The historic Seaman’s Church on Middle Street has weathered many changes since it was built in 1828. Somehow this image seems fitting as we wind down another year.
Tag: Photos
This renovation project has been a huge learning curve for me
While I had once considered architecture as a career, I’m surprised how little I know about what makes a home work or, through the eyes of my coconspirators in this venture, how much a few imaginative strokes can transform an existing structure. Not all of them are budget-busters for folks in the lower half of the income bell curve, either.
It’s a long way from my ingrained tastes shaped by the clean 20th century lines of the Bauhaus school of design as well as my admired Shaker and Zen aesthetics. Historic New England home styles have come as a more recent appreciation along the lines of an “This Old House” public television series dimension. Still, after owning a traditional New Englander described in many of the earlier blog posts here, I had jokingly promised myself that the next house would be concrete, glass, and steel – nothing that would rot or need maintenance. At least, with the move to Eastport, it wasn’t in the pine box I had once jokingly expected at the end of my Dover sojourn.
At least I’m no longer left with a state of anxiety each time a nor’easter barrels our way. Despite all the asphalt shingles on the sidewalks and streets I had found after each of those, fortunately most of ours stayed in place. As we’ve since discovered, the biggest wonder was that our roof itself had withstood so much for so long in its condition.
But I’ve also been haunted by an “This Old House” series that followed a renovation of a Nantucket Island home, if I recall right, and the way it overran budget and led to its sale shortly afterward.
You would have thought we would have had our plan down pat long before the renovations began. Maybe it was a good thing we didn’t.
I mean, with three years of looking for a contractor, there was lots of time for planning. Except that we kept it in the nebulous dream stage rather than some hard decisions.
And then, once we found one, we had hoped to have the entire roof component buttoned up before last winter but had to settle on getting the back half done first and then tackling the front come springtime, as you’ve seen in these weekly posts. So here we are, more than a year later.
We’ve made some mistakes, of course. We spent money on CAD specifications in a design done through a local lumberyard only to find out what our contractor needed wasn’t what we thought he was looking for. Looking back, I’m not sure they could have delivered, considering what we were really facing and then revised as we went..
And the wood stove’s metal chimney didn’t have to go up next to the brick chimney, meaning that it had more bending than was necessary. Oops. At least it draws the smoke well.
On the other hand, much of the rest has been pretty straight-forward.
We even know that it will never, ever, really be finished.
Tagging a tree
Our custom is to bring the tree indoors on Christmas Eve and decorate it then. Sometimes we’ve even waited till that very morning to head out to the tree farm to harvest the one we had tagged earlier. But that was back in New Hampshire.
Here in Real Downeast Maine, we instead initially gleaned our Yule tree in the neighboring forests, sometimes even along country roads under utility lines, first in tabletop sizes and then full-size. The vegan member of our circle, however, complained that they weren’t full enough. She wanted something more classically ideal. Definitely nothing Charlie Brown.
Well, the natural – organic – ones do tend to grow mostly on one side, nestled in with others, unless you fell a taller evergreen and lop off the top five or six feet. Not that such an argument went anywhere. Even so, the rest of us were perfectly delighted with what we put up and strung lights on and all the rest.
Against that background, we finally relented and were then astonished at one nearby family tree farm that goes along for perhaps a half-mile in clearings along an unpaved lane into the bigger forest. There are probably enough trees for every child, woman, and man in the county, and the prices are ridiculously low in comparison to what you just paid, wherever.
The kids in the family will even come around with electric chainsaws to cut it down for you. What more could you ask? Well, maybe that netting before we jam it into the hatch of our car?
What you see here is us claiming one to be ours, that is “tagging” it with ribbon and an identifying label, ahead of time. We trust that nobody else will ignore those markers. (It’s happened to us only once, back in more populous Dover. We still found a fine replacement. Maybe better?)
My, those needles y do smell good, outdoors and in.
Here’s wishing you and yours and happy and memorable togetherness.
Gong, gong buoy
This “green can” at Heron Neck on Vinahaven Island has a gong mechanism rising from its base. Rocking in the waves makes it sound, as we observed on a cruise aboard the historic schooner Louis R. French.
For more schooner sailing experiences, take a look at my Under Sail photo album at Thistle Finch editions.
Not just because there might be a touch of snow on the ground
We find ourselves looking at evergreens in the wild a bit differently at this time of year. Remember, we cut our own Christmas tree once we locate the right choice.
Set to drag for scallops
Serving fresh scallops quickly became a Christmas Day tradition in our household once we moved to Eastport. The fishermen set forth before sunrise on each of their preciously allocated days, and only the worst weather can convince them otherwise.
Regarding our real estate market
We were staggered and bewildered by the number of people – mainly from California, Texas, and New York – who were buying up properties out here, sight unseen during the height of the Covid epidemic. Well, that went for our Dover in New Hampshire, too. Their bids definitely inflated the selling prices.
It seemed pretty risky, from the locals’ point of view, and that included us. There are so many things, including warning signs, that you discover in a walkthrough of a property, fine distinctions that don’t appear in photos or descriptions. Just think of smells or the neighbors or even lighting as well.
There are also so many things you won’t catch if you see a property only in fine weather. Not just leaks or drafts, either. As a quip around here goes, will those buyers be selling once they’ve endured a winter living here?
We were lucky to purchase when we did. The prices not only went up dramatically soon after that, they’ve stayed up, We remain mystified about how young families are paying what they are for housing.
Glad no one was home
Climatic change is bringing more frequent and fiercer storms to Way Downeast. Last winter felled many trees in the region. Here’s what of those did to a riverside rental cabin in Calais.
Gilkey Harbor memory
The member ships of the Maine Windjammer Association are independently owned and operated, and apart from setting firm departure and return dates, each of them ventures at the will of its skipper and the elements each day.
Watching the others in the course of a cruise is almost a game, and sometimes two or three wind up spending the night in the same cove, as happened here on Islesboro. We had the Heritage, above on one side, and the Angelique on the other, and the atmosphere was festive.
For more schooner sailing experiences, take a look at my Under Sail photo album at Thistle Finch editions.
One checkpoint where we lucked out
A miraculous thing for us was that the roofing shingles, which had prompted our big renovation project, had held on for the four years between the insurance company’s alarm after our purchase and the actual replacement. Not so for many other shingles around us, even those that had been replaced during those years.
My initial impression, looking at the real estate market when we started considering this move, had been that we could fit into something cheap and make do. But things were shifting.
Most homes we saw for sale had problems, either for my coconspirators or me. Many of the remodelings were utterly puzzling. Others really needed to be redone.
I wasn’t the one who zeroed in on Eastport, but now I cannot imagine anywhere else I’d want to be at this stage in my life. Maybe it’s like Swami when she came to the Poconos and felt the vibes.
The ideal of moving to an island in Maine is almost a cliché. Even a Downeast shore, or a bit to our west, like the Wyeth clan. But we did need to downsize.
At one point, my dream had been to live on a mountain lake. The ocean never even entered into the picture.
Yet here we are, surrounded by interesting people, too.
Jnana's Red Barn 