by admin | Feb 14, 2023 | Articles, Maine Home & Design
Technically, the couple at the center of this story first saw their house in Wayne online. After that, they had a more poetic encounter: they paddled by in a kayak and saw not the house— which was hidden by trees like all the homes around Wilson Pond—but loons, ospreys, and an old cabin. Later, after they had bought the property, they heard stories. According to one, a hermit once lived in the cabin without electricity, and people flew food in to him, landing on the ice in winter. According to another, the cabin’s summer residents dressed in a tuxedo and gown to celebrate their anniversary every year. Those who went by on boats saw them out on their dock. For the moment, though, the house-shopping couple were simply drawn to what they could observe from the water.
by admin | Feb 14, 2023 | Articles, Maine Home & Design
The house was built in the 1920s, but the oak tree had been standing in its place for far longer. The Kennebunk house saw plenty of changes over the years—it was home to Edmund Muskie, former U.S. senator and Jimmy Carter’s secretary of state, as well as a half-dozen other families who moved in and out of the shingle-style beauty, enjoying their summers on the hill. The oak tree stood there through it all, acting, as landscape designer Ted Carter likes to say, as a “great witness.” So when it came time to change the yard, to ease the steep slope and put in a pool, there was one thing no one wanted to touch. The oak, they decided, would stay.
by admin | Feb 14, 2023 | Articles, Maine Home & Design
Chris and Brandi Hau take their time with choices. They were living in Boston when, expecting their first child, they decided to move to Maine. “We thought, ‘We want more.’ We wanted land we wanted a place for him to play outside,” says Brandi. Chris is from the West Coast, but Brandi convinced him that her native state was a better choice: “I won the battle of Maine versus California, somehow.” Decision made, they spent two years driving around southern Maine, looking at school systems in range of the Portland airport, which enables Chris’s professional travel. Eventually they found a lot in Falmouth, but a week before closing they found themselves gazing out over the neighboring fields and woods. “It would be nice to have that,” they thought, imagining their kids crossing the fields on snowmobiles. They reached out to the owner and made a deal.
by admin | Feb 14, 2023 | Articles, Maine Home & Design
There’s one kind of Maine coast view that makes me catch my breath every time I find it: a wide-open expanse of water, reaching off to the horizon. It’s not the most painterly of scenes; for those, better to seek out the sharp, dark cliffs, the soft curves of salt-marsh, the hush and hum of pebbly beaches. But spending time by the open water, hearing it whisper the secret movements of wind and weather from day to day, might nurture an artist’s soul. One such artist has found her way to such a view, and to a permanent home in Maine.
by admin | Feb 14, 2023 | Articles, Maine Home & Design
Sometimes, you just have to knock down a few walls. When Nicola Manganello bought her sprawling 1760s farmhouse in Yarmouth, she knew she would have to open it up a bit to create some extra space for her family and friends. It’s a gorgeous, stately home, complete with oversize brick fire-boxes designed by New England architect John Calvin Stevens. Some people might blanch at the idea of updating a house like this, but Manganello knows what she’s doing. She’s been in the interior design business for decades, and she’s been a DIY enthusiast for even longer.
