Cupboards

“I sometimes dream of a larger and more populous house, standing in a golden age, of enduring materials, and without ginger-bread work, which shall still consist of only one room, a vast, rude, substantial, primitive hall, without ceiling or plastering, with bare rafters and purlins supporting a sort of lower heaven over one’s head…
“…a house which you have got into when you have opened the outside door, and the ceremony is over; where the weary traveler may wash, and eat, and converse, and sleep, without further journey; such a shelter as you would be glad to reach in a tempestuous night, containing all the essentials of a house, and nothing for house-keeping;
“where you can see all the treasures of the house at one view, and every thing hangs upon its peg that a man should use; at once kitchen, pantry, parlor, chamber, store-house, and garret; where you can see so necessary a thing as a barrel or a ladder, so convenient a thing as a cupboard, and hear the pot boil, and pay your respects to the fire that cooks your dinner and the oven that bakes your bread, and the necessary furniture and utensils are the chief ornaments; where the washing is not put out, nor the fire, nor the mistress, and perhaps you are sometimes requested to move from off the trap-door, when the cook would descend into the cellar, and so learn whether the ground is solid or hollow beneath you without stamp. A house whose inside is as open and manifest as a bird’s nest, and you cannot go in at the front door and out at the back without seeing some of its inhabitants; where to be a guest is to be presented with the freedom of the house, and not to be carefully excluded from seven eighths of it, shut up in a particular cell, and told to make yourself at home there, — in solitary confinement.” ~ Henry David Thoreau


Our house in Logan is so tight and compact. As the kids have grown and we have acquired more stuff, I feel like we barely have room to move. Our new house is open. The design in for transfer of heat and light, but it makes the space seem larger and more inviting. With all the windows it is a lovely transition from outdoor to indoor.

Last summer, there was a canal break in our neighborhood that killed a family and destroyed two additional houses. The neighborhood has been empty and blighted. Just before Christmas, a local millionaire offered to buy all the property on our street (ours included) for taxable value. We declined this offer, but were allowed to salvage materials from the other houses marked for destruction. Greg took out some maple cupboards and put in the kitchen... just had to buy new pulls and corner molding. In the efforts of piecing things together we needed a sink. Once again it came down to the conservative me versus the artistic him. The beautiful farmhouse sinks that would create the right look cost thousands of dollars... some goes for granite countertops. With his gift for lucky finds and improvisation, Greg found a gorgeous granite sink that had once been a display, now sitting collecting dust in a back storeroom, he bought this for a couple hundred, and bought stone scraps to make the countertops with. And our kitchen will be built with beautiful natural enduring materials for under $1000.