Welcome To My Shabby Chic County Cottage

Our Story

Welcome friends to my shabby chic country cottage. In 2021 my family made a huge move from Daytona Beach, Florida to North Cental Arkansas in the foothills of the Ozark mountains. David and I along with our two grown children and two grandchildren made the move and we decide to downsize and get shed to house.  They are stick built homes ours and our daughters are 16x50 (800 sq ft). My son has a 12x24 (360 sq ft). They just come as a shell. You have to build out the inside of little houses.  Our little houses were delivered in august of 2021. My little house was damage in the delivery, and we were told that they would fix it, so we got right into building out our little home. Framing, wiring, insulating, drywalling all the main things you get done before you get to the pretty things. Little did we know that the damage was structural with leaking behind the drywall. It was a nightmare. Once we found this, we called the company, and we negotiated a new house to be built. That would take 4 months to get built and delivered. In the meantime, David had to remove all the wet drywall, all the wet insulation. That was almost a total loss (5,000 loss). We also had to deal with mold everywhere. We focused on the outside infrastructure like the septic, water lines and electric lines to the little houses.  Finally in April 2022 the second home was delivered. The plan was that we would move the old home to a new spot on the property for us to live in and be able to take all of the wiring and framing out and move it to the new home that would be put on our home sight pad.  They attempted to move the home, and it broke in half.  All of our contents were in the home. Like new cabinets, appliances, light and bathroom fixtures. I finally stopped the attempted move and request them to bring us a big shed to be able to move our contents into. They agreed to that.  It took us another 3 months to move and carefully tear everything out. Finally in August 2022 we were set to do the final move. Taking away the old and setting the new home. That was another nightmare. They literally broke the old home in 3 pieces (I did not care), but they also tore up our house sight with the level pad (another $5000 price tag). The new house was not leveled correctly, the ends of the house had been compromised, but we were going to make this homework for us. David got to work again making the side walls sturdy, framing, new insulation, new wiring, new plumbing, and new drywall. We had everything done except 2 sheets of drywall and the mudding and taping when I noticed a wet spot on the drywall. This was December of 2022. We could not believe it. The whole house was wet again. Another nightmare.  Once again, we went into negotiations with the company. We request that they spray foam the entire house and fix the holes that we were seeing on the roof where they had screwed the metal roofing and missed the rafters. They had caulked them but that did not hold, and the water was leaking through and also the ridge vent. We said if they agreed to these terms we would sign off on the house and they would not have to fix anything else that went wrong. They agreed to the terms. Now I know you are thinking what, why would we do that!! Frankly the skill level of the repairs that they were doing was not professional more like handy man. We felt that we could do the repairs and do them correctly. Now remember all the materials that were ruined were a loss to us. No reimbursement. So, December 19th of 2022 we had to move all of the ruined insulation, and drywall again (another $4,000) our beds and stuff we had in the house including our Christmas tree and presents out to the shed they have been provided and stay in my sister's camper. They had 2 days to coordinate as the temperatures were going to drop from the 40s to the 20s.  Once again David got to work drywalling and trying to get the house done. We spent the rest of the winter from January 2023-April 2023 drywalling, piecing together some drywall we were able to save and new drywall. At this point we have no savings anymore, so it was purchase when you get paid. As you can imagine we were just mentally and physically exhausted. At Thanksgiving 2023 we both came down with a very aggressive strain of covid and we were out of commission for a month. We got back to work, and I mean David did in January of 2024 and it's been slow, 2024 was a very stressful year for us. My health prevented me from doing a lot of things. We needed to focus on a few outside projects as we had a new animal and more chickens (chicken math lol) coming and we needed a break from the stress of this build out but, there is light at the end of the tunnel, that is that God Is Good, Jesus is our strength. This year 2025 things are happening. Of course, we will have to move back to outdoor projects too when the weather changes.  I look forward to showing you our little Shabby Chic Country Cottage.  Love and Blessings to you all!!  Lora Lynne

The Second house that was built. Yes, it had a broken window. This is the house we have now. New Photos to come