My passion began a long time ago, in the late 1960’s to be exact, after a hazardous drive through two New England states on a slippery, snowy January evening to meet my future mother in law. Little did I know that evening that the drive from our college in Massachusetts to that magical place in the hills of Glastonbury, Connecticut would be more than just a casual visit, but ultimately lead to a career that would be more rewarding than anything my liberal arts studies could offer. My future mother in law was about to gain not only a daughter, but another carpenter and ally in her old house endeavor. The house that she had purchased six years earlier was two hundred years old and derelict. Unfit for living, it was the house of her dreams. Her husband was not interested in this venture, so the work was on her shoulders entirely. Until she realized that her son, at the ripe old age of twelve, was quite capable of wielding a hammer. The two of them would comb the countryside looking at old houses, and picking up pieces of them that “renovators” tossed out. On any given day they’d arrive home with a car packed with paneling from a “restoration” on Main Street, doors from the dump, hardware from a tag sale. In those days people couldn’t wait to replace crooked old doors with ones that were new and plumb, or old hardware with the sleek new variety. She certainly was ahead of her time. While the Mrs. Cleavers in town were cleaning, cooking or playing Bridge, Virginia was poring over Handyman magazines, and laying out plans to build an old fashioned “settle” with her new jig saw. Her son’s first dozen years were spent on trips with them to Salem, Ipswich and Gloucester, sleeping in old taverns and inns, and visiting museum homes, like the House of Seven Gables, the Witch House or Hathaway House. His keen artistic sense grew with this early exposure to the 18th century’s finest, and proved to be a most propitious investment, as by the age of fourteen, she handed him the helm of the restoration of their home.
By the time I arrived, the stone ell off the back of the house had a new kitchen of unfinished pine, the keeping room fireplace had been rebuilt to include a bake oven, but the wide board floors still had cracks and splits that you could lose a foot in. Fortunately, the rugs she had braided to cover them were as thick and stiff as a plank. As she sat by the great hearth, in the high backed pine settle she had built, hung with an old quilt, in a wooden room that smelled of smoke and pine, my senses soaked in ambiance, I fell in love. With my husband, with her, her two cats, all of her old and weathered, cracked and dilapidated things, and with these magical places made of wood and stone and clay that would bewitch me for the rest of my years.
