Guide · Cottage Care
A seasonal place lives or dies by two weekends a year: the one where you open it and the one where you close it. Get the exterior jobs right at those two moments and the cottage stays ahead of the weather all year. Here's the checklist we'd run on our own place — we're based in Victoria Harbour, so most of it we do run on our own place.
Before anything else, stand back and look up. Winter tells on a cottage from the top down: lifted or missing shingles, moss that fattened up under the snow, gutters with a visible débris line, a sagging trough section, streaks below the chimney flashing. Ten minutes with binoculars now beats a surprise in August. Anything you spot, photograph — a photo is all anyone needs to quote a fix.
The main gutter clear belongs in fall (more on that below), but cottages under white pine need a spring pass too — needles fall all winter, and a trough that was clean in November can be thatched solid by May. If your downspouts gurgle or overflow in the first spring rain, this is why.
One soft wash at opening does three jobs at once: it strips the mildew film that grew under the snow line, lifts the winter's grime off siding and soffits, and — the big one in lake country — breaks down the spider webs, egg sacs, and droppings chemically before the season's population gets established. Wash in May or June and the cottage looks right, and stays clearer of webs, for the whole summer.
Time window cleaning for after the pine pollen finishes — usually mid-to-late June around Georgian Bay. Clean earlier and the yellow film re-coats the glass in a week. If your sprinklers run on well or lake water, mention the mineral spotting; it can come off in the same visit.
Before the furniture goes out, check the boards: grey weathering, algae slickness (a genuine slip hazard when it rains), and any soft spots. A wood-safe wash now means the deck is clean for the season — and prepped, if you're planning to stain later in the summer. (Here's the full deck restoration guide, dry-time and all.)
After leaf-fall and needle-drop, before the freeze. A clogged eavestrough going into winter is how cottages get ice dams, rotted fascia, and spring meltwater in the crawl space — the expensive, invisible kind of damage. If you do exactly one thing on this list, make it this one, and make sure whoever does it flushes the downspouts rather than just scooping the trough.
Moss holds moisture against shingles through every freeze-thaw cycle of the winter — it's slow-motion roof damage. A fall soft-wash treatment kills it at the root; the dead material dries and sheds naturally over the following months, and the roof winters clean.
It sounds cosmetic, but there's a practical reason: clean glass at closing means that on opening day next spring, the view is the first thing you see — not a to-do item. Most of our seasonal clients pair the fall exterior window clean with the gutter visit in the same trip — and on the NordCare plan, the gutter clear and roof treatment ride along at member pricing.
Walk the exterior with your phone: roofline, foundation line, deck, dock. Five minutes of photos gives you a "before winter" record that makes any spring surprise — storm damage, ice damage, a fallen limb — easy to document and easy to get quoted remotely.
Everything above with a calendar attached is what the NordCare Plan does for seasonal owners: windows at opening and closing on autopilot, with the wash, gutter clear, and roof treatment slotting into those visits at member pricing. You don't need to be there for any of it — we send photos when each job's done.
No — it's all exterior. Most owners book online, we work while they're in the city, and they get photos when it's done.
Wash first, windows after — washing rinses the siding and can speckle fresh-cleaned glass. Booking them in the same visit handles the order automatically.
Same treatments apply — wood-safe washing for dock boards, soft wash for bunkie siding. Mention them when you book and they join the visit.