Doing some housecleaning today in the kitchen and the room next to it. The room next to our kitchen is kind of a warming room, at least that is how I look at it, but we also call it the library annex since it is next to the library and will, most likely, contain a number of bookshelves and lots of books.
The room’s most distinguishing feature is the mantle and fireplace. It is gorgeous. They literally do not make them like this anymore.
The most important function of this is, of course, to provide a place to hang stockings at Christmas time for our furkids.The mirror just needs some cleaning, but otherwise is in great shape. Not sure how old it is, but older than us for sure.Love these details. Beautiful.The cast iron insert and cover, which are rare enough to be notable, were clearly designed for coal. Still, we should be able to build small wood fires in it.Close up of one of the columns.
I can’t wait until the day I am able to make a small fire in there, and enjoy the space by sitting with Kelly while having a glass of port or Madeira and maybe some of the furkids warm themselves in front of it too.
As we had mentioned earlier, we had been looking for a house in Vermont for some time. We had been looking for months, and then a few days before Christmas last year, we put in an offer on this house. That offer was not accepted for a good while. That’s a long story.
Well. It has been a long, long time since either of us posted here. But to be honest, we really had a lot going on. After all, we packed up all our stuff, put it in storage, moved to a long-term hotel, found someone who could board both of our cats, cleaned out and fixed up the house in Winthrop, sold that house, looked endlessly for another house in Vermont, finally found it, put in an offer, waited for it to be accepted while we struggled to find others, got our offer accepted, then had to threaten to take the seller to court after he had signed the purchase and sale agreement and then changed his mind, moved to another hotel, finally closed on the house six months after our initial offer, found contractors, struggled to get them scheduled in a timely fashion, looked for new jobs, changed hotels again, found new jobs, started new jobs, moved into the basement of the house, got Vermont identification and car registration, and waited for all the contractors to finish their work so we could figure out when we could actually move into the actual house and not have to sleep on Army cots in the basement anymore.
And if you think that’s a lot, that’s really just the abridged version. We also lost our beloved Scratch Fury, who suddenly threw a clot, became paralyzed while boarding, and then rapidly deteriorated, so we had to quickly go see him while we still could.
Oh yeah, and I also had my left knee replaced, and had to undergo the surgery, recovery, and physical therapy while all this other crap was going on. Like I said, busy.
So anyway. We finally found the sort of house we wanted, in the village of Bellows Falls in the town of Rockingham in Windham County, nestled in the southeast corner of the state. This beautiful old Victorian was built in 1904, and came with a first-generation garage that was built sometime in the 1920’s. Both the house and the garage are part of the Bellows Falls Historic District.
The house, sporting its new roof. Please note the ridiculously overgrown foliage in the front yard.The garage, which was clearly designed for a car the size of a Model T and would be a tight fit even for our Mini, Maisie. Also note the jungle-like foliage and distinctly NOT dachshund-proof fence and gate.
So there have been a LOT of projects here since we closed on the house in June. The first was replacing the roof on both the house and the garage. We also repaired (inside) and replaced (above the roof) the chimney.
Our gorgeous new chimney, complete with ornamental brickwork and chimney cap.
We also had the entire electrical system rewired, as it was largely still knob and tube, and while the electricians did that they also wired parts of the house for ethernet and for speakers. They even replaced some of the fixtures with pretty ones that Kelly and I had found on craigslist.org. Some were cheap, and some were free. Much shopping Kung fu on Kelly’s part.
The dining room, with the awesome new brass chandelier, painted walls, refinished floor, and original stained glass.
Also also wik, we had all the wallpaper taken down and we picked some lovely (and historically appropriate) colors for the walls. They really turned out beautifully.
This is the main bedroom upstairs, with painted walls and newly refinished floor. The warming room (next to the kitchen), which we also call the library annex. Note the gorgeous mantle and fantastic cast iron fireplace insert.
There were also some other improvements made to the house, such as improving the half bathroom next to the kitchen and making some other adjustments and improvements to the plumbing in the basement. We also got a brand-new dryer (the old one died a sudden death, after popping the breaker a few times) and as of this weekend, we will also have a new kitchen refrigerator. The old basement fridge died within 48 hours of the dryer dying, and so we had the contractors move the old kitchen fridge to the basement to take its place. We also added a security system, which is nice for seeing when packages get dropped off. Seriously, it works GREAT for that. And we had gutters added to the house, because it didn’t have any for some reason. We also had to make some adjustments to the fence in the back yard, after Nymeria proved she was more than a match for it on several occasions.
So I will make a point of doing some follow-up posts to show you our progress.
Kelly and I took Dash and Nymeria with us to southeastern Vermont this past weekend. The weather was mostly sunny and actually got quite hot for Vermont. But the dogs generally enjoyed themselves, as did we.
We have become particularly fond of that part of Vermont, basically between Springfield and Brattleboro, and are doing a lot of sightseeing and antique shopping in it. It’s amazing how much greenery there is. I can imagine why so many people come here in autumn.
Today, October 7th, is the 57th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy signing the Partial Test Ban Treaty, officially known as the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space, and Under Water.
Considering how dangerously close we had gotten to World War III during the Cuban Missile Crisis the previous October, this treaty was a long step towards a permanent solution to the dangers of nuclear war. I am old enough to remember the last few times we really had to worry about nuclear war, like back in 1983. That was the year the TV movie “The Day After” came out, and also happened to be the year we had a couple of close calls of which the American public was blissfully unaware.
One of our more interesting Brimfield finds. Although you can find similar Fallout Shelter signs online for sale, I have not seen any others that include the “Capacity” markings.
Geoff and I haven’t been able to get to Brimfield for the last 3 years. We’ve both missed it a lot. But we were able to come this year. Some things have changed (new vendors, more food options, less parking, more 45 supporters) others have stayed the same (bargains if you know where to look, unpredictable weather, good and bad crazy, nice people).
Per usual I documented some of the odder things we encountered. Enjoy.
Even semi-regular visitors around here know that Geoff and I like old stuff. And by old stuff I mean antiques. We have a lot of them around the house. (To be fair we have a reasonable amount of old rocks too, but most of them are set into jewelry.) Some of the antiques we own come to us in rough shape. Some of it we’re good at restoring ourselves, but sometimes we need to involve a professional. Note that you’ll never see an antique piece of furniture painted “shabby chic” or with chalkboard paint in our home. NEVER.
But, you will see furniture with good bones get reupholstered. Reupholstery is part of restoration, sometimes the fabric on a piece isn’t original or is but is too badly damaged to salvage. That’s where a really good upholsterer comes in.
The May edition of Brimfield 2016 has come and gone. We haven’t photographed our purchases yet, that will come later. What we do have are the photos we took as we wandered around. These are the weirdest photos of items we encountered from Thursday-Sunday of last week. And some of them are truly odd. Others reminded us of The Bloggess, so we went ahead and snapped them. For posterity. We did not purchase any of these items.
Kelly and I have been watching this final season of Downton Abbey. I have to say, I have warmed to the show a bit, especially since they have developed some of the characters a little more fully. I am particularly pleased that they have made Thomas Barrow out to be more sympathetic and less of a villain.
Kelly and I don’t stay in hotels very often, but there is one hotel that we try to stay at once a year. It’s the closest we get to a regular vacation. Every May during the big antique show in Brimfield, we try to go for a long weekend and we stay at the Publick House in Sturbridge. We truly love the place. We bring our dogs with us, and they have a good time too.
So obviously we were quite alarmed when our friend Carron told us that she saw on the TV news that there was a fire at the Publick House.
I promised the other day that our next post would be about the awesome things that we saw at the antique show we went to. I might have overstated that a bit. There was a lot of great stuff. Then there was this.
It’s a door. Yeah.
Thankfully I didn’t see it, Geoff did. What Geoff and I spent a lot of time looking at though was this amazing marriage of art and antiques that was in a booth at the back. The work that this guy does is truly one of a kind. Check it out.
The Books are Taking Over... 