I just came into some gorgeous old oval braided rugs with tremendous color in them. I took them down to Camden to get cleaned and they came back in beautiful condition. I just need to sew some of the braids back together

Burning Sunnyside

No, It's not what you think! Now that the weather has turned cold, we are having more fires in the wood stove at home. I just opened a new contractor bag full of scrap wood and it happens to be a bag full of cut down 2 x 4s from the demolition @ Sunnyside last year. She gave her insides so that we could be warm. Until now, we have been burning scraps from the build out, so there are random pieces of shiplap and beadboard fueling the fires, but now, its the old board from the original building and then the 1930s spiffing up of the place. Every time I build a fire now, I think of taking down walls and of the huge scrap wood pile that I insisted on keeping out on the porch. Well, it comes in handy now.

So, our other cottage, Little Bohemia, has been on the market since just after Labor Day and we have not had one person even interested in looking at the place. I know the price is too high for today's market, but I cannot believe there aren't people out there, like us, who will look at a house out of their price range in hopes that they could get it for a lower price. I am not going to price the cottage at a give-away deal, because we don't have to sell. But, that said, I know what I want for the place and am willing to deal to a certain extent. I guess the buyers just aren't there. We will only have Little Bohemia up for sale for another six weeks and then she comes off the market so that I can start renting for next season. I already have my repeat renters lined up for their weeks, which I am holding in limbo for them, and I am already fielding rental requests for the rest of the summer. We have put Little Bohemia to sleep for the winter, but still have Sunnyside up and running. If we do not have any rental interest for the Christmas holiday, I might just host a party there, which would be a nice change of pace.

What a downpour today...mystery storm?? I never saw it coming. We lost power for a couple of hours this morning and I was thinking of packing up and moving to Sunnyside for the day, but there was too much to do here.

We had to move some things around at Sunnyside, and instead of putting the outdoor furniture in the basement, for now, I have it around the house. The living room looks like it's all set up for a sewing circle. I moved the sofa around so that heat from the monitor heater actually permeated the house rather than get soaked into the sofa. I've been thinking of drawing the curtains and putting down the shades at the cottage, but I really like the natural light that comes in from all sides.

Nice additions to the cottage are the new doors that finally arrived for the master bedroom. And yes, I know we need to paint the trim...in the Spring. I thought this was a nice shot of the open feeling that the upstairs rooms have for such a small space. Love the big double doors. I hope the renters did last year.

Started back to work on Sunnyside this weekend. I think we will be weekend warriors there for a while. Greg and I finally found some really great carpeting for the stairs that we both liked and that would be fairly easy to work with. It is an indoor-outdoor carpeting that looks a bit like horse-hair sisal carpet. We found it at Marden's (where else) on a large roll, and had them cut three 30" wide strips. Total cost for the rug bits was about $60.00 or .68 cents a foot

I felt bad for the renters last summer who had to deal with the all white stairs. Finally when my parents came to stay, my mother complained about not being able to see the steps so much that I put blue painter's tape on the treads for her. We left it there through all the rest of the rentals. We were never able to agree or find carpeting that either one of us liked.

White stairs with pretty blue tape

The rug roll

I picked this pattern because it looks a bit Victorian and goes best with the interior.

I have to admit that I did nothing but carry the rug rolls inside the house and hand Greg some tools for a bit before setting up his Pandora channel so that he could rock out and install the carpet. It is kind of a narrow area, suitable for one person.

He did a beautiful job

We are now going back to Marden's to get more of this stuff for our house. I really like the quality.

So what was I doing for the day and a half that Greg took to install the rug? I was outside raking.......and raking......and raking. I am ready to cut down the two large maples in front of the house. They rain down so may leaves!!!

I think I must rent a leaf blower in the spring to get ALL the leaves out of the rock walls, and from under the house, but I figure 13 densely packed bags full was enough for me...Had to come home and pop some Aleve tablets after that ordeal.
I put an ad on Craig's List again for free eco-insulation and within an hour had a response from the same couple who took all the bags last year. They came yesterday and loaded the bagged leaves onto their truck and took off happy!

This is about 3/4s of the leaves

If anyone knows of someone who is looking for a winter rental, or is looking for a month or two respite on the coast of Maine in a furnished and cozy house overlooking the water, send 'em my way.

I would also consider renting for the Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year's holidays!

2bdrm/ 2ba totally renovated cottage with amazing water views from every room. Walk in shower down and tub up. King, Queen and twin beds.
Dogs welcome.
Quaint seaside village of Bayside in Northport, ME
$1200 a month, utilities included.
207 323-8383

check back in again soon. I am going to begin working on Sunnyside again this winter, so stay tuned for such stimulating entries as: "Finally, a carpet for the stairs that we both agree upon!" and "finding the #%#$& leak that only happens during Nor'Easters!" or, one of my favorites..."finally painting that bedroom trim."

All this and more in the next coming weeks!

I don't know how many of you out there are still reading this blog, and I certainly do not know how many of you have children. In the wake of all the reported suicides of gay and lesbian youths due to bullying over the last several weeks, I felt the need to post about my thoughts on the subject here.

I was the fat gay kid in school when I was young. I didn't know I was gay at the time, but because I was fat and not into sports and not athletic and popular, I got bullied. Life was miserable in the public school I attended. So called "friends" would throw rocks at me when I passed by on my bicycle, a girl in my class beat me up at recess because I was taught never to hit a girl, so I didn't fight back, I ate lunch alone. A group of kids spray painted "Seth Sucks" on our driveway. Life as a boy was dreadful. It may not have been because I was gay, but it was because I was different; I was easy to pick on.

My parents went so far as to transfer me to another school. A private school where a lot of their friends sent their kids. I was still the large unpopular kid, but I did have friends; I was a side-kick to the popular boys. Life was a little better. As I got taller, I became a bully on the bus home and once made a kid cry. "I am sorry Spencer!" I still remember that afternoon and regret it to this day. But, kids will do as other kids will to fit in the scene. It is not something for which I am proud. It didn't make my life miraculously better. I was still an outsider, a feeling that stayed with me through high school where I boarded. I was not among the teachers' favorite students, and my roommate and his friends would secretly pull pranks on me...I was certainly the kid in the dorm who got picked on a lot. But I was used to it.

What I have to say here today is that is is the responsibility of the parents to make sure that 1. their kids aren't mean or bullies. If parents get a call that their kids are being mean to another student, those parents should take action. There is no reason that in this day and age that kids should be picking on others for being different. Your kids may not want to be friends with the fat kid, or the wheelchair kid, or the gay kid, or even the Jewish kid, but they shouldn't be allowed to taunt those other kids. Education is not just up to schools. You chose to have children, please choose to tell them right from wrong. That is a parent's job!!

For two college age students to cyber-bully one of their classmates to the point that the man drove to the George Washington Bridge and hurled himself into the Hudson River is such a tragedy. Such a senseless tragedy. More than one life was thrown away the morning that Tyler Clementi died. The bullies are now going to be the bullied.

My mother tells me she used to lay awake at night wondering and worrying about where I would end up in life. I do not remember getting lots of comforting words from my parents about being bullied, but I do remember spending a lot of time with my mom, who did protect me and made me feel special when I was with her. I got through all the bullshit of being a kid. I made it through the bad times into college and beyond. Childhood cruelties fell away as I became older and found good groups of loyal friends.

If your kids are small, unpopular, or feel like an outsider and they come to you feeling miserable, tell them it gets better. Make them see that another three years of high school may seem like a lifetime to them, but that it is only a small blip in an otherwise wonderful life. Make them feel special. If they are being bullied, do not ignore it, but take issues into your own hands. These are your children and they need to be loved and protected no matter who they are. If I could have come out to my parents earlier than I did, I would have, but I was not emotionally stable enough to handle the perceived rejection. It would have put me into such turmoil and the feelings of being gay at a young age are scary enough.

Please, be vigilant. No lives should be lost because of being different.

I finally have a bit of time to update folks on the cottage. Here I sit in NY doing my other job, and ironically have the time to sit and type about Sunnyside.

We've had a two week gap between renters and originally, I wanted to use that time to paint the outside of the house. When the time drew near, I found I was too burned out on the cottage to effectively do the paint job. We'll wait until Spring to do that. I did do some paint touch ups inside the house, getting spots off the floor and painting over damaged areas where we had some water issues. We did get the leaks fixed, finally (fingers crossed) and I had our man Josh repair the water damaged cased beam where the waterfall leak happened.

Thankfully, we have gotten rid of the ant problem and so Sunnyside, without ants and without leaks, finally turns into a cottage without major problems (knocks on wood)

We have a family from Minnesota checking in today for three weeks. They are in for a treat as the leaves yesterday along Route 3 were painfully gorgeous. I lamented having to leave for a week as I think this will really be a fabulous color week.

Thats all for now. Most of our neighbors at Sunnyside have left for the season, so the neighborhood is wonderfully quiet and peaceful.

Enjoy,
Seth

I am working on gathering information on a property that is coming up for auction in Belfast. A new blog??? Perhaps. Stay tuned.

The News is out, its been leaked. We are putting Little Bohemia up for sale after Labor Day. The time has come to move onto other projects. Greg and I have been discussing building a house on some land we have on a pond in Liberty, Maine, about 20 miles outside of Belfast. We don't have to sell Little Bohemia, but I would like to continue investing in real estate, but I have to sell something to do it, and Little Bohemia is the first to go. She is a charmer of a house and shows really well and I am hoping someone falls in love with her like I did. I love the uniqueness of this wonderful Arts and Crafts cottage and the fact that it is like no other house in Bayside. Sigh....I will miss her...if she sells!

I wanted to let all my blog readers know about the summit at Point Lookout. Greg and I went there last night for drinks and a light repast and had a fantastic time. The summit is open from 4:30- 9pm Tues-Thurs. There is a light bistro menu and a full bar. The view is panoramic and you can see clear to Deer Isle, Vinalhaven, and up to Belfast. It is worth a trip. The food is really good too.

We spent yesterday afternoon in dishwasher hell at Sunnyside! The hose to the new dishwasher kept tearing. The first time, a neighbor called to let us know that he turned the water off and that there was now an inch of water on the first floor of Sunnyside... we hustled over there with a load of towels to find the renters mopping up the spill. There was still quite a bit of water, but luckily, it never got to the cork floor. We repaired the hose and went about our way after an hour or so and then the hose burst again! We think there was a flaw in the tubing, so we went to another hardware store and bought heavy duty hose. Should work, haven't heard anything back from the renters, so I am confident it worked, but my word there was a lot of water!!

A happy report from my second set of renters: I particularly like the part about the zero gravity reclining chairs since Greg laughed at me when I bought them.

The Northeasts said... Hello From Cobourg Ontario Canada.
We were fortunate to stay at Sunnyside for the first 2 weeks of August.The pictures on line do not capture its size or beauty. We expected a much more narrow cottage...the rooms are so wide with lovely high ceilings. The upstairs deck compliments the space so much and we enjoyed all our dinners there. Terrific reclining chairs on the deck were a treasured spot for our gals
reading comics. A luxury for us was to have new beds ,new plumbing, and great water pressure for showers all in such a historic place. The community at Bayside were always most welcoming, and our kids enjoyed meeting many new friends when we walked down to the ocean front . Finding star fish and sea urchins and old pottery became a daily routine. The cottage is located perfectly in front of a small park, great privacy, and space from quiet neighbors. A nice distance from the busier ocean front , or streets with close cottages.
We have stayed in Belfast Maine before , so were familiar with this area and its great proximity to wonderful places.We would highly recommend this cottage to a couple or folks with kids. We appreciated Seths attention, and eagerness to make our stay wonderful. Any minor concerns were quickly followed up on.
The drive to Bayside takes us 2 days. We have many fond memories and hope that others will enjoy as we all did.

Already booked five weeks for next summer, two are repeat renters. Yehaw!

If anyone out there knows of someone who wants a winter rental in Bayside, please steer them my way. Sunnyside is a wonderful, cozy winter rental with even more view after the leaves are off the trees. $1000 a month plus utilities.

thanks

The last four days have been wonderfully unproductive. I haven't even cleaned out my car from all the stuff I threw into it from Sunnyside. We have been out on the boat almost every day and I happened to snap a few photos of the house from the water. Both times (well, OK, the three times) I've powered past the house, there have been people on the second floor deck. The last time we went by, we did trade waves.

I find it interesting that 1 Clinton Lane, the house directly in front of us on the water is on the market for $700 and something thousand. Good luck with that I say and I hope you get near the asking price. True that the house is on the water, but there is no property to speak of and the balconies on the water side are small and not so useable. Clinton Lane cuts almost right under the drip lines of the house. I am tempted to put Sunnyside on the market as a competing property for a lot less money than that. But, we have to finish it first!

An email from our first renters:

"Kudos to the two of you for pulling off this fantastic redo! You've succeeded in holding onto the obvious charm, style and grace of this antuque cottage while adding a sprinkling of modern touches here and there. I can't tell you how pleased we are to be here, and, according to my husband, will be returning here from now on. We've stayed in several different places in the past, and it was always part of the adventure, but you have charmed him with the ambience here.

Bruce and I are planning on building a new house in Rockport in the coming year, or as soon as our present house sells, and it's great to see some of the things we've thought about doing,actually here, like the small tiles in the bathrooms, I wasn't convinced that's what I wanted, but I am now. It's like taking a shower while being in Aladdin's cave, surrounded by jewels! I, for one, am glad your gay gene kicked in!"

We finished the house at 10 minutes to five last night...just before people started to arrive for the open house. We must have had a good 40-50 people through and everyone was so nice. It was a very good time. I had to leave around 7:45 or else I was going to fall asleep standing up. The day before had been an 18 hour day. Our first renters check in today at 3pm and I still have some things to get and do. We hid a lot of things last night that I have to go around and either throw out or take home. So here are the photos of the "finished for now" Sunnyside.

Enjoy!

ay



r

OPEN HOUSE

FRIDAY JULY 23RD

5pm

SUNNYSIDE

COME ENJOY A GLASS OF WINE ON THE SECOND FLOOR DECK

I will have pictures after today, I promise. The boys are coming today to finish the front porch railings and perhaps the kitchen. After 12 hours of painting and doing things like putting up the shower caddies, etc., I was bushed last night. I missed a great night out on the boat with friends because I wanted to get a coat of paint on a few things. So, around 10pm, after a good long hot shower (water pressure here is GREAT!) I toddled off up to the second floor deck to sit in one of the new Zero Gravity chairs and have a bit of a break before bed. Greg got home and joined me and the two of us spent an hour up there gazing at the stars and the lights across the bay. It was total heaven. And while there is the front porch to sit on at night and watch the world go by, I much prefer the privacy of the upper deck and the view it affords!

Got to get back to it!

spent our second night in the cottage last night. I was in bed by 8:30 after having not had much sleep the night before because of dogs and friends. The dogs barked at anything that moved outside the cottage all night long because they are terriers and unused to having lots of stuff going on around them. Bayside certainly hops well into the evening. Our friends from California didn't get to our house until 4am and Greg went over in his bathrobe to welcome them.

So, last night was much better. Slept on and off until 4, when I had to take the pups for a jaunt around the hood. Thought I would stay up and start to work, but I got back into bed and slept soundly until 7. We have the bare minimum here for furniture, and it is good that we are living here to see what works and what doesn't. We need some hooks and some shelving in the bathrooms and some major window treatments!

The new carriage house garage doors get installed today and that will make all the difference in the outside of the house. As soon as that is done, I can order the stone for the floor of the garage and check that project off my list of things to do.

Scraping the outside of the house today.

Partly furnished the house today in prep for our moving in for the week.

I think we did it.

Enjoy.

Raining cats and dogs in Maine today. Bad day for exterior painting, and the humidity didn't help me inside! But, the stairs are primed and painted, the bathroom ceilings have finish coats on them, the living room floor has a first coat of dark green on it, and the main counter top has two coats of clear poly.

Tomorrow we have beds and a couch to fetch at Mardens while also returning the broken washer and the white Whirlpool side by side fridge just cause we got a black one instead. We are moving into the cottage on Tuesday and I understand from our contractor that he and his boys are coming on Thursday and Friday to finish the exterior of the house!! I hope that means we'll have kitchen cabinets too.

I think we might finish the place with days to spare...not too bad!

Installing the Jenn-Aire downdraft stove. It took us a while to level the stove out because the cabinet and thus the counter top are not completely level. As Greg says, we should rename the house "Shimmy-shim cottage" for all the appliances we have had to shim up!

OK, so the stove is a bit fancy, and I have oven envy. If I can't rent the place in the winter, I want to have Thanksgiving here.

So, this is the main kitchen counter with room for stools. It's hard figured maple and will have a clear poly finish on it. I think it is just beautiful with the stove.

Final coat of green on the kitchen floor

Before and After Photos.....new stairs!

I love these before and after because it shows me that we really have done remarkable work in only a few short months. This first photo shows the living room just as it was when we bought the cottage. The stairs were a bit rickety to say the least.

mid construction with a view of the temporary stairs that were in place until last week! I wasn't even freaking out at this point.

Greg's beautiful stairs, ready to be primed and painted. Notice that this staircase is a bit longer than the original, which was a really scary ride to come down because they were so narrow and steep. A tiny closet awaits a door under the stairs.

My new routine seems to be: "get up, try and straighten up, chug Ibuprofin, and go to the cottage."

Greg and I are moving into the cottage for a week starting on Tuesday. Our friends from California who are coming for the week were supposed to stay there, but the house is not kid friendly yet and I was worried that with a 2 year old and a 5 year old there and no balcony railings, things could get a bit ugly. This way, we can work on the house 24 hours a day too!

We worked until 9 or so last night, after taking a two hour dinner break to go home and spend time with the dogs. Greg got his newel post and hand railing in for the stairs and I got the first coat of the floor painted in the kitchen....when I left, I really thought the floor looked amazing.

Yesterday morning I got over there around 6 and almost finished staining the last of the walls going up the stairs, but I ran out of freakin' paint with about 10 more boards to stain! Ain't it the way.

Hooked up the washer dryer, only to find out the washer doesn't work! My great bargain at Marden's, a rehabbed Bosch front loader for $200 and the thing doesn't even turn on! Back it goes, along with the fridge we bought there last month. The fridge is great, but because we bought a Jenn-Aire stove in black, we wanted a fridge to match, which we bought yesterday. It works beautifully and the dark green floors look really well with the black appliances.

Pics as soon as I get to the cottage

7am on Wednesday the 7th.

I haven't hurt this much in a loooooong time. Yesterday was another banner work day where we got a lot done.


Can you see the smile on my face? All of sudden, this cottage is coming together and I really like the outcome. It is completely different from the way I envisioned it looking when we bought it, but in an amazing way. The downstairs has become a very tranquil space. I wasn't quite sure about painting it all one color, but it works very well.


. The downstairs ceiling is finished, and looks incredible, gone is the peeling bright yellow ceiling in the kitchen as well as the bluish white ceiling in the old living room that had drips of what looked like nicotine staining the underside of the beams. In it's place is a pure white beamed ceiling that really unifies the space.

The stairs have come a long way and now all the treads and risers are cut out and placed. Today, Greg should screw everything down and then start on the banister.

I had lots of neighbors stop in yesterday to have a looksee. I have given over to self-guided tours because we need every second to get the house in some condition to be habitable for our friends and their kids who are coming next Tuesday. A really nice neighbor stopped by with warm fresh baked bread last night and I gotta tell ya, I like the ritual! We like lemonade, diet coke, and fruit too.....just sayin'.

Though I have no photos this am, I spent yesterday priming two sides of the first floor exterior and was all set to keep going when the flash rain storm started and kicked the humidity levels into high gear. I put my brushes down and took several hours off and then came back last night around 7pm and decided to paint some more window trim and prep and prime the kitchen floor for a top coat. You can see the primed floor in the last photo above. What I thought might take me an hour or so, took 3 and a half. I swept, vacuumed, and scrubbed the floor of all dirt. I then taped the outside of the floor and began by tinting the primer. The floor took a load of primer and the thick goopy primer filled in a lot of the floor's imperfections. I was amazed at what it covered. Of course, by this morning, the primer had settled between the boards in the floor and so the floor doesn't look as good as it did when the paint was fresh. I got done by 10:30 and made it home soon thereafter.

Great shot of dawn over the Bay from the new deck on the back of Sunnyside. This is the million dollar view!

The deck after two days. My contractors are on vacation this week, so progress on the deck will be nil until next week. We are going to take the "Victorian" spindle railings from the first floor and use them up here on this deck. The new square spindle railings for the first floor are sitting on the lawn and ready to go on the house.

T'was a day for getting stuff done. I am amazed at the progress for this week already. I got to the cottage around 5am and did some sanding and some trim painting. Tim, the painter showed up around 7am and finished sanding and priming the ceiling of the first floor

Downstairs ceiling is primed and ready for painting tomorrow.

Stairs are going in nicely!!

Lots of progress here.

The front and side of the first floor exterior are scraped and sanded and ready for priming.

Looks like we are on track for the countdown to renters.

Before and After, The Old Living Room

This first photo was taken just after we bought the house, and probably the day I took the old couch out of this room and finally opened the front doors for the first time in 10 years. If any of you have been reading this from the beginning, you might remember that under this piece of old cut rug, which covers the whole room, there was a layer of roofing felt over the original wooden floor boards. The room was painted a very interesting shade of Pepto pink, but note that new framing is already in place as are new windows.

Here is the room after we cleaned it out and added finished the new framing around the door and the other side of the room where the stairs are. You can just see the framing for the downstairs bathroom in the left side of the photo.

A long time coming, but the room is almost done. Ceiling and floor will be painted by the end of the week. (I hired a painter for the next seven days to catch us up). There will probably be a pull out couch here by the end of the month.

The decking was put on yesterday afternoon and, though it is a fantastically big deck with lots of room, I worried all last night that it was too big. I asked a friend for his advice and he told me that no deck was too big. When I talked with Greg on the phone before bed, he concurred with me that having the deck run all the way to the perimeter of the new addition roof might be a bit of overkill.

I woke bolt upright at 5 am thinking that I had to get over there before Larry and the Boys arrived at 6:45 so I could suss out the situation. I walked around the square and went upstairs to really take a look at how big this sucker really was. It is obscenely big, bigger than practicality dictates. I could still have a table and chairs and a couple of loungers and still have room for a group Yoga session if I lopped off about 6 feet from the side of the deck.

So, all of you who are awakened this morning by the sound of drills working away, know that the Boys are working a bit backwards this morning and taking off a good portion of the deck they built yesterday.

Took the day off yesterday in order to take care of some other business and to just decompress a bit. Today starts deck building off the master bedroom, which should be done by tomorrow afternoon. I am going over this am to continue scraping and sanding the outside of the house in prep for painting next week.

Before and After!
I love these posts, for it makes me see how far we have come

I have posted this photo before, but this is the living room and how it looked on the day we first saw Sunnyside. An unfinished addition with no walls, floor, or ceiling, no insulation, but with very nice Anderson sliding glass doors already installed. I think this was almost a year ago.

The same room with shiplap walls and ceiling, nice track lighting, and brand new cork floors. All with 4" of foam insulation in the walls and ceiling.