) are built on openings and walls on walls, the lower floors of a building have to be designed keeping what might be added on a higher floor and sides if required. As you would notice a double door has to be crossed (or broken) before one can reach one sleeping securely in the bed room, and that too has to be kept in mind in the design besides a host of other things such as closets, a kitchen table etc. For me a kitchen is incomplete unless it has a Mother Hubbard like cupboard to stash the goodies and a kitchen table to decorate and eat the cake. Therefore that too was incorporated in this tiny cottage.

The mention of Mother Hubbard reminds me that at one time I composed a set of Nursery Rhymes for kids by modifying the original ones to exclude the hidden violence in them because violence is one thing humans need to get rid of before then can take the next big evolutionary step as the Great Buddha mentioned even two and a half millenniums ago. The composed nursery rhymes have been included in a small booklet for preschool children called Magical Alphabet that is has been available at Amazon and elsewhere for several years including frequent airing on US Public TV by the Reading Lady 
(http://www.pegmedia.org/index.php?q=msvr/showall/52/detail).

Old Mother Hubbard

Old mother Hubbard
Went to the cupboard
To fetch her doggie a bone

When she got there
The cupboard was bare
So the doggie had
an ice-cream cone

UPDATE JUNE 5 , 2014, Found some wonderful ideas for tiny homes today here http://www.poplarnetwork.com/news/5-tiny-house-tricks-every-building-design

For More Cottage designs in this blog see
http://someitemshave.blogspot.in/2014/11/design-for-cottage.html

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