It took a week....

More kitchen than we bargained for...the island 10 feet long!

From the other end

From the living room

Home from Vermont and why I will be going back...

The view

The Girls

The View
The House The New Kitchen

As of Last Friday

This is what it looks like from the pond. We selected the colors so that it would "blend in" as much as a two story behemoth could.

New oak floor looking out to the front porch.

The Ikea Kitchen waiting for it's Master!

Porch off the upstairs bedroom.

Exterior shot from the neighbor's yard.

We will be headed up soon to install the kitchen and take care of some details.

New Pictures

The front of the camp from the water

The railing on the loft - the blue is a protective plastic on the plexiglass

The railing from below and the Big Beam boxed out in pine

Looking out the front porch from the kitchen

The window seat in the loft

Building Update...

The roof is on and the electrician is roughing in the wiring. The garage door has been ordered. The hole for the cellar stairs has been cut and the exterior cellar door is in place. All the windows and doors are now in and we are getting close to a complete button up.

There is 30 inches of snow there right now and snowmobile season began last Sunday.

There is a neighbor 100 yards directly behind our place that has a web weather cam. His camera actually points in the direction of our place. We can always see how much snow we have and what the current conditions are like... also some great shots of birds... the link to the Coles Pond webcam is embedded above and also in the column on the right.


Have a great day!

The basement is finished...framing starts next week

This is the view from the road...

Standing in the drive looking out to the pond.

Isn't it beautiful?

This is the upper level of the basement floor. It had to be poured high because of the ledge under it. We opted not to blast the ledge away in order to protect our well and the neighbor's.

Lower level and upper level - doorway out to the pond.

Those orange pipes sticking up are for the radiant heating in the basement floor. Warm water will run through the floor keeping the temperature constant throughout the year. We will have radiant heat on the first floor of the house as well.

This is the view out the basement doors. See the swimming raft on the right in the distance?

I had them pour a pad outside the basement doors. There will be a small deck above this and I did not want a mud hole just outside the basement.

Next week they will start building the floor over the basement and then framing the first floor. The only concrete work left is pour the pad for the garage.

Pouring the floor

The truck coming up the lane...

Pouring the basement floor...

The crawl space under the downstairs bedrooms is finished...
Look at the wet cement...Smoothing it out...
This is looking good...

These were taken yesterday...

These pictures show the basement and crawl space under the camp...

the subfloor will go on top of these walls.

Looking Due North

Looking from the "garage" through the house to the front "porch"

Looking at what will some day be the entrance to the breakfast room

camp pictures....

The view from the drive prior to tear down - the well head is right of center above


The view from the drive after the tear down - only a little more to the right. Well head at the center - Malibu is the blonde who is right of center in the picture

Digging the foundation and basement - looking out on the pond

My neighbor Bob keeping a watchful eye on the goings on - thanks Bob!

Our Shack…

I had known Mike and Sue for 12 or 13 years at the time. I lived with them for a while in the early 1990’s and Mike had been my best man at our wedding in 1996.

They had a drafty old cabin on a lake in Vermont and asked if Christine and I were interested in using it for a vacation get-a-way. Having both lived in New England we jumped at the chance to use their place.

It turned out to be one of the most relaxing peaceful weeks either of us had ever spent away.

We just spent the week reading, sleeping late, observing nature, sailing on the pond and scouting the area. We found some great restaurants close by with local cheeses, breads and summer fruits that just delighted us.

The people were friendly and helpful to “flatlanders.”

After about four days I looked at Chris and said, “We should get a place here.” She gave me that look that says, “Nice idea dreamer boy!”

We poked around the pond and found a couple of old cabins that looked as if no one had been around in a long time. I did some research with the neighbors and the Walden town office and got the phones numbers of the owners. After we returned home to Cleveland I called both owners and left a message that went something like this, “We were up on Coles Pond last week and we saw your place and wondered if, when you are interested in selling, you would give us a call!” I left our name and number.

About three weeks later we got a call from a woman on Long Island who owned the place at the end of the pond called “Sommersett.” She was interested in selling because she was building a new home and she rarely got up to use the cabin.

It was a little quick for us… we thought it would be years before someone actually called us. But we mulled it over and made her an offer and to our surprise she accepted it!

When we were on vacation the previous summer we had only walked around the exterior. We had never seen the inside of the place. But our friends, Mike and Sue, got a key and inspected the place for us. With Mike’s approval we purchased it.

That was seven years ago and we have enjoyed it every summer since. With a nod to Christine’s Irish roots we renamed it “Tearmann” (Pronounced cheer-munn) which is Gaelic for “Sanctuary.” It has truly been a sanctuary for us. We have fixed it up through the years but without a well and only a wood stove for heat we were never able to use it year round.

This summer we are planning to build a new place on the site of the old cabin. It will allow us to realize some dreams sooner rather than later. We spent the weekend looking at counter tops, tile, and carpets - thinking about exterior finishes and metal roofs.

The thought of building is a fascinating and scary process.