Bird's Yellow House: Another Pandemic Project

The Colonel and I have lived in Tradewinds, our custom-built, retirement, dream home for nearly thirteen and a half years now. When we had Tradewinds built, the little garage cottage (Tarpon Cottage) that sits catty-corner from the house did not have an air conditioning system. We had a couple of window units at one time but those really are no substitute for a a good system (plus they are noisy).

I had been wanting to get a good A/C system in the cottage for a long while but just kept putting it off and with the pandemic situation going on, we had nothing but time to do a much needed and desired renovation project on the cottage.

We went to The Home Depot to choose a new floor tile. We wanted something that was light gray in color and had the look of wood flooring. We thought it would be easy working with The Home Depot, but it was not. We kept on getting the install date pushed back. No one at the store seemed to know anything about our order when we spoke to them. One employee called us the day before the install was finally going to take place and demanded more money (because the tile we choose had a special installment procedure unbeknownst to us) or the project would be cancelled. The whole order was mishandled from the very beginning. The tile installer was the exception to the whole experience...but we will talk about him later.

We wanted a new color for the cottage walls. The original color was called Delicious Melon (very much like the color of the flesh of a cantaloupe). I like the color (my mermaid bathroom is still that color), but we wanted a change for the cottage. The Colonel choose a blue-gray called Absolute Zero. It is a nice cool and calming color.

We pulled up the old carpet and began painting the walls in the smaller room of the cottage. Then we began to take out the pocket door that separated the two rooms and enlarge the opening. We would need to enlarge the opening so that the new A/C system could circulate the cool air throughout the entire space.

We got the pocket door removed (it is a heavy door) and continued to cut away the wall separating the two rooms of the cottage.

Once we had the wall opening enlarged, we framed it up and painted the wood white.

It was then time to tackle the larger room. There was more carpet removal and wall painting to do.

Before the tile man came, we had the new A/C unit installed. It is one of the mini split type units. It is whisper quiet and keeps the place very comfortable.

Finally, it was time for the tile installer. He was a nice, middle-aged man and originally from Albania. He did an excellent job installing the tile. It looks beautiful! He had the job completed in three days.

The transition from the bathroom tile to the new tile was seamless.

This is what the cottage looks like now. The only thing we are waiting for is a new piece of furniture. It is a chair that can convert into a lounger or a bed (the camping chair is temporary).

The chair we had originally wanted did not pan out. The company kept pushing the delivery date back, so we cancelled the order and got our money back. We decided to order a couch from Amazon and while we waited for that one to arrive, The Colonel, Yam and I shopped at Ikea in Tampa and bought a wing-back chair to sit in while we waited for the new couch to arrive. Funny thing was, when we came back from Tampa, a FedEx truck pulled in a couple of minutes after we did and had our new couch from Amazon (it was not supposed to arrive until the first week of October).