Grand Illumination

The third Wednesday in August is the highlight of the summer in the Campground: Grand Illumination. This summer it was on August 18th, 2010. We spent the day putting up over 40 Chinese lanterns, both upstairs and downstairs around the porches. We had help from Melissa, Jeff, Nancy and Kathy. The challenge was determining which lantern to place where, how to hang them and how to light them. We put a large Chinese umbrella on the pulpit porch upstairs too. We used Christmas lights on the lower porch and LED tea lights upstairs. The LED lights were not nearly strong enough.....rookie mistake.

We sat on the porch and enjoyed the Community Sing which included music from the Vineyard Haven Community Band which has been in existance since 1868. At the appointed time (around 9:00 PM), the lanterns around the Tabernacle were lighted which signified the time to light ours. Our lanterns were lit and all other lights were extinguished. Unfortunately, it began to rain lightly. Thousands of people braved the weather and strolled around the campground enjoying the decorations. People stopped by Seas the Day and chatted with us, asking questions and expressing delight in the decorations and the tradition. Anthony Quittadamo, the previous owner, stopped by to say hello and visit the house.

Around 10:30, the fire engines made their rounds indicating it was time to shut down. We had to not only turn off our lights but take down all the lanterns. Nothing could be left up on the house! Most of our houseguests had either gone to sleep or were out getting donuts at Back Door Donuts. Despite the small crew, we were able to get everything down and put away before 11:00 PM. The rain ruined several smaller lanterns but all-in-all it was a great night. I must admit that I was nervous and inimidated about our first Illumination Night....there are high expectations for a cottage on the circle. It is great to have our first one under our belts and we look forward to next year.

Name That Gingerbread

If you have been following our blog, you will know that we have been deliberating on a fun name to call our little gingerbread since we purchased it. It was named "Chuck Full O' Nuts". We presume the "nuts" stood for the little acorn cutouts on the rails. In the Fall, people who strolled by as we were working frequently called Barry--"Chuck"! (Of course, he has been called a whole lot worse than Chuck) If we didn't think the name was bad before, we were determined to change it.

We considered anything related to Oak. Len Euart had a great idea "SeaSun'd Oak" which was the front runner for a long time. Then while walking around Key West in February, we saw a great sign "Seas the Day" and both looked at each other and said "That's it!" At this point in our lives, seize the day really seems to hit home. We are reminded that we need to capture time and make the most of every day. We also want to enjoy the ocean and all the benefits it brings to our lives: "Seas the Day" Carpe diem!

We got a small sign made that would fit exactly where we wanted it. We have toyed with a bigger, flashy sign but decided that small and simple would be best for our little cottage. Please stop by "Seas The Day" for a drink on our peaceful porch!

Color My World

If you have been following our blog, you will know that selecting colors for our little gingerbread was a challenge. We have spent many hours walking around the Campground, looking at books and a pictures online. Thankfully, our daughter, Melissa, gave us a wonderful house warming gift: time with a color consultant!

Hank Rudisill from Painted Acre worked with us to learn about the Campground, our little cottage and what we liked for colors. He came back with 3 scenarios and we selected the "bold" one. The front of our cottage has 5 different colors on it. All of them are C2 paints (which you cannot get on the island, so we have been hauling them over). The colors: Body-Halifax, Trim-Shaker @150%, Rails-Artichoke, Porch ceiling-Silver Screen and Accents-Hot Tomale.

Unfortunately, we did not log the number of hours spent scraping, sanding, priming and painting 2 coats of paint on the front of our cottage. What we know is that if we had hired someone to do the amount of work that we did, we would be broke right now!

Check out some of our before and after pictures!

Can you TOP This?

When we bought the OB Gingerbread, the roof of the cottage was in sad shape. The shingles were old, curling and covered with moss. It was obvious that a new roof was in order. The picture doesn't really show how bad it looked, you will need to trust us!

So, we hired a local contractor to remove the old shingles, repair any rot, put an ice shield layer and top it off with architectural shingles. They did the work in March. In addition to the top of the house, they reshingled the roof of the porch. Because there are shingles under the pulpit porch, the upstairs porch was removed from the house...ouch. They had to cut it off the house! They were able to reshingle under the porch and re-attach the porch to the house. While they were doing this, we requested that they reshingle the top half of the front of the house. Barry and I had painted the shingles in the basement of our Marion house during the winter. We were able to put a coat of primer and 2 coats of stain on all 4 sides of each cedar shingle. As you can see below, we added rows of "fish scale" shingles. We even had the contractor paint the spire at the peak our incredible hot tomale red!

The transformation was incredible. The shingles are comprised of several colors on the house: red, blue, and green. Depending on the time of day and what angle you look at the house, a different color pops out. The architectural shingles provide interest with a varied pattern that makes it look like shingles on the side of the house. Because our house has the tallest peak in our area, our new roof really stands out.

Opening Day

Today we hosted our first official cottage event, a luncheon for the South Coast Instructional Technology Team (aka southcoast Tech Directors). After catching the 7:30 ferry to visit the West Tisbury Elementary School to see the exciting things they are doing with technology, twelve guests trooped to our little Gingerbread for some lunch and conversation. They christened our new Guest Book and stopped for a picture on our newly painted front porch before heading out to catch the 1:15 ferry back to Falmouth. All things considered, I was very impressed that 13 people in the little house did not seem claustrophobic! Let the summer parties begin.....

Landscaping

We spent April vacation week in our OB Gingerbread, working all day, every day. The only time we left the property was to walk the dogs and go to the grocery (a nightly event). Most of our work was scraping, sanding and painting the front of the house. I took a break one day from the scraping to do some landscaping.

After painting the porch skirt (changing the blue to tan), I took the pile of broken bricks left from taking down the chimney part way and used them to create a border for the landscaping in front of the house. I doubled the size of the foundation beds to allow shrubs and a row of hostas. I also circled the oak tree and connected it with the foundation bed on that side of the house.

For Christmas, the Falmouth IT Department gave me a generous gift for new plants from Mahoney's. I took a drive out to their OB location and purchased two lovely dwarf holley bushes. I planted them on either side of the front step and moved the hydrandea over. There were tons of hostas that I moved around. I also brought some plants from our Marion home: day lillies, iris, catmint, astilbe and dahlia bulbs. I planted everything in a location that would suit the plant type (sun vs shade).

We will wait to put some mulch down after we have finished all the scraping. It should help to cover up all the little paint chips. Already it looks cleaner and more defined.

One man's trash is another man's treasure

A couple weeks ago while taking our morning walk, Barry and I passed an old, ugly chair sitting by the side of the road with all the other trash, waiting for garbage pickup. It was clearly an antique that had been neglected. We talked about it the rest of our walk home and decided to go back and rescue it. This picture doesn't show all the mildew and chipped paint. You can see the upholstering was a rag! It was truly ugly.

We have spent the last few weeks scraping and cleaning it. A healthy coat of oil-based primer to feed the wood was followed by 2 coats of paint. We used the same paint that will be used on all of the trim inside the Vineyard house.

Our goal is to take it to the OB house and put it in our bedroom. Since we just purchased a new bedspread for our bedroom, we decided to find material that would compliment it. The new bedspread is a coral color. I have never apholstered anything before, so this was a challenge. It may not be as great if a professional did the reconditioning, but we think it looks terrific! Hope you do too. We will use some of the extra material to make a toss pillow to go with it.

Porch benches

When we purchased our gingerbread in September, there were a pair of old benches on the porch. They were painted blue with light blue contact paper on the top and were positioned against the front railing on either side of the porch. We used them to sit on and for tables.

We brought them home to fix and paint. Over the winter, we removed the contact paper, scraped and sanded (repeatedly) and finally painted the new color of the railing, an artichoke green. Wendy finished them by stenciling flowers on the top.

Unfortunately, we did not take any before pictures but we can show you the after picture! We are looking forward to taking them back to the house, sitting on the porch in our new rockers and having a glass of wine! Hope you will join us...

Getting ready for spring

The OB house has been all closed up for the winter, although we have visited a couple times. Spring is fast approaching and we are getting the itch to get over there and start working. All winter we have been collecting items to take over and thinking about projects we would like to tackle this spring. (remember we can't do much work during the summer, it isn't allowed).

One major project this summer will be a new roof. We have hired a contractor to do that work and he is supposed to start that this week. :)

In preparation for the new roof, we needed to install ceiling collar ties inside the house. We have no beam along the ridge to hold the side beams together. Collar ties connect them and will hopefully secure the house before the new roof is installed. You can see from the picture that the collar ties installed hold the sides together. We don't want the house to spread any more than it already has. Check out the spaces at the peak already.

So, we went over for the day a few weekends ago to measure, cut and prime the 2X4s we were going to use. We went back last weekend to install them. Now there are collar ties connecting almost all the beams in the house. This isn't the glamorous stuff like painting, installing new fixtures or decorating but so necessary on an old house to ensure it will be around another 150 years!

Our activity is picking up and we anticipate many more postings over the next several months. Stay tuned......