Exposed!

While clearing trees, undergrowth and brambles for our COO (certificate of occupancy)down by the driveway entrance, we came upon this old, half buried, (what we are guessing to be) horse drawn plow. Yet another old piece of farm equipment to add to our inventory. It is inspiring me to find out more about the history of this little bit of farmland.

Caged Queens

A batch of new queen bees were picked up in St. Albans by Don and Tim King. They will be used to expand into new hives. In the meantime, they really aren't liking their cramped quarters.

Trimmed out

The windows are being trimmed inside. It's a simple design, intended match the lines of the rest of the house.

Pine Floor

In the folklore of Scots pine a common theme is their use as markers in the landscape. We have used the Scot pines that we had to fell from the land to put up our house as some flooring. Perhaps we have marked with this Scot pine floor, the spot from which it lived and now where we will live. This picture is of the Scot pine floor in our bathroom. Maybe by tomorrow afternoon the mudroom and powder room will also have pine floor installed.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches

or have a beautiful birch floor underfoot. Our birch flooring is almost all installed and it is beautiful. There are all sorts of colors and patterns. The birch hardwood is from Vermont, which was purchased from Lathrops in Bristol, Vermont.

From Floor to Ceiling

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Instalation of the hardwood floors and the living room pine ceiling were all started today.

COO

COO = Certificate of Occupancy, which is required before we move in. One thing we need to do to get our COO is clear some trees along our field of vision when exiting the driveway onto Sherman Hollow Road. This is a 'before' picture.

Inside colors

We have chosen to go with a basic 'sunny white' for most of the inside color, until we can live with it for a while and see how the light/seasons/ etc. are. But some rooms were given a 'real' color. The downstairs den and guest room all were painted. as was our bathroom and the power room.

I'm seeing red

I'm very pleased with the deep, almost brownish red of the garage. The color in the picture makes it look more scarlet than it actually is. Don and I decided that it's the red of sumac fruit in fall. I tried to get a picture where you can see the color of the house next to the color of the garage.

Finally

It took lots of time and work, but we've finally gotten Butler Drive ready to sell. It was a sad/happy day today to put the 'for sale' sign in the front yard. This has been a great home to us for 24 years.

We've got a color

After lots of discussion, we decided on a deep red for the garage. Matching the house seemed too 'suburban' now that we are going to live in the country. I'll add a picture of the color palette we are using that supported the decision, a least according to Benjamin Moore.

Upstairs in the garage

This is Don, upstairs in the almost finished garage. He's looking very happy because he realized there's lots of room up there to store all our 'stuff', like toboggans and snow shows, fans and bicycles and any other out of season things. There is a wide set of stairs going up into it, plus, for the extra big things, a double wide door at the other end. Now Don will never get rid of anything since he has a place to keep it. The view from those double wide doors is beautiful, out over the field and into the far hills. It would make a better room than a garage storage space.

Imagine

Imagine the color of the garage. The roof will be similar to the house, but what about the boards and battens? The same as the house? the same as the barn (mud red)?, some color all its own? and if so, what? I'm leaning towards the same red as the barn will be. Opinions welcome.

Garaged

We have the start of a garage! Against the advise of most, we decided on a detached garage. We have such wonderful scenes out of every side of the house, we couldn't bear to put a garage on to interfere. So, we went with a detached garage. It's only a few steps to the house. Maybe when we are ninety or so, we can construct a covered walkway to get between there and the house.

Sheet Rock

This past week the sheet rock work began. Lots of progress was made on the first floor. It sure makes it look more like a liveable house.