Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Question on Design of your Common House

[Lynn Nadeau / Maraiah (welcome]

RoseWind Cohousing, Port Townsend WA. Lot development model. Common  
House completed 2000.

We designed our CH ourselves, looking at many that were already built.  
We also did a lot of the work ourselves, including construction,  
plastering and stuccoing, tiling, painting, and woodwork finishing. We  
are 24 households, in fair-sized single-family homes. What we built --  
what we could afford -- is about 2800 sq feet. It's essentially three  
30x30 squares, arranged in an L shape. One square is the dining room/  
great room. The crook of the L makes our south patio. No guest room.

The open kitchen is great, with a serving area to the dining room, a  
pass-through window for contact with the entry hall, and a pantry with  
back door to trash, compost, and recycling. The clean side/ dirty side  
kitchen layout, and two-level center island, works really well.  
Convection oven is right next to the tiled serving counter. Commercial  
slide-through sanitizer for dishwashing is wonderful. Our wooden  
floored dining/meeting room is very attractive and useful. Many  
windows, interior and exterior, give good visual connections.

If we'd had more money, we would have benefited from one more small  
room. We have a 15x30 rec room which is largely taken up by pingpong,  
and one 15x15 room that started as a well-equipped room for younger  
children. When we had a low number of kids that age, the room was  
snapped up by adults who were craving a heatable small room for  
watching videos, quiet dining, and small meetings, like committee  
meetings. It was a need that wasn't being met. Now we have more young  
kids, but the room has been transformed: we really could have used a  
room for each function.

I'll also put in a plug for our hallway from the foyer to the big  
room: it's lined on both sides with permanent-quality (Forbo) bulletin  
boards, with separate boards for Common House calendar, meal sign ups  
etc, another for meeting notes, another for community concerts and  
other announcements of local events, and still lots of room for photos  
and art work.

I"m glad to offer more detail if contacted directly.

Maraiah Lynn Nadeau
www.rosewind.org
where we have spring flowers in bud, and two homes for sale