the same frame, showing the new flooring extending out onto the sill.  

the header and jacks for the frame for our new doors in the living room. (note new doors and giant pile of debris just outside). 

the installation completed 

the new window with solid header and battleship strong framing 

Bud and I examine the original framing 

the old window comes out 

a new kitchen window

Not nearly as difficult as I expected, our new kitchen window installation was completed today. Lot's of heavy framing, compensating for everything else in the kitchen being off-level, and a bit improvisation is all it took. Bud was a big help, and our watts line to Dave's boatshop for last minute advice was invaluable.

sam makes a fire - walls stripped back for new windows 

new wall in bathroom with switches 

mike roughs in the shower for tile 

the kitchen fully gutted. the window to the right was removed today 

our new dumpster - filled in two hours! 

siding removed to make room for new doors and windows 

progress

Two weeks ago, I stated here that we had passed the point where demolition ends and recontruction begins. Wrong. We've discovered since that any room receiving a moderate amount of renovation needs to be taken completely down to the studs. It's just that much easier to work from scratch than to work around little details.

But we have made significant progress lately. The bathroom is now in the hands of Mike G. - our friend and the tileman on the project. The master bath now has complete plumbing, and the walls are back up, including the new walk-in shower. 40 gallons of concrete and some sticky black waterproofing have made the floor for the shower, and the tile is sitting in one of the barns, waiting for installation, which begins later today. Samantha and I have installed some new wiring in the bath, including switches for the lights, which previously required hand-screwing to turn them on and off (?!).

The new kitchen windows and the large glass doors and matching window for the living room have arrived as well. Framing for the kitchen window is partially complete and I'll be doing more of that today as well.

Samantha finished painting the front of the house, just in time for two weeks of heavy rain, so no further exterior work has been possible. Although Dave and I went up on the roof on one dry day to check the flashing around one of the chimneys where some water was getting in. It was an easy repair and the chimney stack has been much drier since.

I expect the kitchen to start coming together quickly over the next two weeks, and we'll probably ask the appliance people to deliver the big appliances toward the middle of next week.

With the amount of work the two of us are putting into the house, there's no doubt that this place will truly be ours when it's done.

a very hard-to-see rainbow, during a break in last week's rain, across the back yard. 

looking down into the kitchen from the little 'cathedral' ceiling 

the bathroom floor, with new plumbing 

the shower wall (with water on the chimney stack) 

it's all destroyed

We've finally hit the point beyond which demolition starts to slow, and reconstruction picks up. The master bathroom is stripped to the studs, with the new plumbing roughed in. Mike should be laying down the subfloor for tiles, and the wonderboard for the shower wall foundation. It's a good thing he didn't start when he was scheduled, as the recent heavy rain has revealed a leak around the bathroom vent and the woodstove chimney, which rises behind the shower wall. In another week, it would all be sealed up, and we'd likely have to pull some of it out in the future.

The kitchen is significantly more destroyed than during my last post. The ceiling is entirely torn down, and all that remains is the old cast iron sink, which is too heavy to move by myself.

Samantha has been painting away (interiors only during this wet season), and we both hope to put down a new floor in the den next week. After that, we'll have lots of molding to put in, having removed much of it in the demolition.

potential cathedral ceiling 

would you trust this man with your kitchen? 

kitchen destruction 

demolition man

Demolition, which seems like the simplest, most primitive, part of reconstruction, is actually quite a challenge. Removing a wall or ceiling, pipes or electrical lines generates new problems and possibilities at every turn. With the master bathroom fully demolished, I turned my attention to the kitchen. But after two days of Sawzall and sledgehammer work, it's down to the studs and plywood. All except the ceiling, which we've decided to remove entirely, revealing a small extension of "cathedral ceiling" above the center island and counters.

Deconstruction proceeds on the living room outside wall, where there will be a new pair of doors and a matching window, replacing the rotting wood siding and porthole-like octagonal window.

woodstove in the barn 

newly painted garage doors 

Dad weeding the hedgerow 

folding chairs

It's a shame I can't find or make more time to blog these days. Things are happening at such a quick pace. Been spending much of my time demolishing a bathroom down to the studs, and preparing a kitchen for similar destruction. In between there's talking to contractors, chimney sweeps, tractor salesmen and loggers (about cord wood). A bit of a change from Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.

Samantha and I are glad we opted for Maine where we have so many skilled friends, instead of Columbia County or Vermont where we know few people. The bathroom tilework is in the able hands of our friend Mike G., while the kitchen cabinets are being designed and built by Dave our source for occasional free sailing and the owner of Bullhouse Boat Works, a heritage craft wooden boat building business. We assume our kitchen will float when it is complete. Having knowledgable people to bounce things off of is an indispensible plus.

Although we've spent thousands on new tools in the last month, our most precious purchase was the two folding chairs which remain almost all of the furniture in the new place (everything else remains in storage). For lunch, or when we're just too tired to continue at the end of the day, we drag the chairs to the edge of the "patio" (read gravel) and look out at the field. The past two days have brought a change in birdlife in the trees and hedgerows, and a flock of bluebirds have arrived, diving into the grass for crickets and who knows what else. There were high winds today, and while we sat eating our lunch a cracking noise came from the forest as a tree laid itself down.

barns one and two. 

looking from the pasture into the hayfield. 

the farmhouse 

a new home in Maine

My posts have been infrequent and, for the most part, off topic for quite a while now. Sorry for the paucity of book related info. I hope you'll understand. Samantha and I have been planning our move for quite a while now, and after the sale of our place here in Brooklyn, things accelerated nicely. To add fuel to the fire, we found a place in Maine, made a bid this past Monday, and spent the last week gritting our teeth hoping that another bidder wouldn't beat us to the punch. We'll we're in contract now, and assuming the inspections go well, we will be closing on the 25th of August.

The new home is a mid 19th century farmhouse, with some later day renovations, and three attached barns, all on 18.5 acres of mixed farmland and forest. I fully expect that in no time at all, we will have an operational vineyard (for late harvest wines, naturally), bees, truffles, peacocks, goats, vicuna, alpacas and whatever other ridiculously impractical ideas we can come up with. More news soon.

farm dreams

Been getting a bit carried away lately - reading more books about farming, daydreaming about erosion, and viewing tractors for sale on eBay. Our move still seems a long way off, but seems more real all the time.

soil & soul

I recently made a reference to lots of good reading - a trend which has thankfully continued. Lately, my mind and reading table have been occupied with books about food, both eating and growing. This week I digested Scott Chaskey's This Common Ground, an ode to organic farming by an experienced farmer, a talented poet and a patient man. Chaskey charts the benefits to soul and soil and in this description of the seasons on Quail Hill Farm CSA in Amagansett, NY which he ran for many years. My subway reading has been Waverley Root's The Food of France. Root's book, which is arranged as a travelogue of sorts, loudly celebrates the local forces which create cuisine (geography, politics, culture, etc.). Originally published in 1958, the book was claiming the importance of terroir for food and and wine long before organic farming was a necessary reaction to the despoilation of our farmland by "modern farming methods". Compiled three decades later, Andries de Groot's collection of essays, In Search of the Perfect Meal echoes many of Root's ideas about the important of location in formation of cuisine. Samantha was wonderful enough to get me two books of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall - The massive and thorough River Cottage Meat Book, and his seasonally based farm cookbook, The River Cottage Year. I've only begun to cook from the River Cottage Year, trying the lettuce risotto, rhubarb trifle, and a few others, all to great satisfaction. I'm slowly plodding through the Meat Book in the hot weather, hoping for the fall, when the idea of a few hours over a hot stove won't seem so difficult.

summer catalogue - parts 1&2

After much cataloging and scanning, I've finally finished both parts of my summer catalogue. It's arranged alphabetically, with part 1 covering the first half of the century, and part 2 the second half. While much of the catalogue is given over to the historical avant-gardes, there are many items in the fields of design, architecture, literature, modern thought and culture. I'll be integrating the catalogues into my website soon.

June slides by

This has been an impossible month, with Samantha and me putting the apartment on the market and trying to imagine just what is next. My reading has taken a turn toward the bucolic, with lots of food related books (both old and new) making it to the bedside table. More about those books later. We've both been separately grappling with the idea of writing, and imagining that our new rural surroundings may aid in that process. Of course, this is a fantasy. Samantha, though has been working on it all along - her blog has become more than a dumping place for the daily brain clutter, or a rehash of interesting links. It's really an investigation of the process of baking, and of becoming a baker, from the inside out. What's more, she's developing readers, well beyond the well-wishing friends and relatives that form every (well most) writers' first audience. I'm just a bit jealous.

I've been wrapped up in the appraisal of the archive of a well-known horror writer. In fact a very nice, very literary chap. This constant exposure to the process of writing, seems to be having an effect on the way I organize my thoughts. Certainly, it helps to demystify the workings of the writers' mind when you see the constant revising, the complete but discarded novels, the thousands of pages written before recognition reveals itself. When craft is laid out in front of you like this, it seems more possible, but much more work.

While the blogging has been on hiatus, it's been a month of great reading. Last night finished Zbigniew Herbert's King of the Ants, a retelling and extension of a mythological stories. The narrator assumes an attitude of amused consideration, filling in gaps in the original tales, or following incomplete threads to a previously unspoken conclusion. While the book hasn't the sheer brilliance of Barbarian in the Garden, it still provides a peak into the swirl of ideas which is Herbert's mind.

time to resume

It's been more than a month now without my laptop, and thus, no blogging. Events come and go, reviews are waiting, and generally work is piling up, but not to worry, blogging is an entirely voluntary activity!