The New Mailbox

When I first bought the property the old mailbox looked tired and sad. Propped up with a small stick on one side of the post, it looked as though it would topple over with the first autumn wind. Its paint and numbers were worn and the whole underside of the box had been gobbled away by carpenter ants. This week I decided to give it new life. I wanted to reuse the same box and salvage as much of the post as I could.  

Here is what the mailbox looked like when I first bought the property.

Here is what it looked like after I removed it from the post.

After sanding it down and scraping the loose paint away, I used spray paint to coat both the inside and the outside of the box. I love the new bright red color and painting the inside seems to finish it nicely.

                                                           Matt  dug a new hole for the post.

                    After rebuilding the post, Michael brought it over to insert it into the newly dug hole.

Matt filled the bucket with cement and then added water. This new post will never lean like the old one.

                                                    Matt and I painted the rebuilt post white.

                           When the paint dried, Matt screwed on the newly painted mailbox.

And Voila! A nice new mailbox. I'll plant some pretty flowers and hosta around the bottom of the post.

I added some extra touches by painting the front tabs and the side-flag black. 

Matt suggested I paint the "U.S. MAIL" letters on the front of the box white. 

I liked that idea so I might just try my hand at it today. 

        

                                                          What a difference a little paint makes!
                                       I'm already imagining how it will look at Christmas time.

My resident turkey flock was very excited to see the new mailbox when they visited yesterday.

Adding More Beams

This past week, Michael finished the task of getting all the beams in place throughout the cottage. Unlike the bedroom, where we used 6x6 beams suspended from the new cathedral ceilings, we chose to use smaller 4x6 rough-cut spruce beams in the living room and kitchen. These beams were cut into the sheetrock ceilings in order to appear authentic. They are less likely to pull away from the sheetrock and cause gaps. We decided to keep the ceilings at the original height in this area instead of creating cathedral ceilings. This will help conserve heat, especially since the main source of heat which is our gas fireplace, will be located in the living room. 

This is what the beams look like in the living room. (The fireplace will be on the left wall)

                                                And this is what they look like in the kitchen

We are trying to decide which is the best way of treating the beams. Should we use a stain to make them a little darker or a bleaching oil to give them a weathered look? Originally I wanted to whitewash them but now I am not sure. We definitely want them to look old and weathered but not too dark and heavy. I will keep you posted on our final decision.

We also got the bathtub last week and put that in place. Nothing fancy, just a simple tub. We just don't have the space to have a tub and a separate shower. We are planning on building a lovely outside shower in the private bedroom garden next year and a shower in the basement bathroom. As you can see in the photo below, there are two walls at the end of the room. The one on the left will have a built- in cupboard behind it and the one on the right will separate the vanity from the toilet.

                       The bathroom (The vanity will be located directly across from the bathtub) 

By taking out the low ceilings in the master bedroom and building cathedral ceilings, we were able to create a loft space which will give us 12 useable feet of attic storage space. Michael built the frame for a  small door we are going to make out of old barn boards. The weathered ladder I found in the woods last week will lead up to this door.

                                       The doorway to the loft space in the master bedroom

If you turn to the opposite wall from the loft space in the bedroom, you can see the upper window we installed. We decided to install a horizontal beam under the window and vertical trusses on each side, thus continuing the rustic barn look. It draws your eye up when you first enter the room. I think it will be stunning when the sheetrock is installed around it on the wall. Tongue and groove boards are going to cover the ceiling instead of sheetrock.

                                           The beams on the back wall of the master bedroom  

           So much more to come in the next few days. Until then, enjoy your Monday!

Hunting For Maine Lobster.... In The Woods!

Here in Maine we are so fortunate to have a plethora of seafood available all year long. We regularly enjoy fresh scallops and shrimp right off the boat, mussels, clams and of course the famous and well loved, Maine lobster! However, when September rolls around, we get to enjoy yet another kind of lobster....except this one doesn't come from the sea and isn't so well known. It's the Lobster Mushroom, otherwise known as Hypomyces lactiflurum. This brightly colored orange spectacle is actually a mold that grows on and over a preceding mushroom. It almost looks like a lobster claw reaching out of the ground when you find it in the woods. You can't miss them.

Well, this weekend, when we went for our hike around the Catch Meadow Cottage property, we also hunted for Lobster Mushrooms. They were everywhere on the property. In fact, not much hunting was necessary, it was hard to take a step and not find one. Although they fill the house with a strong seafood-like aroma, I will clean, chop and then dry them in my dehydrator so that we may enjoy them in our soups and stews all winter long. Black Trumpet season is rolling around very soon so I hope they are as plentiful on the land as the Lobster Mushrooms. The Black Trumpet mushrooms are my favorite!

                             Here are a few of the Lobster Mushrooms we found at Catch Meadow Cottage

                                                                          So Beautiful!

                        After hiking and mushroom hunting, we added the finishing touches to the gate.

                         Round corbels on the posts and black iron hinges and handles complete the look! 

We have also been working on the beams inside the house. That will be included in my next post.

      Enjoy your day!

              A special thank you to Ron Gay from Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rongay58/favorites/
                                                       for use of the #1 Lobster Mushroom photo. 

A Harrowing Experience

Although much work is being done inside the cottage this week, I thought I would share with you some of the exciting treasures I found on my daily woodland walks. Most recently I came across an old, weathered ladder hidden beneath an ancient pine on the edge of the meadow. 

I assume the ladder was once used by a hunter when he climbed up to his tree stand to wait for a passing deer. I think it's beautiful and I will prop the ladder up on the wall in the bedroom in order to reach up to the new attic loft we recently created. 

   

I also found a vintage can of Stanley's Crow Repellant, lying in the field. The can looks like something that a farmer used back in the 1930's. I did a little research and found that the ingredients were basically tar and water. The farmers were instructed to pour the goop on their corn seeds and then plant them, thus rendering the seeds unpalatable to pesky crows and other critters. 

The most exciting thing I found so far though, was an old harrow. Although rusted and tangled, it is still in good, solid shape. It will make a wonderful sculpture piece at the cottage some day. It is probably a cast off from the 1930's or 40's, most likely from the same farmer that used the 

Crow Repellant. 

This old harrow was probably pulled behind a horse or mule and used to level and smooth the soil of the corn field.    

         This is how it looked when I found it. 

                       This is a photo I found online of the same type of harrow but in usable condition.

With Michael's help, I loaded the old harrow in the back of the tractor and brought it up to the cottage.

I just love the big iron C's it's made out of! Perhaps I'll hang some on the wall to represent Catch Meadow Cottage, my initials CCM or Michael's last name which begins with a C. How fun!

  Today we are planning to do a lot more work inside the cottage but first we are headed out for a lovely Sunday morning hike on the nearby trails that lead through the pine forest. I wonder what else we will find!

                                                                Have a beautiful Sunday!

Shingles, Shutters & So Much More....

Yesterday being Labor Day, we did exactly that....we labored! I mowed down a large area of 3 foot tall grass and weeds while Michael continued shingling the gable end of the house. The area I mowed will someday be our vegetable garden. I left a large stand of bee balm and another stand of blackberries and a small grove a walnut saplings that we will soon transplant. Although you can't really tell from the photos, the land slopes down quite a bit so I'm planning on building stone steps that will lead down to the garden. The mowing and cutting was a slow process because so much was hidden in the tall grass. I found stumps and logs, baseball bats, soda bottles, tomato cages, horseshoe stakes and even a sand box. I had to walk through everything before I could mow, to ensure that nothing got tangled up or caught in the blades of the mower.

                                              This is what the area looked like before I mowed

And this is what it looked like after I mowed.

                                 
I also painted all the shutters we are hanging on the house. Although very gingerbread looking, I think they are ideal for Catch Meadow Cottage. These lovely shutters have quite a colorful history. I was able to rescue them from demolition at the nearby Winery, almost two years ago. My son Tim is the property manager at the Winery and he called me one day to say that the old Winery farmhouse was being torn down to make way for the new event space they were building.

I knew that the farmhouse shutters were handmade by the previous owners of the Winery and I just couldn't let them get tossed away with the rubble. With the help of my son, I was able to pull all the shutters off the house. I've been saving them ever since.

The old shutter is on the left while the newly painted one is on the right. They are now an olive green color. We took the purple backing off the shutters and later, shortened each one up to fit the new windows.

   This is a photo of the original farmhouse that once stood at the Winery. I took this picture from an old    
             magazine ad. If you look closely at the main house, you can see the green shutters I rescued.

Because we knew that big rains were on the way by mid-afternoon, we really pushed hard to get a lot done today. That included finishing the shingling on the gable end, hanging the shutters and moving the extremely large rhododendrons from the front of the house to the side.

                                     Michael and Mark finished up the shingling this morning.

           This is what the front of the house looked like this morning before we moved the two bushes.

       Mark and I uprooted the first one. Rhododendrons have very shallow roots and are quite easy to   
       transplant.

A couple of strong men really come in handy when the bushes are as big and the second rhododendron we moved. The approaching rain was timed perfectly for the transplanting!

                                                                 This one was huge!

And now the shingles, shutters AND bushes are in place on the gable end. We still have to add two small shutters on each side of the top window and finish painting the meter box pipe. Did you notice the rounded shingles on the peak around the window? 

Just as a reference, this is a comparison of what the house looked like during the first week of July....

                                          And this is what it looks like today... just two months later!

                     
                            There's so much more to do but we're very happy with the progress.

The Meadow Gate

What a wonderful Friday and Saturday we had at Catch Meadow Cottage! I cannot tell you how much we love it there. It is such a peaceful corner of the earth and I feel so very connected to nature, especially when I am hiking through the woods, walking along the brook or strolling down the path around the meadow. It all feels so hidden away from the world. I am so grateful to have this property.

Young Matt and his good friend Chandler stopped by to walk the trails and set up a trail cam and a blind in the woods. They wanted to see if they could catch some pictures of the different wildlife that might pass by.

                                             Both boys are avid fishermen and outdoorsmen

I continued to haul branches to the burn pile and collect large stones from the field while Michael's brother Mark started shingling the gable end of the house.

                          Michael showed Mark the first steps of shingling and Mark took it from there.

      Doesn't it look nice? He did a great job. The rest of that side will be finished today.

The most exciting thing that took place though, was the building of the new meadow gate! 

When my Dad was here, he suggested that we put something up at the meadow entrance to let folks know that trucks and cars should not be driven into the meadow. During the autumn hunting season, hunters often drive in and park so they can hunt the woods and the meadow. Now that we are living here and often have children and animals around, we do not feel safe or comfortable with that idea. Michael is also a hunter and is empathetic to other hunters but we just want to protect the safety of our home, our family and our neighbors. 

This is the entrance to the meadow. Our driveway is to the left (just out of the picture).

   We searched online and found several different ideas for gates but in the end, 

        Michael designed his own gate.

On Friday Mark and Michael dug holes for the posts and cemented them in. 

                                                            Then the laying out of the gate began.

Michael used a combination of pressure-treated wood for the frame and pine panels for the face.

                                                                   This is the frame.

Then the face boards went on.

The first side went up easily.

I started painting as soon as it was hinged in place.

                                            The second side went up just as easily as the first! 
                       This is the backside of the gate. We are going to get black, metal clasps and 
                        a lockset but for now we are just using temporary blocks to keep it closed.

I just love how the new gate looks! Michael is a true artist. He is going to add two small toppers in the middle of the gate and we will attach three long black, face-hinges on each side. He built the gate low enough so people passing by can still enjoy the view of the meadow. 

How lovely the birch tree looks sitting next to the gate. I will plant daisies and black-eyed Susans next to it to add color. During the Christmas Season, we plan on hanging a fir wreath in the center of the gate with a big red bow. (Oh, and that big pile of dried branches you see in the distance will soon be burned up to offer an unobstructed view of the meadow). 

    

                                                 This is how the gate looks from our driveway.

                                                        Our beautiful, new meadow gate!