Kitchen Rising

The ice storm set us back a bit and we are just now starting the framing on the ell...

Kitchen floor joists being attached to the granite foundation. The 150 year old stacked granite foundation is only 1/8 of an inch off of level today- amazing!

The framed doorway will be the mudroom off of the kitchen. The mudroom will also house a stacking washer and dryer for kitchen towels. New Hampshire actually has a mud season! so mud rooms are imperative, especially when you have dogs and love to garden!

The two-over-two casement wood windows are still a couple of weeks out, so while their framing is in, the openings won't be cut until they arrive. There will be two separate windows with the range placed between the two.

View from the back of the property. There will be three side-by-side windows in the plywood expanse which are centered over the sink.

Door on the left upstairs above the framing is the door from the master bedroom into the new master bath. The door on the right is the door to the new guest bath.

View from the main house 'part of the kitchen' to the new ell 'part of the kitchen.' The workers are installing the load-supporting beam which will do away with the studs in the foreground making the old and new kitchen one big room.

Hard as it is to imagine the white board/open hole/painted wood area in the photo will soon be the entrance into the master walk-in closet! The closet is in the barn above the soon-to-be great room (aka the Barn Room.) Also on this level of the barn will be a mechanical room housing the heating and AC for the barn and a storage room. The closet will measure approximately 14 x 14, and while we certainly don't need a closet that big the space is there and closets are such a rarity in antique homes that bigger is better.

Pretty for a change!

Enough of the demo and ice storm pics, I can't take any more!! Dan found a memory-card with photos from our previous house and I can't tell you how nice it was to see 'pretty' again! You have to understand that 99.897% of everything we own is still (almost one year later) in the original moving boxes. To put it mildly... we sooooo miss our treasures! Imagine all of your favorite antiques and accessories packed away and only a memory... until now! Here are some photos of our old house....

Entry with antique urns filled with giant liriope at front door. Vintage alabaster chandelier we found at the Paris Flea Market.




An antique mirror rests on an 18th c. flame-mahogany chest of drawers with original hardware, marble urn made into lamp with parchment shade; 18th c. Italian gilt candlesticks found at the Paris Flea Market. Dan brought the tulips home from a trip to Seattle- he stopped at Pike Place Market.

Dining room with my first set of American antique herbariums. I have a photograph of the woman who made these which is very special since unless your antiques come from relatives, you don't have any idea who owned them before you. I had these framed with old wavy antique glass. When we found the chandelier it had 197 huge crystals dripping from it, much too much for my tastes- took me two days to take them all off. I now use them to decorate a Christmas tree using only lots of white lights and the crystal prism drops. Centerpiece is a piece of forestwood we found on a back road in Colorado.



Living Room looking through entry into dining room.



Living Room



Living Room. Sofa has cushions made from 18th and 19th c. tapestries. Coffee table, chair (which is one of a pair) and commode we found in France. French door was actually an old window, a curb-side requisition.



My second collection of antique herbariums! They are American and pressed by LuLu M. Cowan in 1889! I actually have 23 more, but this was as many as I could tastefully display!! I love this collection- I can't tell you how happy they make my heart!



Collection of antique tortoiseshell boxes, mercury glass globe vase, antique Santos, and Victorian iron piece turned into lamp.



Antique Italian mirror. Pair of lamps found in Paris. Birds were Christmas gifts one year- one pair from my mother one from my sister, neither knowing they were giving the same gift! I love having four of them. They are standing in real bird seed!



Oil Painting was another curb-side requisition! One man's trash...



Antique Italian case piece filled with found objects.



A close up of the Italian case piece. This pair of herbariums belongs to the grouping in the dining room. Pair of 18th c. vellum books. Antique bronze candelabrum with purple, clear and smoked taupe crystals.



Antique tortoiseshell frames. The top two we found at the Paris Flea Market and the bottom one in Jackson, MS.



Antique gilt Italian pricket, a hotel silver tray and a demijohn bottle turned lamp all on an antique marble top and teak outdoor cafe table from Singapore.

My kitchen! Island was an antique piece found at an estate sale and we topped it with a piece of honed granite. Basket under the island was another curb-side find.

Antique iron French chandelier. Chalkboard 'Menu 'board made from old mirror frame. Case piece was made by Dan as a birthday present. I design, he builds! It is filled with my collections of white ironstone, green yelloware, hotel silver, and my cookbooks. Note Ella in the lower right hand corner of the photo looking up at purple 'Dumbo' sitting on the counter- I think we were getting ready to leave on a road trip!



Close-up of case piece. The hotel champagne bucket on the bottom shelf is my favorite champagne bucket- it is from the Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel, 1924.



Kitchen dining table with hotel silver flatware in antique celery glasses, and an antique English ironstone ham stand used as a candle holder. The platter is one of my most prized hotel silver pieces, I actually have a pair of these beauties which I found separately. It is from the Biltmore Hotel, circa 1913 and measures 27 1/2"!






Kitchen at night.



Den







Master bedroom. Antique Italian starburst mirror over bed. It was once gilded, but now only slight remnants of gold remain. Headboard is brown velvet, skirt is natural linen and duvet cover is quilted cotton. Chair is suede with a mink pillow.



Master bedroom- antique French commode found in Atlanta at the Scott show. On top is a collection of French processional crosses, most we brought back from France. Their stands were made out of old glazed terra-cotta pieces and old alabaster pieces.






The cup is a coin silver mint julep cup made by a New Orleans maker. We found this cup in a small antiques shop marked "brass cup" for $5! Before we moved I always had it filled with flowers on my bed side table. I thank Carolyne Roehm for making it okay to use mini carnations! I'm not a big fan of the large ones, but I think the white minis are sweet, smell great and last forever!



Study. French door with frosted glass is one of a pair (other one is just to the left of the chest) and are closet doors.

Guest bedroom



Guest bedroom. Curtain rod is a bamboo piece that I tortoised. Painting from the South of France- it hangs from an antique chain and nail head. Mink pillow made from vintage muff.

Ice is NOT nice...

This was the message posted on a day-care center's sign board, and oh how true it is. Last Thursday night our power went out due to the ice raining down on us,and we went to bed thinking it would all be melted in the morning... wrong. We woke up to what looked and sounded like a bombing; ice an inch thick, power lines snapped in two, trees and branches down across all roads making most impassable, huge old trees uprooted, and what sounded like gun fire going off every 15 seconds was actually the sound of huge trees breaking from the weight of the ice. After five very long days (and who knows how many more- the newspaper has said some people could be without power for the next 2-6 WEEKS...) of NO electricity, NO running water and two nights of nine degrees with NO heat, we were finally able to procure an hotel room last night. Ahh, heat and hot running water and light bulbs!

The moment we woke up and realized the total devastation we HAD to get to our house immediately. The five mile drive from the rent house there took years off my life- swerving around fallen limbs and trees, the car being pummeled from above from falling ice and limbs falling from tall trees, driving over downed power lines and under perilously low-hanging lines, only to find a huge old tree blocking the road making it impassible and then turning around to find another tree had fallen behind us blocking our exit... about this time an 'angel' in a pickup truck hopped out with a chain saw and cut a path allowing us to continue and then he disappeared into the day. The following pictures are what we found... As horrible as they look we were so blessed the damage wasn't worse. My biggest fear was losing one of our huge maples. We lost some rather large limbs, but the maples are still standing. A pine tree fell across our driveway and took out the electrical lines to the house, which explains the gaping hole in the upstairs corner. Ironically we were in the middle of burying our electrical lines to the house at the time of the storm. We spent the day in shock and sadness for the loss of so many beautiful trees, and all the damage done (being without news we had no idea at the time as to the impact the storm had on our whole state, not just our region.) We resigned ourselves that the house project would be put on hold for weeks, but late in the afternoon our contractor (who himself had extensive damage at his home) called and said he had cleared the driveway and they had been busy working to bury the electrical conduits they had laid the day before. The fact that work progress had been made on the house the day of such devastation was a very bright light on such a dark day. Our move-in date is four months from today! OH MY!!! Now to the photos...

first sighting

driveway from the road to the houseelectrical lines ripped from house
our driveway from the house looking back towards the road

No-ell

And yes... pun intended!!

The ell connects the main house to the barn. Unlike the main house it had been remodeled (very poorly) over the years-- ugly aluminum windows, the only shower in the house right off the old kitchen- ewww, uneven floors due to the structure being compromised to get plumbing in the upstairs guest bath, etc. . Simply put, it was a mess and the decision to take it down (and then to re-build it exactly in the same foot print) was an easy one. The new upstairs ell will house the master bath and the guest bath. The new downstairs ell will house 2/3 of the kitchen (the other 1/3 is in the original main part of the house.) Since much of the new electrical and all of the new plumbing for the master bath, guest bath, and the kitchen will be in the new ell it made so much sense to take it down to put it up again all new and level! But having said that it still was a 'OMG' kind of moment! Hold you breath... here goes some 'before', 'after', and 'in between' photos! The new framing starts tomorrow!

Before

After

In between!



Ella waiting patiently for her turn in the port-a-potty!!