This house may have old-fashioned details, but it contains some surprises, like scored concrete floors that are stained "the color of a bomber jacket" and a low-maintenance lap siding made of cement, sand, and wood that's ideal for the climate because it resists mildew and termites. And though the cottage certainly looks like a typical New Orleans house built on raised piers, all but the porch stands on a concrete slab. "That gave the house more stability and did away with maintenance issues of raised houses," Judy says. Slab construction is also less expensive. Did she think about building over a basement? In a word, no. "If you dig a hole in the ground here, it fills up with water. A basement in Louisiana is a swimming pool."

Judy specified traditional double-hung wooden windows for the facade and aluminum windows elsewhere "because they're easy to operate and don't have to be painted." The shingles under the gable at the top of the house are a modern cement-fiber material that resembles cedar shake. "We went with traditional where it worked, like the attic vent and the black shutter dogs," Judy says, "but I wanted modern materials that were less trouble for the homeowners wherever we could use them."

Several years after throwing themselves into the building process and saying goodbye to their old home, the Fergusons have settled into their new cottage. "This house is easy," Kathy says. "Before, we walked through rooms we never used, but now we live in the whole house. That's exactly what we wanted."