What would be in YOUR dream kitchen?!

HELP!!! I woke up in the middle of the night and thought how I was missing a valuable resource by not asking YOU what you would want in your dream kitchen! I'd love to hear anything and everything since I am so frightened of moving in and thinking "darn, I should have added this/that." Your contributions will be greatly appreciated!

Sooooooo.... what would it be? Big item, small.... anything and everything at all that you would want to put into a new kitchen! Or even anything that you currently have that you hate! List away....!!
Oh, and thanks again!

I love houses...

...I always have. One of my first childhood memories is sitting on the front porch of my Grandmother's house in Portland, Oregon (who knew that my future-husband was probably across town visiting his grandparents at the very same time!) with my two older sisters, and I fell in love with the 1920's house across the street and commented that it was a "huggable"house-- I got a lot of ribbing for that statement, but I meant it with all my heart. I find it poignant that our 'first' house was already across town in that same city (Portland) and would be ours some 25 years later!

My oldest sister has a letter that I sent her when I was 9 years old and she was away at college. I described in great detail how I had just re-decorated my bedroom! Growing up, one of my weekly chores was dusting the house- I hated it, but it wasn't the dusting that I hated, I just hated that it wasn't MY house!! An interesting thought for a 11 year old. I have always wanted my own house!

One of my favorite house quotes comes from Under the Tuscan Sun ... "We love the concept of four walls. 'What is her house like?' my sister asks, and we both know she means what is she like?" I get that. I think your home and how you live speaks volumes about the person you truly are. Not the person you show to the world, or the person you want to be... but the person you are at your core.

During this time of thanksgiving, I just want to say how very thankful I am to own a home again after 9 months of being "homeless!" It is a very simple farmhouse, but it speaks directly to my heart. I still drive up to it, or walk from one room into another and have my breath taken away. I hope your Thanksgiving is filled with many, many things to be thankful for, huggable houses, and lots of turkey(s)!

turkeys visiting at the rent house!

Happy Thanksgiving to you!

thank you brooke giannetti at velvet & linen

Thank you so very much Brooke for mentioning my house blog on Velvet & Linen yesterday! What an honor to be mentioned on such a beautiful interior design blog! And 'welcome' to all of Brooke's readers. Two days ago I had no idea that today people from all over the globe would be looking at my house project in New Hampshire! What a special treat and honor it is for us to have you here!

here's the link.... http://brookegiannetti.typepad.com/velvet_and_linen/2008/11/for-the-love-of-a-house.html

The big dig! /aka 'man stuff'

First of all let me just say that the subject of this post wigs me out! I know it has to be done, I know that I will love it when it is done, I know it is being done correctly and safely and yet... I can barely look while trying to take photos! Dan, on the other hand, was like a little boy in a toy store, and since it is the making of the Garage I guess that is as it should be! This is Dan's baby and he has free reign... which of course as you women know, means as long as I approve it!! As previously mentioned we are putting in a garage underneath the barn which entails shoring up the barn footing and a lot of digging below grade!

Barn before big dig!
Existing stone wall will be moved to the corner of the barn wall, area will be back filled and we will then put in a large stone patio accessed from the 'to-be' barn/great room on the main floor.

You can see the temporary support structure inside the barn. The open space where the old garage door was will become an interior concrete wall in the new garage.

Same corner as above photo except from the entry-to-the-garage side of barn. Photo shows the new concrete footing. The dig extends 6 feet below the current grade- that includes a 2 foot lowering for the garage floor, plus 4 feet to reach below the winter frost line. This photo makes my palms sweat!

Barn before big dig! This is the side that will have the garage doors. Notice the gravel and granite-slab ramp where the cows would enter the barn!
This is the same corner where the cow ramp was!

Site of the new first floor half-bath which will be accessed from the barn room. Affectionately referred to as the outhouse! At present there is no bathroom on the first floor of the house.

Boys and their toys!

This is the location of our 'to-be' mud room which will be accessed from the kitchen. It will be approximately a 6 x 6.5' space that will be two stories tall (it will extend a corner of the house) and the second floor section will contain a WC and a stacked washer and dryer just off of the master closet.
Same area showing the newly poured concrete footing.


At the same time, the chimney is being taken down and re-mortared (with the original bricks) from the roof up.

An Overview

I thought it would be a good time to give an overview of our house project.

First, a little history about the house. The house was built around 1850 and sits on 4.16 acres with views of hayfields and distant mountains. When Dan and I get some time we will go to our closest large city of Nashua, where we can look up state records and get a more exact date. The sales agent for our house gave us the name of a man who contacted her a couple of months ago stating that his great/great-great grandfather lived in the house at one time. I have his number and hope to get more information and some old photos of the house from him. Our house is a traditional "farmhouse" and was thought to be a part of the neighboring grand estate. The large maple trees on our property continue in a row through the estate, so that makes a lot of sense. The way our house is sited also suggests it was part of the estate- our house faces the estate house not the road below. Our house sits up on a hill (I have always loved houses that sit up from the road!) and the property line on the road is lined with a stone wall and our driveway is flanked by a pair of gorgeous stone beehives to mark the entrance. Stone walls are everywhere here, and I mean everywhere. You can be out in the middle of nowhere and the land will have stone walls running through it. We've been told that back in the early 1800's the whole state of New Hampshire was logged off and if you look at old photos of towns back then they are always sitting on barren land. The stones were moved from the fields to prepare them for planting and were conveniently stacked into walls. They are 'dry-stacked' meaning no mortar of any kind. They are truly works of art and it is amazing to think they have been standing for hundreds of years! Sorry, I digress.... The foundation of the house sits on huge slabs of granite (New Hampshire is the 'granite state' after all!) and everyone from the inspector, the structural engineer, our contractor, and all the various subs who come to bid jobs at the house all praise the solid foundation and how well it was built. They all say they've never seen a house this old in such good structural condition. Woo-hoo! (that's Dan and me cheering!)

Our mission statement is to bring this 19th-century home into the 21st-century and enable it to last another 150 years! We will be putting in all new electrical wiring throughout the house(electricians started last Monday), burying the electrical lines to the house from the road, installing all new plumbing, new roofs , a state-of-art heating and air conditioning system (and yes, you do want AC here in the summer) and blowing in insulation- believe it or not the house had none which made our contractor very happy since it makes our new "green" insulation that much more effective. The windows in the main house are staying- no one is touching my windows no matter how much my dear husband and contractor try to guilt me into their lack of energy efficiency! The antique wavy glass is gorgeous and no one is touching them! The new ell kitchen and master bath and the barn room will all have new energy-efficient windows.

As it sits now the attached barn is just that... a barn- cow stanchions and all! I knew it was my house when out in one of the cow stalls is a iron hay rack very similar to the one I had purchased for a fern holder at my old house! Again, I digress! The barn is also very well built, although a later addition to the main house, and will be a big project. The basement floor will be turned into a three-car garage (the house doesn't have a garage at present); the main floor will be a large 'barn' or great room with a huge field-stone fireplace and french doors looking out to the back meadow (aka our backyard!), a mudroom area where you come up from the garage floor below and a large storage room (antique houses have NO storage!), the second floor will be have a purpose-to-be-determined room with a vaulted ceiling and the other half will magically be opened into the main house and will become my master closet and a master storage room!

Have I made you tired yet?!

The beehives at the entrance from the road

A neat view of our location- this white house is the estate next door, as seen from the hill across from our hill...our house is just to the right of the white house

A larger view of same photo- white house is on the right side in the middle of the photo

Back view of the house with the ell and the attached barn
Baseboards off to pull new electrical wiring
The basement showing the granite slab foundation

Election day in our Town

Regardless of whether you voted Democrat or Republican I think we all agree what a huge success the election was with all the new voters and interest. New Hampshire takes their politics very seriously. A fun, new sight for us was when we would drive to/through larger towns/cities and you would find one or two or five people standing on the street or at a street corner holding their candidate's signs and waving to passing cars. Now this was never any kind of organized group these were just your typical-next-door-neighbor-types who decided to go get up from the sofa and go support their candidate on the street for an hour or two!

Last Spring when we went to our town offices to register our car we also registered to vote at the same time. After filling out the paperwork and handing it to the oh-so-nice lady behind the counter I asked if they would now be mailing me my voter's registration card? She nicely said, "no we don't have registration cards." So then I said, "oh, so I'll just show you my driver's license when I come in to vote," and she said...."no, no need to show your driver's license.... we'll just remember you." That's when I realized that Toto we're not in Kansas anymore!!!

Our first election here was so much fun. I've voted many times in my life, but can never say the experience was 'fun'! Our town hall is located on our small main street and all the merchants along the street had donuts and coffee outside their shops. One of our local policemen, Officer Mike, was there to help you cross the street and lots of people were standing with their party/candidate signs. There were dogs, and people milling about, it just had this really festive vibe, just as any important election should have! We went in and sure enough, no ID needed- we told them who we were and went into curtain covered booths I remember my mother voting in when I was a child, and when it was all over we felt as if we had gone too fast through a 'fun ride' at the carnival!

Our town offices are in the furthest away part of this building.

On the close end where you see the people standing (exit poll) is our local movie theater! The 'Town Hall Theater' has been showing movies since 1919 and before that had live entertainment including vaudeville shows. It is set in an old auditorium and shows current and foreign artsy movies for $6 every night and old classic black and white movies for free (with a donation to their charity of the week) on Saturday afternoons! And to top it off they serve popcorn with real butter!!

Our Faux Kitchen

Keep in mind that it was only three weeks ago tomorrow that we closed on the house! Things are moving along quite quickly. We have had two meetings with a kitchen designer who is basically putting my original floor plan on paper and then the three of us work to tweak it. Our contractor mocked up the room so we could really see and feel it which has been invaluable! The new kitchen is the combination of the old kitchen (part of the main house) and the "ell" (which is a structure that connects the main house to the barn.) To give you perspective, the room measures 14.5' x 30' and has a 9' ceiling (which is the rarest of rare here in New England- it's not uncommon to have 7' ceilings in antique homes!) The room will have a lot of windows plus French doors (not in the pictures) and you can see the placement of the new windows outlined in blue tape. The windows measure 32 x 55". The island measures 36 x 84". The back stairs in the photos will be demoed as the second floor of the ell will be the new master bath and who wants stairs coming up in your shower! The 'faux' dining room table seen in the bottom of the top two photos is the dining area of the kitchen and will have french door leading out to the back porch. Behind the dining table area (not seen in the photos) will be a fireplace! The formal dining room (which backs up to the kitchen) has a fireplace and we are opening it up to have a see-through fireplace between the two rooms! Off of the left hand side of the top two photos is the existing walk-in pantry! I am so excited about that- it even has a full sized window in it! Pretty cool!

Our 'faux' kitchen!

The area where you see the stairs and doorway will become the entry into the Barn which will become our 'barn' room a.k.a. great room or den.

Range (a 48" Wolf) faces West and looks out at the driveway coming up to the house. There are no upper cabinets on this wall. The two windows flanking the range have been re-sized since the photo was taken.

Windows facing the East meadow. A farmhouse sink will be placed under the center window

My very own outhouse!