It's been a bit more than a year since I last posted, and what a year it has been. The house we bought in Maine has turned out to be every bit of the work we thought it would be and then some. The rental cottage out back is pretty much ready to show to prospective tenants( I need to hang towel bars, varnish the stair treads, and other punch list items, but the interior is, for all intents and purposes, done). The main house remains a wreck. I spent the winter "camping" in two rooms. I left the thermostat set at 52 degrees to keep the pipes from freezing and spent much quality time in front of the wood stove in the kitchen. Thank God we had a mild winter this year...
Dark Secret languishes in the barn. She has not received much attention in the past year. I am incredibly lucky and grateful to have a barn where she can spend the winter, but oooohhhhh the plans I had for what I was going to accomplish this past winter. The bottom line is that there are not enough hours in the day. I took a job at Wayfarer Marine in Camden and moved up here full time in October. My incredibly patient and loving wife still lives in the Gloucester house and still does the ungodly commute to Boston every day. We are trying to keep our "eyes on the prize," but neither of us is ecstatic about being married and 200 miles apart. Then again, I think there are days when she wouldn't have it any other way.
Despite the lack of progress on Dark Secret, I have not been idle during the last year or so. The house has a new 200 amp service, the barn has received some much needed shoring up (permanent solutions forthcoming), and the previously mentioned rental cottage is nearly done. I have (mostly) painted one side (the most challenging side) of the exterior of the main house. It has been such an eyesore for so long that I thought I would start at the street side for the benefit of the neighbors. So much has contributed to declining property values over the last few years that I figured a bit of neighborhood improvement couldn't hurt the abutters' portfolios.
I really hope that I can post some Dark Secret-related progress in the not-too-diastant future, but I still have a HUGE list ahead of me to accomplish before the snow flies next winter.
Think happy thoughts for us. It's going to be a tough pull but we know it will be worth it in the long run.
