breaking bread
Sep. 1st, 2009 11:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
topazJust about every cohousing community is built around a "common house" -- sort of a clubhouse for grownups. Typical common houses include a "great room" large enough for a few dozen people to eat together, a kids' rec room, a mail room, a living room -- that sort of thing. Ours also has a music room, a laundry room, an exercise area, a commercial-grade kitchen and more.
The common house is the backbone of a cohousing group. The community is organized in a way that encourages people to gather at the common house during the course of the day. Everyone's mail gets delivered there. Many of us do laundry in the common house. Two to four times a week we hold a community-wide meal. We designed and built the community with the expectation that we would often spend as much time hanging out at the common house as at our own houses.
There was one hitch in this plan. Our common house wasn't ready.
When we started moving in, the general contractor was still finishing some of the units. The construction schedule meant that most of the units would get finished before the common house. That's good, because the individual family houses had to be finished before people could move into them! But very very frustrating for us.
So we have been picking up our mail at the town post office every day or two. Those of us who don't have our own laundry machines have been sharing with those who do, or going to a laundromat. We've been having common meals a couple of times a week in the dining room of one of the unsold units. Living here is great, but it wasn't exactly what we were expecting.
Until now.
It's a "temporary" certificate of occupancy because there are still a few things to be negotiated with this inspector and that official and this other guy, and so on, but nothing likely to be show-stopping at this point. With no likely overwhelming roadblocks at this point, we are legally allowed to use the building.
So what's it like?
This is what it's like:
It's better than anything.
The common house is the backbone of a cohousing group. The community is organized in a way that encourages people to gather at the common house during the course of the day. Everyone's mail gets delivered there. Many of us do laundry in the common house. Two to four times a week we hold a community-wide meal. We designed and built the community with the expectation that we would often spend as much time hanging out at the common house as at our own houses.
There was one hitch in this plan. Our common house wasn't ready.
When we started moving in, the general contractor was still finishing some of the units. The construction schedule meant that most of the units would get finished before the common house. That's good, because the individual family houses had to be finished before people could move into them! But very very frustrating for us.
So we have been picking up our mail at the town post office every day or two. Those of us who don't have our own laundry machines have been sharing with those who do, or going to a laundromat. We've been having common meals a couple of times a week in the dining room of one of the unsold units. Living here is great, but it wasn't exactly what we were expecting.
Until now.
It's a "temporary" certificate of occupancy because there are still a few things to be negotiated with this inspector and that official and this other guy, and so on, but nothing likely to be show-stopping at this point. With no likely overwhelming roadblocks at this point, we are legally allowed to use the building.
So what's it like?
This is what it's like:
It's better than anything.
 |  |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-09-02 03:32 am (UTC)