Trying to keep track of a slew of storms and screens, all of varying sizes and shapes, for the twice yearly changeout on a large hundred year old house is a daunting task. This numbering system makes the job much less odious. These little unobtrusive gems get attached in three spots. One on the inside of the window frame in an inconspicuous spot, one on the storm window, and one on the screen. No more guessing about which screen or storm goes where while juggling the cumbersome piece in your hand. The original screens and storms had Roman numerals incised into the frames, but not only did they all not match up to the existing windows, they did not correspond to any markings on the window frames. The time had arrived for a new system.

Climbing ladders to accomplish the change out also was a system that needed to be updated. I devised a plan that would enable the storms and screens to be swapped out from the inside of the house. The storm or screen is slotted into a groove on the top of the outside of the window frame, the bottom pulled toward you from the inside and then latched down into place with a lever. Gone are the days of wrestling with the two story ladder and the feel of scaling Mount Everest with a large and heavy storm window in one hand and groping for a handhold with the other. Add the possibility of a gust of wind to catch the storm window and send it flying out of your hand and the task seemed fraught with peril. Now all of the change out can be accomplished from the safety of the inside of the house.

Why not just replace all of the windows with new ones to avoid all this you ask? The desire to keep the old European style windows which open inward, and add so much to the charm of the house, over ruled. Have you ever looked at a recently remodeled old house and thought, something just does not look right about it? It is usually the new windows that are wrong for the period of the house. We wanted to avoid that.

Trotting out an old invention for a solution to a problem on an old house just felt right.

Ahead of our “judges conclave,” as we called it, Heather of heatheratwood.com, and brainchild of the contest, sent me all of the entries so that we would enter into the decision making process well read. While we were arranging the meeting to pick the winner, we confessed that we each had a clear favorite. We decided not to reveal our individual choices to each other until our conclave. Within less than five minutes after sitting down with all of the printed entries, we realized that we had both picked the same entry. We hope you enjoy reading this as much as we did.

We had some other terrific entries. Watch Heather’s site for a dozen or so of our favorites picked from the pile.

Recipe for Life: What to Teach Your Children

Sandy Farrell

The gifts from my mother remain as intangibles — no recipe box, no heirloom dish set for the holidays, no special linens rich with memory and smell- but a different treasury that is very special to me. My mother died when I was 10, she was smiling at lunchtime and gone by the time I returned home from grammar school at 3 pm. Met by my father, silent and in shock, sitting on the stairs bracing himself for the task of telling his three young daughters that their mother was gone forever.

We didn’t live with dad, my parents were separated and lived as polar opposites in their own Cold War of the 1950s. Belonging to that 25% of New England, the Anglo-Irish mix had torn apart their marriage from the start. We lived with an aunt and cooked out of her borrowed kitchen. It was the Mamie Eisenhower era, years before Jackie Kennedy and Julia Child would give us a different view on the world. This may sound bleak, but what I inherited was an appreciation that came only much later in life: the innovative spirit my mother possessed.

And in order to feel that appreciation I had to first distance myself with all of the hurt and anger that a ten year old girl could muster up to protect herself from such a loss. My mother had wanted to be an artist — and indeed was an artist. I have a beautiful charcoal she did at 14, and pastels done on the back of leftover wallpaper, weekly trips to the art museum on free Saturday mornings, and walks to the park for concerts. The local librarian told me they gave her an adult library card because she had read so much of the children’s library. She had trained as a nurse but the hours were too long for a mom with three little girls so she took a job as a waitress at a small neighborhood restaurant.

Never one to get caught up in recipes, or own many cookbooks, she would scan the fridge for content and swiftly make a decisive move, gather up an armful of ingredients and proceed to the counter. Tasks that took longer got started earlier, missing ingredients were replaced by substitutes, efficient peeling and chopping began, each of us assigned a specific job, taught the basic skills, not a moment or veg wasted, no tears, perseveration, hesitation, or remorse. Supper, plain and simple, quickly executed like a Zen master. First thought, best thought. Never the same river nor stew twice.

RECIPE FOR LIFE:

use what was on hand don’t let it be a chore keep it simple
use basic kitchen utensils plan ahead

substitute freely and often don’t waste a thing
serve it up hot and fresh

Even today, some fifty-plus years later these basic ingredients and recipe for life bless our kitchen. Cooking is fun, it’s relaxing and creative. I still come home from work and have supper on the table in less than thirty minutes. Repeat last weeks dish? Never. No need, mom taught me more than how to cook up supper.

When my parents retired and began looking at places to build their dream house, they settled upon Del Mar after exploring Austin, Texas and Carmel, California. As my mother recounts, Austin was too hot, Carmel too cold, but Del Mar was just right. The lot they found was a very steep one graced with a massive old Torrey pine tree at the top with swoopingly dramatic branches like a piece of sculpture. Views abound of the Pacific Ocean below and the town of La Jolla across the Los Penasquitos lagoon.

My father’s room mate at West Point, Herbert Turner, became a designer of buildings instead of pursuing a career in the military. He studied architecture with John Lloyd Wright, Frank Lloyd Wright’s son. Herb’s houses are decidedly California modern in style and incorporate many Wrightian features. Dentil molding, using outside siding materials inside, and bringing the outside in are all features of Wright’s style that Herb Turner re-tooled for the California coast. Once the empty lot was found, a scarcity in the area, Herb Turner drew up plans for the challenging steep hillside lot. The garage was placed on the lower level and the house situated above and behind it. A challenge was, how to get from the garage up into the house without climbing many steps? As my parents planned to live in this house for the remainder of their lives, an elevator was placed at the back end of the garage, which carries you up to the living room, two stories above. Ground was broken for the construction just as my father discovered that he had cancer.  Unfortunately, he never saw his dream house completed. Single handedly, my mother moved forward with the project. Although I lived three thousand miles away, I helped as much as I could.

The end result is a stunner of a house which fits the lot and is in perfect scale with its surroundings, which so few new homes are these days. Designed for just the two of them, it is not large but has a spacious feel when inside. The living, dining and kitchen areas take up one side of the house. The ceilings there are two stories and give the spaces a sense of drama. The bedrooms, baths and laundry room are on the other side of the house with lower ceilings for a more intimate feel. These two spaces feel separate and are divided by a wide galleria which runs the entire depth of the house. It also doubles as a large, high ceilinged entry hall. The walls of the galleria are hung with artwork collected over the years, including a painting by Herb Turner.

My mother Wootsie (nicknames abound in my family), proper name Margaret, has happily lived in this house for over twenty years now. The house has been featured in newspaper articles and is featured prominently in the book Art and Architecture of Herbert B. Turner.  While my father Tom never saw his dream realized, this house above the Pacific serves as a fitting capstone to the adventurous years of my parents’ life together.     

Circle the wagons

Sometimes, a problem is so big, it calls for a big, loud and growling solution. Such was the case recently at Howlets. After two large trees were taken down and a long-forgotten kitchen garden was cleared of years of unchecked growth, we were faced with a 10-foot high pile of brush filling the parking spaces for two cars.

As readers of this blog know, Howlets is a 100 year old stone house overlooking Folly Cove in Rockport, Massachusetts, purchased last year by friends David and Heather. The grounds of the property had unfortunately been neglected, save for the lawns being mowed. David and Heather and I hashed out a plan to “take back” the grounds. David has been digging up the kitchen garden of briars, saplings and other unwanted volunteer growth — and he has the scratches on his arms to prove it. Heather has been weeding, replanting and restructuring a long narrow garden bed which hugs a sweeping stone wall. Two old, half-dead locust trees were removed by a professional tree service and the usable wood cut into fireplace lengths. Some of the remaining crowns of the large trees were thrown on the ever-growing pile. A parking spot for two cars at the bottom of the driveway had been sacrificed for the woody detritus that seemed to grow exponentially.

Feed me

Once Spring had sprung, how to get rid of the eyesore was on all of our minds. A wood chipper, of course! What is it about men and their fascination with power equipment? Boys and their toys, I suppose? As I excitedly drove off  to hitch up the rented wood chipper to my station wagon, I tried not to focus on the Freudian answer to that question. The yellow beast was much larger than I imagined, and as I got a quick lesson on the intricacies of its operation from the rental agent, nagging thoughts of performance anxiety began to rear their ugly head.

Bump and grind

All fears were put to rest as the engine sputtered to life and began to chew up pieces of wood as big as my arm. During the course of the six hours that it took to work through the pile, we watched the beast’s revolving sharp teeth pull the branches into the grinder, conjuring images from gory movies (Fargo, anyone?). The possibility of drawing back a bloody stump kept both David and me hyper vigilant. Fortunately, no ambulance trips to the emergency room were necessary and the woody mountain we called Everest was finally conquered. Sir Edmond Hillary had nothing on us that day, at least in our own minds.

Mother’s Day is on the horizon. Friend and fellow blogger Heather Atwood and I were brainstorming about a creative way to honor all mothers. Our answer was a knock out table setting, whipped up by me, and an equally tantalizing dessert recipe suggested by Heather. Heather is the food writer extraordinaire behind the food column Food for Thought and blog heatheratwood.com. By submitting a favorite memory and recipe of your own mother, you can win this table setting. For contest details and lots more photos of the setting, check out Heather’s website at heatheratwood.com.

The dessert table setting for four has a lofty set of three candlesticks which I crafted from vintage Victorian ballustrades. Combined with a mid-century modern vase and a white/creme/grey color palate for the accessories, this highly eclectic mis en scene will fill the eye. Save room for dessert.

Hardscrabble

This post is part of a continuing series on Cape Ann artists, their studios and work.

Scattered throughout the old village of Rockport, Massachusetts are studios of famous and not-so-famous artists. Richard Recchia and Kitty Parsons Recchia had a home and studio there. Richard was a sculptor and Kitty was a watercolorist and poetess. Kitty was a founding member of the Rockport Art Association in 1920. You may recognize some of Richard’s work that are on public display in New England.

Poised to dive

His friezes, depicting “Art” and “Architecture,” done in a Greek style, adorn the Fenway side of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. A joyfully whimsical boy riding a frog is in a pocket park beside the Rockport Art Association and a woman executed in bronze, on the verge of diving, is in the inner courtyard of the Association. The diver was originally placed near their studio under a magnolia tree. When the blossoms began to fall, they created a pool of petals below, creating the illusion that she was diving into a pond of pink petals. Recchia’s statue of the Revolutionary War General John Stark astride a fiery steed graces Stark Park in Manchester, New Hampshire near the equestrian’s burial site. The Association and the Museum of Fine Arts have permission to reproduce some of his smaller pieces and they are occasionally available for sale.

Joyride

Self-satisfied feline

At peace

Kitty’s watercolors are more difficult to find on public display. However, I have included two examples from a private collection below.

Something to crow about

Summer in a vase

Richard and Kitty’s house and studio are Dutch Colonial in style with sweeping end gables, which give it a flair. Dutch Colonial architecture was not widely used on Cape Ann so the house stands out. The house, grounds and studio, although in a neighborhood setting, have a mini estate feel, complete with gazebo. They named the house and studio, Hardscrabble. Their early years of the struggling artists’ life were perhaps the inspiration for the name. The old artists-colony-style studio’s large metal framed windows that are inset into the Dutch style gable of the roof give clues to what lies within. The studio ceiling is two stories high with a huge arched doorway to the outside to accommodate the large sculptures that Richard executed in the space. Thankfully, both structures remain intact, although the studio was converted to a living space and both the house and studio were sold out of the family after their deaths.

Richard, sculptures, & studio

Richard, Kitty, & collie

Richard had the foresight to design his own tombstone before his demise, a large bronze headstone depicting Richard as a figure leaping in an upward rush heavenward. It is entitled “Flight of the Soul” and is located in a Rockport cemetery. Although not widely known, both of these individuals made up a group of artists that lived worked and created art in a town at the end of a cape.

Flight of the soul

Click on any photo to enlarge.

We have been lucky enough to live in towns with great swap shops. Both our current home town in Massachusetts and our previous residence in New Hampshire had swap shops at the town dumps. These swap shops enable town residents to drop off unwanted but serviceable items and fellow townspeople to peruse through the items and take what they wish. One man’s trash is another’s treasure, indeed. If, after a week or so, the item has not found a new home, it goes in the dumpster as trash. Over the years, the scores of finds that I have rescued from the landfill could furnish a small nation. Antique bed frames, lamps, dishes, frames, silverware, trays, glassware, tablecloths, antique Christmas decorations, chairs, a Danish modern bureau, and books have all found their way into my house and houses of neighbors and friends. My across-the-street neighbor and I trade each other discovered items that we know the other would like. She has an amazing eye.

The priviledge of shopping at these dumps comes at a cost, however. A sticker on your car is necessary for admittance to the dump. In our Massachusetts town the yearly sticker price pushes the $200 mark. In the New Hampshire town, the sticker is had for a mere $6.00, good for two years. When we first applied for the sticker in New Hampshire some ten years ago, it was $2.50 and when I remarked on the low figure, the town employee replied, “when the sticker price went up from $1.00 per year there was an outcry.”

In reading a recent article in a shelter magazine about a decorator and her work, she was quoted as saying, “I always like to add a few thrift shop finds to a project to give it a not all new look.”  My philosophy is the opposite. I like to use mostly found and vintage items and add just a few new items so the end result is not dowdy.

The return policy at these establishments is unparalleled. If you tire of the item or it no longer works with your “look,” take it back for someone else to enjoy.

Here is just a tiny sampling of the items that I saved from destruction.

Dine with a view

Those of you who took a child to Disney Land in its heyday and went on the Small World ride will remember that cloying annoying song that you could not get out of your head for days. That melody kept popping into my mind as I recently readied a 500 square foot living space for rental.

Wee space

The challenge in furnishing small spaces is creating a feeling of openness and yet providing areas where daily living activities can be performed easily and with comfort. No small order in 500 square feet. In most spaces this tiny, the common solution to the sleeping/living area dilemma is a daybed or a fold out sofa. The daybed solution requires a made bed with tons of pillows to support the back in order to sit during the day. The height of most daybeds are not conducive to comfortable sitting; the feet tend to dangle, not touching the floor. Fold out sofas have come a long way in recent years with inflatable mattresses — a vast improvement on the sofa beds of old. But removing the sofa cushions and placing sleeping pillows on the bed each night is still a bit of an ordeal. Reversing the process in the morning just makes you want to stay in bed to avoid your chambermaid tasks.

Disappearing act

Sometimes old solutions are the best solutions. We installed a Murphy bed in a sleek frosted glass fronted cabinet with huge sliding doors that conceal the bed by day. This frees up the limited floor space for a real sofa, end tables that have large drawers which double as bureaus, a coffee table, a dining table and chairs, and a Hans Olsen “fried egg” chair which looks like a piece of sculpture. All of the furniture you can see under; this expands the space visually, making it feel larger. The Murphy bed is counter weighted so that it comes down with a light pull. The other half of the cabinet is an ample closet with bars for hanging items and built in shelves and pull out drawers for clothes storage.

With large living spaces, furniture selection can be fluid as there are many choices as to placement of the pieces. If a piece does not work in one room, moving it to another is always an option. In a one room small space, each piece must be chosen to fit in its designated space and perform with aplomb. Form and function at its best. One painting graces this room and a modicum of “dust catchers” sit on surfaces. A music system, flat TV, and speakers all hang on a wall, freeing up floor space. The project’s end result is, although the space is compact, it has the comfort and feel of a much larger one.

Kitchen a la Jetsons

There were several “tricks” we used to accomplish this feeling. When sitting in the living room and looking into the kitchen, no appliances or sinks piled with dirty dished are visible. In the kitchen, most of the storage is below the counter with upper cabinet frosted glass garage door cabinets to house the dishes and glasses. The cabinets are lit from within and throw a soft glow of light through the frosted glass fronts. They seemingly float on the wall. All of the lower cabinets are on slender stainless steel legs and are lit from below, giving an airy open feeling to the room.

If the small world theme song would stop internally rewinding ad nauseam, we could appreciate our efforts.

A bit of extra space

Up The Mount

The Mount in the Berkshires announced the social stature of its owner, Edith Wharton. It sits on a small rise, not a mountain, but then the name alludes to the lofty social position of the great writer.

The Vanderbilts’ Marble House in Newport, Rhode Island, describes the mansion perfectly. But ironically the Vanderbilts referred to it as a cottage. I suspect that the Vanderbilts knew that the words marble and cottage are not normally used in the same sentence when describing a house.

Faded glory of Grey Gardens

Grey Gardens in East Hampton, New York, owned at one time by an aunt and cousin of First Lady Jackie Kennedy, was named after an estate in England. The intent behind the name was probably to convey cachet. It’s ironic then that, after the 1972 film documentary and more recent Broadway musical about the squalor that Big Edie and Little Edie Bouvier Beale lived in, Grey Gardens now conjures images of rotting food, broken windows, and raccoon squatters.

Often on this blog, I have written about Howlets, a stone house in Folly Cove, Massachusetts built by the Hale family. Despite a family history encompassing Nathan Hale, Edward Everett Hale, Harriet Beacher Stowe, the painters Ellen Day Hale, Philip Leslie Hale, and Lilian Westcott Hale, and oddly enough, Helen Keller, the Hales nevertheless chose to name their summer home Howlets, meaning baby owls. The name suggests a certain humility.

Naming a house after your self is the ultimate act of ego. Sometimes it seems earned. One thousand-acre Appleton Farms, a land grant to Samuel Appleton in 1638, is the oldest continuous working farm in Massachusetts. This Ipswich, Massachusetts farm hosted many luminaries in its day, including the Duke of Windsor who hunted foxes on horseback there. As recently as a few years ago an Appleton still lived on the farm. It is currently owned by The Trustees of the Reservation and is very much an active farm. After nearly four centuries, the Appleton name has proved its staying power.

And sometimes naming a place after your self is just an indicator of a healthy self-regard. I recently stumbled over two such homes in Palm Springs, California. Villa Fontaine is named after the film and stage actress Joan Fontaine and Casa Liberace named after the pianist and vocalist. (Somehow the descriptor “pianist and vocalist” seems so inadequate to describe him, doesn’t it)? A good sense of self is important in life and absolutely vital in the entertainment business. The ownership of these homes has long passed to others, but the original plaques proudly remain. Staying power of a different sort.

LeFrak City is a sprawling 5,000-apartment complex in Queens, New York built in the 1960s. In his day, the developer Samuel LeFrak was the Donald Trump of his time. Years later, when LeFrak was asked about Donald Trump and his building of Trump Tower, LeFrak sagely responded, “a peacock today, a feather duster tomorrow.”