Cohousing-L Mailing List: Another commonhouse description

[Rob Sandelin (robsan]

A couple of folks have asked me about Sharingwoods under construction 
commonhouse so here are the details.

Sharingwoods Commonhouse is a bit over 2,000 square feet.  We are going 
to do much of the construction work ourselves, which may be a bit of an 
epic, although we have two contractors in residence to be the straw 
bosses and expertise.  We are about 1/4 done so far.

Most the space in the commonhouse is one great room, and their is  a 
small alcove near the kitchen which contains storage, heating and one 
of two bathrooms.

There are two front entrances to the building, one coming off the main 
path and another which opens onto the front patio. The front patio is 
separated from the playground by a garden strip and will be bordered on 
one side by our kitchen garden.   As you walk in the front door 
(non-patio) the kitchen is in front of you, the kids room to the right 
and a bathroom to the left.

Our kids space is a half floor (4 feet) below the main floor, near the 
entrance, so during dinner we will be able to hear the screams but not 
the giggles (we hope). The bathroom blocks most of the kids room off 
from the eating space.   The kids room has its own door outside into a 
path to the existing playground.  The kitchen is on the same end as the 
kids room, but above it on the main floor  and the scullery is in an 
adjacent alcove. There is a hole in the wall separating the kids room 
and kitchen so parents cooking can see the kids.   We have built in 
storage closets for tables and chairs and a small 12X12 basement below 
the kitchen for deep storage or some other use.

The building has lots of windows, 6 skylights and faces into the 
existing playground.  Our ceiling is made of wooden planks and I 
suspect we will end up sanding and finishing the plywood subfloor and 
call it our floor.  We are self-funding this building project with 
loans from community members.  We started out with a $2,000 per 
household assessment to create a pool of money to get started and the 
total project budget is around $120,000.  There are several very large 
wooden beams across the ceiling and we hope the whole affect is one of 
lodge-like hominess.  On the opposite end of the building from the 
kitchen is a small woodstove and corner lounge which will be separated 
from the main eating space by movable partitions which have a bulletin 
board on one side and bookcase or magazine rack on the other.

There is a long bench along one side of the entry for removing shoes 
(we would like this to be a no shoe building to help keep it clean) and 
the other side is a long coat rack and cubbies for internal mail.

Our food service is from a custom made rolling table, allowing access 
from two lines and we will have rolling carts for dishes as well.  The 
eating space is roughly 25 X 40 feet which we project will hold a 
maximum of fifteen, six person tables for seating of 90, although we 
expect regular dinners to be less than that.

Some of this is still on paper and what we actually end up with in the 
end, since we are building it ourselves, may vary somewhat as we go 
about construction.

Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood