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The HVAC installation is progressing.  Barry Gearwar has completed a lot of the preliminary plumbing and is at least halfway through the work to install a boiler and radiators in the main house.  The boiler is tiny (I am guessing about 3' high and 2' wide) and 95% efficient. The radiators will be white, modern, flat, steel ones placed mostly under windows. We have radiant heat in the concrete basement floor, we just have to connect it to the boiler and add a thermostat.  Sheetrocking was supposed to happen soon but with frost-heaves in Vermont big heavy trucks can’t drive on the Ridge Road for a bit.  Upstairs hallway at the top of the stairs, reading nook at front near windows (a place for a desk with a view), north bedroom can be seen here, bathroom on the right Same view except south bedroom, you can see the bathroom entrance on the left See you next time house

If you don't have a clear vision of what you want and what you like, I guess it could be overwhelming. I do have a clear idea and look through options pretty efficiently. No, nope, no way, OK, yes. I was trying to figure out how a homeowner (who is not just doing a remodel, but instead building a whole house) goes about ordering a bathtub, vanity, toilet, and fixtures, etc. The contractor had said it was up to me to choose and purchase the items I wanted.  I thought it made better sense to buy through the plumber and use his connections, sources, and knowledge but the builder said I’d probably get a better price if I just did it myself.  In this day & age of online searches, I have spent time studying online options for plumbing supplies.  But a lot of the results seem to be Home Depot or other big box stores.  I knew those choices might not be the highest quality.  On the other hand, I didn’t want to go ‘high-end’ and spend too much.  At least by studying the items online I had a pretty good idea of price ranges and the variety of options available.  My next step was to go to a showroom so I could see the items in person and be better informed.  I was excited to see that places like F.W. Webb have a showroom in Northampton, MA near me and also have stores in Lebanon, N.H. near our Vermont house.  I went in and asked if it was possible to order from them here and have it shipped from a store in N.H.  The woman said, “No.”  If she “put in all the work of ordering, the N.H. store would get all the credit for the order.”  OK.  I looked around anyway.  Completely ignored by the salespeople.  Then I drove across the street to Sink & Spout.  I figured it would be the same scenario, but I thought at least I could see what they carried. To my surprise Sink & Spout is part of The Granite Group which also has stores in Vermont!  One store is only 20 minutes from my Vermont house site in Barre, VT.  When I asked the salesperson if ordering through them and shipping through Barre, Vermont was an option, she cheerfully answered, “Yes!”  Besides having worked in a lumber yard/hardware store in the past, she has also designed kitchens.  Rose was knowledgeable and helpful.  I showed her items from my “Materials List” with photos and links to online sites.  She was able to find the same or similar items and we starting compiling a list for the Ridge Road house.  She sent me a quote later that day.  I was able to evaluate the prices Sink & Spout offered because of my online research.  Even though their usual list price was higher, she offered me a ‘sale’ price that matched anything I had seen online.  I figured the benefits of having one source for everything was well worth any individual deal I might find online.  I wouldn’t have to remember where I ordered each item, I wouldn’t have to wonder when items were arriving, and I wouldn’t have to contact various suppliers if damage occurred during shipping.  So today I went in to doublecheck my order.  We went through each item to make sure it was correct.  Then I got out my checkbook and wrote another big check.  It is a combination of the most fun and the most stress. Shopping. Spending. I am related to my Gram Gray.  Ruby Gray used to love to shop.  You wouldn’t expect a good farm mom who did the majority of her mothering in rural Vermont from 1925-1955 to be into shopping.  Or maybe you would.  If someone was used to making all of their own clothes and growing their own food, maybe shopping looks pretty good.  Everything laid out for you in a store; just wandering around and looking at the merchandise would be exciting.  One of her favorite outings was to go up to Barre to Harry’s Discount Department store which opened around 1960.  My grandfather would dutifully drive her up there and they would shop.  Photo taken from Mary Kathleen Mehuron's article below. But yes, Harry's as I remember it complete with the 70s cars. The orange football Harry's sign on the Barre Montpelier Road. An article written by Mary Kathleen Mehuron for “The Valley Reporter” does a great job of describing Harry’s. “It was far from fancy, just a big warehouse filled with hardware, stereos, clothes; it even had a pharmacy. If you are thinking like Costco, think again. Harry’s makes Costco look like a luxury establishment.” https://www.valleyreporter.com/index.php/news/artsent/15909-a-jersey-girl-meets-the-mad-river-valley My point being- yes, I guess I love to shop, but I also don’t like spending money.  Building this house in Vermont presents both opportunities.  Be prepared for this sort of up/down experience if you are building a house.  I try to think of the end product and how it will all even out in the end (money-wise, after selling our house in Massachusetts) and try and savor the good stuff.  Do I have second thoughts after ordering? Yes. Is there still time to adjust the order and make a few changes? Maybe. Just have to do my best. We'll see what you think when you see items installed.

The insulation is almost completely installed. This house will be very easy to heat and cool. Joe uses Rockwool insulation which is better than fiberglass at insulating from temperatures as well as noise. The house already has a cozy feel. They don't even have to heat it continuously to keep it warm as they are working. Our downstairs bedroom in the northwest corner of the house with rockwool insulation Rockwool looks like cloth. It's gray, looks soft, and comes in batts. Over the top of the rockwool, they put rigid foil board which adds a vapor barrier and more insulation. Upstairs bedroom on the south side Even the cellar is insulated. The radiant heat in the floor will heat the concrete. The cellar walls have rigid panels of insulation The old bathroom in the upstairs of the original house was tiny. If the term "powder room" had been around in the 1950s, it would definitely fit into that category (in terms of size, but maybe not in elegance). The old bathroom fit into the hallway. No windows, just a sink & toilet. The new bathroom has its own dormer (not a full dormer for the house, but a dormer the full width of the bathroom itself, with two windows looking out to the woods in the back of the property). It will have a tub/shower, a double sink vanity (and of course a toilet). It sits in the same place as the old bathroom, just a bit wider and deeper, a little more centered in the hallway between the two bedrooms. John, Joe's brother who works with him, says his favorite place in the house is the front dormer upstairs. Mine too. He said he goes there first thing every morning to look out at the view. I am so lucky to have builders who are loving the house too. P.S. the plumber has started his work and I could see pipes going to the kitchen sink, the upstairs bathroom, the downstairs bathroom. We made a change today in the location of the washer/dryer. Joe suggested putting it in the mudroom closet instead of in full view at the end of the mudroom/laundry area. I agree! Why not hide them when not in use. In a way it gives us more room in the mudroom to use it for that purpose. We'll just switch the two areas a bit and instead of a bench in the corner, we'll have a bench that looks out the mudroom window. Nice! Joe has good suggestions.

Phil Godenschwager's sketches from my wish-lists. Try to picture this in color (I will add some photos of the colors). This is the wall you will see directly ahead (just beyond the island) as you enter the dining room from the south porch. This is similar to the old kitchen except the stove/oven was not on this wall. To the left of this wall will be the hallway/bathroom entry. The kitchen sink is to the right...see 2nd elevation drawing below. The stain on the cabinet bases will be dark (hopefully reminiscent of the 1920s kitchens and also the kitchen that was in Grampa Cooley's house when he had it from the 1960s). Light/white countertop as he also had in the old kitchen. Makes for a nice contrast. The countertop will be just slightly off-white with a very subtle pattern. All white looks too plain and modern to me. The backsplash will be a simple white wooden bead board. It will only go up to the bottom of the first shelf. I won't have any upper cabinets. Just wooden shelves in the same stain as the base cabinets. Sort of like this though I am only have two shelves and spaced a little further apart from bottom to top- Here is the kitchen elevation on the east wall. Picture the same dark base cabinets below, white countertop, white bead board back splash. The white sink is in the same place as it always was in the old house. The windows above the sink are also similar. All appliances will be white, not stainless steel. The island doesn't show in this elevation version though it will be in a similar place to the half-wall that was in the old house. It will be 3' away from the dishwasher/sink area and stretch straight out to the west (or towards the front of this drawing) 5'6"long (x 3'6" wide). Here's the floor plan again so you can orient yourself.

As I move through my house daily here in Massachusetts, I am also already living in the Vermont house.  I have studied the plans so thoroughly that I know where everything will be.  I am pleasantly surprised at how many similarities there are between the house we have now and the house we will be living in by 2028.  The house design in Vermont was mostly determined by what was there in the past, in the old house.  I can’t claim that the design was created simply by copying the house in Massachusetts.  But I did use comparisons from the start.  I did things like- “size of kitchen in MA vs VT” and went on to compare the dining room, living room, etc.  I know what I like here (and don’t like) and wanted to make sure the space was not too cramped in Vermont.  But surprisingly, the layout of the original house in Vermont and this house where we live now in Massachusetts is similar. The main living areas have a lot of southern exposure.  You can sit at the dining room table and look straight out to the south. The same will be true in Vermont (except I will be able to see the barn and horses from here). Dining room in Massachusetts The kitchen window looks east in both places, the stove and the island will be in almost exactly the same spot.  East window in Massachusetts, island placement, and stove along 'north' wall The living room here has windows to the south and west. This will be the same in Vermont (see floor plan below). But I can also walk around this house in western Mass and say- “the stairs will be here in Vermont, the front door will be over here, the wood stove will be moved from that south wall to this spot here.  Instead of a garage on the other side of the living room, there will be a bedroom.  Where the guest room is here, will be the mud room/laundry room in Vermont.  The bathroom is in basically the same place but it will be larger and moved more to the outside wall (the front of our house here).”  It’s fun.  It helps you visualize living there.    The upstairs (here) however bears no resemblance to the Vermont house.  In Vermont there is the beauty of the Cape Cod style simplicity- two matching bedrooms (one of either side- south/north) with a bathroom in the middle on the east side.  The most glorious difference (from our Massachusetts house) will be the two windows in the front where Danny can have his desk and look out over the Green Mountains to the west.   This house (in Mass) has no views at all to the west as it is attic space.  This sitting nook in Vermont (as named by Sara Tucker) used to be a tiny ‘3 rd  bedroom’ upstairs.   Now it will be open to the stairwell and hallway to let light in.  It will have two built-in bookshelves tucked into the dramatic slopes of the roof lines.  There will be a bookshelf banister along the top of the stair well.  There will be some shallow closet space in this hallway (built around the chimney area on the left in this photo above) and the little door preserved from the secret passageway of the old house will go here.  I am visualizing the kids playing hide and seek.  I am guessing other people who build houses have had this experience- you live in the house before you even move in.  The view from the original house (off the front dormer)

A desk with secret drawers A cellar is what I grew up with. My childhood home had an old oak roll-top desk in the cellar where the neighborhood kids could gather for a club. There was also a root cellar- a room with a dirt floor where my Mom stored canned goods on a shelf and potatoes, things like that. It has a good smell. The earth, coolness, dark. There was one finished room that my Dad had created for his photography business (in his early days) and my oldest sister had painted a variety of cool colors using tape to form triangles and other geometric shapes with nice clean lines. I tend to think of cellars as something from the 1950s and basements from the 1980s. Or maybe there were cellars in Vermont and basements in Massachusetts. The old stone foundation of the original house Our new basement at the Ridge Road house is quite the contrast from the old house. It's the only time I don't mind a difference from the original house. It is huge, concrete, and has a heated floor. Instead of glimpsing daylight through openings in the stone foundation, you get light through small basement windows. Most importantly, it is a sturdy base for the house and creates lots of extra space. It is one of the ways that I hope to lure my Massachusetts family/kids to come up. I have promised a ping pong table down there. I imagine starting a model train project that can be ongoing and growing- set up on plywood tables on top of sawhorses. The walls will be insulated with white rigid foam boards. The utility room will be self-contained with locked doors. You can enter it via the bulkhead on the north side of the house. There will be a spare room just to the right as you come down to the base of the stairs, that will have sheetrock, a large closet, a window. I call it the exercise room but it can be a space for an overflow of guests. Basements are not beautiful but I am excited about our new one. So far, no water rising up (like in one of our houses requiring a sump pump), nice and dry. So far no cracks like our current one and not yet filled with STUFF. I have time now to whittle down our stored-debris-of-living (stuff in boxes) before we move to Vermont, so hopefully this basement will stay more open. Our laundry room is on the first floor, near our bedroom, not down here. So that is one less thing in the basement.

A day of intense feelings…all good ones.  My first visit to Vermont in a while what with winter weather and holidays.  My sister who lives in Vermont had driven by recently and told me all of the windows are in and that it looks so good- like the old house is rising back up.  I was excited to see it. The windows are beautiful, real wooden grills that divide the glass. They are energy-efficient and are the type you can flip inwards to clean. Seeing the inside of the house with windows brings me back more and more to the original house. I remember standing in those rooms, looking out windows, and it does feel similar. The new view is the same If anything, we do have an extra window here and there which will add to the light in the house. It is gorgeous and I am feeling very lucky. Living room There was a flurry of activity at the house when I got there.  The electrician Tim Schoolcraft from Harmony Electric in Randolph, along with his assistant Ken were there, already putting in the junction boxes for plugs and switches (the plastic electrical box that sits in the wall, nailed to a wooden stud).  We went over the plans and he asked me where I would like switches and if they should be three-way switches (turn a light on and off from two different locations).  We went through every light location in the house.  It’s a whole different experience thinking about the lights in a room from a floor plan vs. living in a house and noticing when a switch isn’t conveniently placed.  I had to think about- where will I enter this room, what light will I need to turn on if it is dark out, where will I exit the room, where does the switch need to be to turn it off again?  Tim Schoolcraft from Harmony Electric I really liked Tim.  He is knowledgeable and patient.  He didn’t try to influence me to go in any direction with my decisions.  He just asked questions and jotted down the answer on the plans.  Sometimes where you put a switch is arbitrary and sometimes it is important.  He could tell me what the usual place was for a particular switch though, which helped.  He worked with me and Joe to mark out where the dining room table will go and then figured out where the center would be for the chandelier I have chosen over the table.  Dining area on right, kitchen to the left. The half-wall in the original house will instead be a sizable island We walked through the whole house together, 1 st floor, upstairs, the basement.  I am very particular about the fixtures I want for the house, except for the basement.  The basement does not have to match any period style, just be functional.  The only place I am allowing recessed pot lights or can lights is in closets and the basement.  (I forgot to take a photo of the basement!)...really the first time I have been down there since I was in the old house. The cellar stairs are in so I could go down. Huge. I can't wait to put in the ping-pong table I promised my granddaughters and maybe even a model train project up on tables? We have one small separate room that will be either an exercise room or an extra bedroom if we need it. There will also be a separated area/closed up, lockable room which will have the boiler, the water heater, etc. It will be out of site but also accessible by the hatchway up and out to the north side of the house. If we needed work done, a repair person could come into that section of the house without any access to the rest of the house if we weren't home. Joe thinks of everything. He has so many great suggestions. I will be buying all of my own fixtures and I have already picked them out.  I just have to make sure they are quality fixtures.  I will go to a lighting store in Vermont to see what they have and buy locally if they have the same ones I want (and hopefully higher quality).  Last night when I got home from Vermont, I sat down and went through every fixture and sent images and specifications on each up to Tim so he would know what the box size and shape should be.  The chandelier I picked out...I love how it isn't too frilly (no jingling, dangling glass) but still looks a little fancy, yet rustic at the same time I like this sort of thing.  It is fun to imagine them all up in the house, adding to the style.  I am pretty straight forward in my approach.  Simple is best.  On the side of vintage or 1920s-looking if possible, but not too ornate.  Consistency from room to room except when the room use demands a different style or a different fixture adds interest to the room.  I’m going with all black fixtures/bases except for the bedrooms which will get a bronze or browns.  Sconces in bedrooms Sconces in other rooms Sconces in screened-in porch Light over kitchen sink While I was there, I also met with the heating specialist/plumber that Joe uses- Barry.  Last name unknown. He will give me quotes on a boiler to run the radiant heat in the basement along with radiant heat panels in the rest of the house.  We will use mini-splits just for AC. Also working, were three others besides Joe with the construction crew.  Still hammering on a few framing details like closets.  So all together there were eight people there including me.  All of sudden it hit me…”I am paying for all of these people.”  Kind of daunting when you look at it like that.  Joe is done there for a few days while the electrician works on the wiring.  Upstairs north bedroom. My older granddaughter has already "called" the nook area to the right of the windows for her bed! The other bed in this room is bigger but she wants that cozy nook! This house will also have tons of great hide-and-go-seek areas with little doors into under the eave storage, hidden closets, a tiny door in the hallway that used to go to the secret passageway will be part of a large set up cupboards.

The old house on Ridge Road had Greek Revival components. The front door with the sidelights and an overhang plus side trim and was classic. A gable on the front of the house is also typical of this style. Grampa Cooley's Vermont house also had the classic Greek Revival returns on the trim of the gable ends (the trim rather than continuing downward from the slope of the roof, turns back in on itself pointing towards the center of the building). During the 1820-1860 period, Americans were drawn to this style which was from classical Greek temples. Was it, as some write, a nod to the democracy of the Greeks? Or was it the grandeur of the temple entrance (even when it was a barely used front door)? It is interesting to me that Vermont farmers during the 1800s who relied on subsistence farming and needed to survive in a harsh, cold climate would bother with grandeur. But grandeur to some can be just be a delight to the eye for others...sidelights create balance on each side of the door along with the added benefit of letting light into the house. Greek revival also included some simplicity. A boxy style of the house and balanced front windows were a part of that simplicity. We are working on maintaining these Greek Revival components in the new house.

There is nothing easy about contractors having to work in the winter.  Today the wind is howling and there is a ½” of ice coating every surface.  I’m not sure what they will actually get done but just to show up and sand the driveway is admirable.

Does this millstone look familiar? Yes it's the very same one that is still at the housebuilding site in Vermont. But see that extensive stone wall system in the background? Taken down by someone other than me, gone. Now the circular driveway exits there. Interesting to see the evolution of a property. These two adorable munchkins are both Cooleys, my husband's younger brothers. Photo courtesy of P.A. Cooley collection. Estimated 1968 Just as winter might create a slowdown in some activities, my house project seems to be on hold as well.  My builder, being a good Vermonter, took a lot of November off to go hunting.  I got to see deer heads in my garage as he was preparing to take them to the taxidermist.  His co-workers were in and out of the site, getting small jobs done.  The roof, though I announced the impending application of more than once, is yet to go on completely, which is understandable with snow storms, along with extreme wind and cold.  The good news?  It is all paid for.  Today was a good day between big jobs and big bills to sit down and analyze the current status of costs paid and those yet to be incurred.  I can remember almost 2 years ago sitting down in a Zoom meeting with our financial advisor and asking him about the realities of building a new house.  He would enter a low-end estimate into what looked like a Wheel of Fortune investment app and it would spin and give us results…we were doing GREAT!  Then he would ‘up’ the estimate by $100,000 at a time and we were still doing GREAT!  (though he never got up to the amount that a 2026 build might realistically stack up to be).   We have our current house paid for, but when you take out a Home Equity Line of Credit on that house, it feels like you are undoing all of your hard work and the debt appears again. It does make me feel that we are teetering on the edge sometimes.  Some of it is just playing with money on paper- that kind of figuring doesn’t leave one in a calm state of mind, no matter who you are.  Ultimately, if we sell our “updated 4-bedroom home with 3-stall barn and tack room, along with the fenced in paddocks and 3 acres, a hobby farm only 8 minutes to Umass,” we should be at least GOOD!  If not GREAT!  It’s all in the wash.  But a bit hard in the interim to think that way (with a less than comfortable stretched out time-line).  I am pretty good at it; I can look at the big picture and realize we will be OK in the long-run.  Danny?  Not at all, so he stays away from the numbers as much as possible or he won’t be sleeping at night.  A convenient tool for house building analysis right now is AI.  I was accustomed to doing my own research and using multiple sites to come up with the final analysis.  Now you can type in a long-winded, very detailed scenario and it will spit back (within a few seconds) ranges of costs, breakdowns, and options, specifically for your area of the country.  Of course, you have to hope ‘it’ used reliable sources, which is not at all guaranteed.  But it is a start and it is fast.  I could see if what I have already been charged is on the high or low end. Luckily we have a reputable builder. I could also see a layout of what portion of an entire budget each item in a house requires: the framing vs. the foundation vs. the major systems (electrical, plumbing, heating) vs. the interior finishes.  When I hear the estimates, I won’t be flying in the dark with the numbers.  I will have an idea of what they should cost.  I feel a little more prepared for what is coming next in January 2026.  First electrical, then plumbing, then insulation.  We do have windows already paid for which could go in (but there will be the labor costs). A new year, new bills, new headway on the house rising.  Gotta stay excited for all of the positives.  I know I will…it is a fun project that I am privileged to oversee.

Charles H. Cooley with his horse Lexa (Fern Hill Alexandra) which became my horse later in life. What a great horse. I'm sure it wasn't as if she was used every day. Here she was going out on the road, Ridge Road, with traffic, then down Skyview Road, giving several rides to family members. She was so good. A Lippitt Morgan. Here you can see the barn which is still there. I love getting to see the exact fencing Charles was using. Here is his special horse Suzanne Royalty, aka Suzie and her foal Hale. You can see the old house.

Upon seeing the East Wing of the White House get demolished, I understood how family members felt who had a hard time seeing Grampa Cooley’s house go up in flames and dissolve before their eyes. White House East Wing Demolition One family member told me how angry he was, others couldn’t watch or be there on the day of the controlled burn, others were there and sad.  I understood.  Ridge Road House Demolition It’s actually not fun to have that much power. The memories, the old beams, even the old flaking wallpaper which had seen better days… it is sad.  It is a loss.  I’m sorry.  It was an important family site, just as the White House East Wing was an important site for the American people.  But I’m also proud of myself, my research, my stick-to-itiveness.  This has been a long, involved project yet I have been happy to do it.  The reality is, if I hadn’t made the decision to do something, it would have continued to deteriorate until there was nothing left anyway.  I sped up the process.  I made it a reality.  I didn’t consult family every step of the way.  I didn’t save absolutely every piece of the house worth saving.  I did as much as I could with my abilities. But unlike Trump, I wrote to family members to let them know ahead of time.  Unlike Trump, I contacted the proper State and town authorities, went by the rules, filled out permits, and researched the safest way to demolish the house, offering it to the local fire department for training.  I invited family members in to salvage what they wanted.  I am thankful to those who did.  Many old windows were saved.  All of the pine siding in the upstairs hallway was carefully pulled out, loaded onto the roof of a Jeep and carried away.  These materials may live again in another house.  Myself, I saved four doors from the upstairs that will go back in the new house, along with some windows that I want to use as transom windows over interior doors to let light through from above.  I lugged them down the stairs and hoisted them into the truck, drove them home and unloaded them where they sat in our garage for over a year.  Loaded them back into the truck recently to bring back to the house site.  I am 71 so I pride myself for doing all this by myself, alone in the house for hours. Driving to Vermont once a week for months.    Downstairs the hollow-core doors that were admired as modern and installed by Harry Cooley in the 50s or 60s were deemed (by me) as not worth saving.  It is interesting how the value of an object can change over time.  What happened to those old doors from the downstairs when the new hollow core doors were installed?  Did Harry ask if anyone wanted them? I also saved a few odd items: Part of the stair railing (that looked hand-carved), added on for Anna Cooley (Harry’s mother) when she stayed with him.  An acorn-shaped bubble glass fixture that was at the bottom of the stairs in the front hallway.  An old cast iron handle that was added to the pine siding in the upstairs hallway to make it look like a door.  An oil lantern. Many books. A handwritten love letter written by Harry to his recently deceased wife Bernice (that as far as I know, no one else has ever read, it was not meant to be shared).  It was stuffed and wrinkled, sticking out of the back crack in a filing cabinet. An enlarged photo of Charles’s barn with his beloved Suzy and her foal Haley in front of it.  Harry Cooley’s artifacts from his stint as Vermont Secretary of State.  There were other things I wanted to save: I saw a hand-hewn beam up in the eaves of the Saltbox house.  There was evidence of huge upright beams in the corners of the living room.  A cool old door to a small alcove closet.  I tried hard on that one…bringing tools, old screws and nails that wouldn’t budge, resorting to trying to pry off the whole framing, alas to no avail.  Unfortunately, unless I found someone with the expertise, time, tools, and strength to help me take the house apart, patiently, piece by piece, saving old beams wasn’t going to happen. This was my project, I am the person with the expertise that will get utilized for this project (and that expertise is very limited).    And now the new house, reminiscent of the old one, is rising.  The builder finished the plywood on the roof, along with the felting.  The new standing-seam gray metal roof will go on December 1 st .  He is taking a much-deserved break to go hunting, something he hasn’t done in 20 years.  He’s a Vermonter, after all.