You are currently browsing the monthly archive for July 2007.
Not to put off those who are dying to see all of the massive, awe-inspiring house progress that we are making these days–because we are! Really!–but for right now we are continuing our campaign for more houseguests. Honestly, we don’t know why people won’t come visit us. You want evidence of the good time you can have at our house? You want some proof? Fine. We got your proof right here.
As we promised, if you come to visit us we will:
Take you to Thurston’s Lobster Pound for lobster:
And bring you to the ocean so you can play on the beach:
And we’ll even, if you ask reeeeeal nice, let you climb our stairs to the scary yellow guestroom:
Heck, we’ll even leave the plywood on the stairs so you can have better traction. How nice is that?
We won’t make you work at all. Not even a little bit.
We will, however, make your father carry giant logs through clouds of mosquitoes as we rearrange our woodpile.
What can we say? Michael has standards for how he treats his brother Clinton, and those standards must be met.
…and for once we’re not talking about houseguests.
We’ve been meaning to get around to a little show-and-tell of Maine architecture where we hoped to describe the finer points of each style and pick our favorite real-life examples, but we haven’t gotten around to it.
Luckily, the fine folks at Down East magazine have a paid staff to do the work, plus a booming real estate section that (we imagine) provides a good deal of revenue for them and requires lots of good content. Anyway, they have succeeded where we have failed.
Their Field Guide to Maine Architecture is a handy look at the types of buildings seen around these parts. On Mount Desert Island in particular we have lots of Colonial, Gothic Revival, Queen Anne, and (Cherie’s favorite) Shingle Style examples hanging around. Please note the distinct lack of Arts and Crafts architecture (though Shingle is definitely related). We are a bit of an oddity in that regard. If we’d wanted to fit in, we would have built a nice Cape.
But our love for Arts and Crafts doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate the classics left behind from the 19th century seafarers. So give this little guide a look. And enjoy. And we’ll really try to get our own little guide going to fill in the holes. Down East, for example, has totally neglected the omnipresent Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn Style. Which is just tragic.
Last summer we had the habit of assigning housebuilding work to any poor soul that wandered our way for a visit. We took a lot of heat for this. So much heat that no one has really been to visit us all summer.
Oh, we invite them and try to sell them on all the great attractions we have to offer on Mount Desert Island in the summer. There’s Acadia National Park to explore–and we know all the good hiking spots. There’s tons of great restaurants to try in Bar Harbor, including Mark and Lynn’s delectable Eden. We’ll take you to Thurston’s Lobster Pound or bring you canoeing up Northeast Creek. We’ve got farmer’s markets and pine trees and an ocean! What could be better?
But every time we try this approach, people say things like, "Well, we’d love to come visit, but then you’d make us work."
So fine. You don’t have to work. Nobody that visits us has to work for even one minute unless they want to. (We aren’t dumb enough to turn down volunteers.)
All visitors will, however, have to tolerate the new paint color in the guestroom.
We’ve been struggling with what color to paint this room for months. We needed a color that benefited from the warmth of the wood on the ceiling as well as the sunlight that pours into this easterly-facing room, but that didn’t make an already small room feel smaller. We’ve debated blues (doesn’t look good with the wood), greens (too cold), yellows (overkill with all the light), reds (overkill with the small room), and whites (too boring). We’ve held hundreds of paint chips up to the walls to no avail. It’s been a long and frustrating journey.
Then we had a flash of genius. We use a beautiful quilt in the guestroom that is made up of the loveliest shades of blue and rusty orange. It looks gorgeous in there. What if we took that orange from the quilt, lightened it up a few shades, and used that color?
If we were any smarter we’d…have figured this out four months ago. But anyway. Bygones!
Many paint chips and $30 later we were in proud possession of a gallon of orange paint. Sherman Williams "Joaquil" to be exact. Looked great on the sample chip!
Um…
And this picture is toned down from the flash. It doesn’t look all that horrifying in this shot.
Folks, this room looks like it’s been painted with the orange paint they use to stripe a road. It is BRIGHT. Painfully bright. Horrifyingly bright. Plus, it makes the room look like it’s closing in on you. Just what everyone wants for a restful vacation: dreams of the attacking paint stripe.
Michael’s brother and his wife are coming next week. Sleep well, guys. Sleep well.
And if you find yourself with a touch of insomnia, we might just have a project or two to keep you busy.
