Today I’d like to touch upon a recurring theme: re-homing materials and items still potentially useful to others (if no longer to us). We’ve been fortunate over the years to pair Rosslyn’s storage capacity in the carriage barn and icehouse with local expertise — specifically sawyers with portable sawmills able to custom cut logs on our property — so that fallen and culled timber can be transformed into lumber. The stump-to-lumber ash and elm flooring that was so recently installed during the icehouse rehab, up-bumping the character quotient dramatically, was not completely exhausted during installation. In fact, there’s enough surplus that I’m hoping to use it on a future project. But a short term opportunity arose to share some of this material with my nephews for a small but soon to be eye-popping outbuilding in their Rock Harbor renovation.
Re-Homing Stump-to-Lumber Ash & Elm (Photo: Christoph Aigner)
That sneak peek above illustrates the handsome walls and ceiling in what will become a dedicated workspace located a short plein air passage from the house. Looks a lot like the new floor in Rosslyn’s icehouse, right?
Soon this stump-to-lumber paneling will be paired with more re-homed Rosslyn material: Brazilian cherry (Jatoba) flooring remaining from our 2007-8 dining room rehabilitation.
Reimagine, Re-Home, Reuse
From reimagining to rehoming and reusing, Susan and I have been pretty obsessed with creative ways to revitalize and reboot whenever possible. Yes, that’s a whole lot of re-prefixing! I did mention obsession, right?
Baked into the icehouse rehab (and sooo much of our +/-17 year love affair with Rosslyn) is the inclination to salvage and rehabilitate, to recycle and upcycle, to repurpose and reuse… we’ve been keen to reimagine obsolete and abandoned artifacts in new, useful ways. (Source: Re-Homing Exterior Door)
Another similar opportunity, repurposing a pre-hung door, came up recently.
Sustainability is intrinsically rooted in responsible innovation. We strive to incorporate full cycle, cradle-to-grave thinking into our creative endeavors. A half century of combined construction and renovation experience has taught Susan and me that every project is part of a bigger whole, a small arc in a much larger continuum. And Rosslyn’s endurance, a two century story of repeat reinvention, enriches our confidence and our commitment to responsible re-prefixing whenever possible.
So much of our good fortune as Rosslyn’s stewards has been inherited from generations before us. Responsible ownership, conscientious preservation, and magnanimous spirits account for the life we’ve enjoyed on this property. We endeavor to follow in that tradition… (Source: Re-Homing John Deere AMT 626
Yes, Rosslyn has been far more than a home. She’s been our companion and our teacher.
Rosslyn has tutored us in the merits of conservation and preservation, rehabilitation and reinvention, generosity and sharing. (Source: Re-Homing Exterior Door)
And so it has made perfect sense to extend Rosslyn’s generosities to others. And perhaps my nephews’ workspace will afford them a small reminder from time-to-time of the property where they made many memories between childhood and adulthood.
Child’s play, you say? Legos are a perfect proof of concept when it comes to children’s instinct to construct and then deconstruct, reuse instead of demolish.
Children intuitively understand adaptive reuse:
Legos teach reuse at a young age. You build, take apart and rebuild using the same pieces. You wouldn’t throw away your Legos would you? So why throw away your home’s valuable materials? (reusenetwork.org)
This quirky little video (published on Oct 30, 2009 by the Deconstruction & Reuse Network) is a clever reminder why we should practice more sustainable building and renovation. It’s not rocket science, folks. Reuse! The organization’s mission statement is:
We’re an environmental and humanitarian public benefit corporation, promoting and empowering deconstruction practices and the reuse of quality building materials 501(c)(3). (Source: Deconstruction & Reuse Network)
Too bad they’re in California! I wonder, is their an equivalent deconstruction, salvage, reconstruction, repurposing and/or reuse organization in our area? All tips welcome.
Rosslyn & Reuse
In the early months of Rosslyn’s historic rehabilitation, adaptive reuse was not only environmentally responsible (think green renovation and green building) and architecturally responsible (think preservation of historic heritage), it was also a sentimental inevitability. We inherited such a vast array of architectural salvage from the previous owners — installed and in-use in all four buildings, but also stored away in the carriage barn. Such treasures! We couldn’t even identify everything (mysterious artifacts surface all the time), but we suspected that some day, one day many of these items would serve us (and Rosslyn) well.
One of the items that we removed from the previous owner’s woodshed was a pair of Greek Revivalcolumns. They’re stored away in the carriage barn, hibernating, awaiting a creative reuse. Stay tuned for their next chapter. And, though most passersby are unaware, the flagpole mounted atop Rosslyn’s boathouse was once a sailboat mast!
Reuse is Child’s Play: digital watercolor derived from a video still (Image: Geo Davis)
Legos & DIY
In addition to the handy look at deconstruction and reuse, I also like the video above because it uses Legos. Legos! So accessible, and for many of us, so familiar. This ubiquitous children’s toy is one of our first introductions to the DIY way of thinking, subtly exposing youngsters to the idea of making, encouraging experimentation (and occasional failure) as well as reminding us then when it’s all said and done we can just deconstruct our creation back into its pieces in order to make something new. This ethos guides so much of Susan and my interest in and aptitude for what we call “greenovation” (responsible remodeling). We were both “Do it myself” kids, and now we’re a couple of “Do it myself” adults (who still feel like kids!)
Carriage house horse stall door (Source: Geo Davis)
Horse Stall Haiku
Carriage house stall door, pockmarked, patinated, but hale, relates tenants past.
— Geo Davis
Wabi-sabi Horse Stall
Patina. Rust. Wear-and-tear. The horse stall door in the photograph above abounds in visible reminders of imperfection and impermanence. And yet beauty brims. The image, indeed the horse stall and the horse stall door themselves, exude warmth and comfort and reassurance. No frisky filly within. No stately stallion. Yet life has invested this space with memories and, as Donna Baribeau pointed out, “Authentic Beauty”. The bumps and bruises of horses and those who tend them are part of this carriage barn story. But for much of the last 200+ years that Rosslyn has presided over Merchant Row there were no carriages and no horses in this barn. The stables were repurposed for storing firewood, bicycles, lawn mowers, lumber, tools, children’s forts, and possibly briefly even as a bedroom (if firsthand accounts are accurate.) All of this, and more, has left marks and stories. All of this contributes to the wabi-sabi allure of this space (and this photograph of the space.)
In traditional Japanese aesthetics, wabi-sabi (侘寂) is a world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of appreciating beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete” in nature… Characteristics of wabi-sabi aesthetics and principles include asymmetry, roughness, simplicity, economy, austerity, modesty, intimacy, and the appreciation of both natural objects and the forces of nature. (Source: Wikipedia)
Wabi-sabi is at the root of my attraction to time-worn buildings and artifacts. I consider aging utility buildings — barns, boathouses, ice houses, sugarshacks, etc. — to be at least as intriguing as old houses. More sometimes. So many relics, unselfconscious, candid. Less penchant for concealing, fewer makeovers, more concurrently present years and lives. Sometimes it’s the old, banged up subjects and objects that look the best. Thank goodness for that!
The past lives on in art and memory, but it is not static: it shifts and changes as the present throws its shadow backwards. — Margaret Drabble
I return today to a recurring theme, a preoccupation perhaps, that wends its way through my Rosslyn ruminations and my collections of photographs and artifacts. While the past lives on, the present riffs, repurposes, and reimagines the past. Adaptive reuse. Upcycling. Reinvention. Art.
Buckle up. Or pour yourself a cocktail…
The Past Lives On: NW Corner of Icehouse and Carriage Barn, September 21, 2021 (Photo: Geo Davis)
NW Corner of Icehouse
Before tripping too far into the wilds of my imagination, let’s root the present inquiry in something a little less abstract, a little more concrete. Like, for example, the northwest corner of the icehouse about a year and a half ago, September 21, 2021. That’s what you see in the photo above as well as those below.
I’ve titled this post, “The Past Lives On”, and if you’ve been with me for any time at all you’re well aware that Rosslyn, the property around which this multimodal inquiry circumnavigates like a drunken sailor, is rooted in the past. And the present. Starting out in the early 1800’s and spanning almost exactly two centuries.
I’ve pilfered the title from the quotation above, ostensibly the perspective of Virginia Woolf filtered through the mind of Margaret Drabble. The broader context for Drabble’s perspective is landscape. Let’s look a little further.
The past lives on in art and memory, but it is not static: it shifts and changes as the present throws its shadow backwards. The landscape also changes, but far more slowly; it is a living link between what we were and what we have become. This is one of the reasons why we feel such a profound and apparently disproportionate anguish when a loved landscape is altered out of recognition; we lose not only a place, but ourselves, a continuity between the shifting phases of our life. — Margaret Drabble, A Writer’s Britain: Landscape in Literature, Thames & Hudson, 1987 (Source: Ken Taylor, “Landscape: Memory and Identity”)
In the photo above I’ve recorded the exterior of the icehouse and adjoining lawn as it has looked since approximately the 1950s which is when we understand that a clay tennis court was built behind the icehouse and carriage barn for the pleasure of Sherwood Inn guests.
Actually, I’m slightly oversimplifying the contours of history. Given what I understand, the clay court was installed for Sherwood Inn patrons, but at some point in the decades since, the court was abandoned. Or at least *mostly* abandoned. The +/-10′ tall wooden posts for an enclosure along the northern end of the court remained until we removed them early in our rehabilitation. And one of the two steel tennis net posts will at long last be removed in about a week when Bob Kaleita returns to tune up the site for hardscaping and landscaping. But a long time ago the clay surface was abandoned and a perfectly flat lawn replaced it. We’ve enjoyed using it as a croquet, bocce, and volleyball court for years.
If you look at the bottom right of the photograph at the top of this post you can see that there’s a topographical bulge in the lawn, sort of a grassy hummock that is crowding the building(s). In the photo below you can again see how the ground is higher than the framing on both buildings.
The Past Lives On: NW Corner of Icehouse and Carriage Barn, September 21, 2021 (Photo: Geo Davis)
Not an ideal situation when organics (lawn, landscaping, etc.) crowd wooden buildings. Unfortunately the tennis court was built above the sills of both buildings, and inauspiciously close. Moisture, snow, and ice buid-up over the decades compromised the structures of both buildings because of this miscalculation.
Today, both buildings have had their framing rehabilitated, and their structural integrity is better than ever. In addition, significant site work last autumn (remember “The art of Dirt Work“?) and again next week is restoring the ground level adjacent to the icehouse and carriage barn to more closely resemble what it likely looked like in the 1800s when both buildings were originally sited and constructed.
A landscape altered. A landscape restored.
A memory recreated with the art of landscaping. The past made present. And yet, not. The new grade has been reimagined as an outdoor recreation and entertaining area not likely resembling the environs a couple hundred years ago. And so it is that the past “shifts and changes as the present throws its shadow backwards”…
The Past Lives On: NW Corner of Icehouse, September 21, 2021 (Photo: Geo Davis)
Present Shadowed Past
What if innocence, in a sense, is less unbiased naïveté than wonder-wander, curiosity, and experiment? Or kneading gray clay dug behind the barn, behind the garden, before the forest (but barely before) after summer rain forty years ago. Stiff and cold at first, loosening with touch, oozing through cupped palms and playful fingers, shapes suggest themselves. Contours and textures echo yesterdays unrecorded and likely forgotten but re-emergent, confections conjured of sodded clay, and curiosity.
The Past Lives On
Indeed, something endures, but rarely should we be confident that we are knowing the past as it was. As it once was. We are informed and perhaps sometimes misinformed by our perspective sometime subsequent to the archival echo we fixate upon. And yet, perhaps allowing for reimagination, adaptive reuse, and even ahistoric reinvention, drawing upon the artifacts and memories we inherit but investing them with whimsy and wonder is one of the best ways of rehabilitating the past. Art from artifacts…
Welcome to spring! It’s currently 43° at Rosslyn, on target to hit 46° shortly. Sun is out. Snow is melting. Bulbs are bursting. So many remarkable signs and suggestions that the vernal equinox may indeed have marked the transition from winter to spring (daffodils and daylilies perking up, an auspicious sunset cloud formation, a handsome Barred Owl encounter,…)
Let’s start out with our just-passed solar equinox and then work our way toward the Barred Owl (Strix varia) and some celestial special effects from Susan’s end-of-day walk with Denise.
Vernal Equinox: Rosslyn Sundown (Photo: Susan Bacot-Davis)
Vernal Equinox-ish
In 2023, the official first day of spring is Monday, March 20. This date marks the “spring equinox” in the Northern Hemisphere… at 5:24 P.M. EDT. This… is the astronomical beginning of the spring season in the Northern Hemisphere… (Source: The Old Farmer’s Almanac)
That was yesterday. In fact, this post was intended to be published yesterday. On time. Relevant. But, sometimes searching for poetry preempts timely updates. Sorry.
Despite the fact that today’s post is slightly out of sync with the astronomical calendar, I couldn’t resist the chance to subtly revise yesterday’s draft and share it anyway. There was simply too much resonance. Yes, I’m biased. But after yesterday’s candid peak into Rosslyn’s artifact-packed carriage barn (and into my mental morass where architectural salvage, historic rehabilitation, poetic introspection, and memoiresque storytelling commingle) it felt, well, almost logical. Bear with me? I find that spring’s arrival rarely follows a predictable schedule. Each year unique. And, in spite of the heathen thrill that comes with romancing celestial and meteorological rituals, it would appear that the vernal equinox is merely a symbolic approximation of springtime.
An equinox occurs twice a year, around 20 March and 22 September. The word itself has several related definitions. The oldest meaning is the day when daytime and night are of approximately equal duration. (Wikipedia)
I excerpted the tidy part, eliminating the inevitable diatribe about day and night not really being the same length. A debate for another blogger. I love rituals, even when they’re easily scoffed. Here’s a flip riff by Phil Plait (@BadAstronomer) if you’d like a quick scoff before we romance the vernal equinox.
Today is the vernal equinox, what a lot of folks think of as the first day of spring (though given the forecast, people on the U.S. East Coast can be forgiven if they’re rolling their eyes at that thought, assuming their eyeballs aren’t frozen to their eyelids). (Slate)
The omnipresent smell of mud hints at spring’s earth entrance, and that’s good enough for me. No. More. Snow. Please!
Tony and I were returning from the forest beyond Library Brook where we’d been blazing the next meander in Rosslyn’s ongoing trail building initiative. The brook was swollen and running wild. The trees were a-chatter with avian neighbors and squirrels riffing raucous against the riparian chorus. It felt like a page out of Dylan Thomas. And then Tony spied the owl.
“Do you see it?” he hoarse-whispered, pointing up into the trees.
I didn’t. He guided my gaze. But I couldn’t identify the big blob on a branch. Wrong sunglasses.
“It’s an owl,” he said
We walked closer. I fumbled with my phone, launch the camera app, zoomed in as far as I could, snapped a couple of images. We kept walking. The owl swooped away, an immense span of plumage, arcing through trees and branches powerfully, gracefully without brushing a twig.
Disinclined by temperament to observe overt omens and symbolism in the world around me, I’m nonetheless receptive to the “singing underneath”. Sometimes life rhymes. I try to exercise humility and wonder in these moments. I endeavor to hear and observe and sometimes to record the poetry that presents itself. I’ll leave conclusions to others. For me, for now, questions are plenty.
Vernal Equinox: Day Lilies Reawakening (Photo: Geo Davis)
Daylilies
With snow, still covering much of the ground, bulbs are bursting up, unwilling or unable to wait. The earthy array above are day lilies, among the thousands of green shoots reaching skyward below the stonewall that divides our lower lawn from upper lawn.
Perhaps overly precocious sprouts. I’d venture a guess that some more freezing nights, possibly even some more snow might challenge these daylilies. And yet, as in all previous years, they will flourish, foliage thickening, stout stems reaching somewhere between knee and waist by Independence Day when they’ll explode in joyful orange blooms. They will. And yet I can’t help wondering if they’re premature?
Vernal Equinox: Cloud Theatre I (Photo: Susan Bacot-Davis)
Sundown Skies
As if conjuring orange blooms is contagious, the day’s spring preview weather concluded with a dash of colorful drama and cloud theatre extraordinaire.
Taken by Susan while winding down the day with Denise and Carley, ambling Blockhouse Road, likely lost in conversation. Phone photography sure has come a long way!
Vernal Equinox: Cloud Theatre II (Photo: Susan Bacot-Davis)
So beguiling and mysterious is that second cloud theatre image that I’m sharing a tighter, second perspective.
Vernal Equinox: Cloud Theatre III (Photo: Susan Bacot-Davis)
Welcome back, springtime. What wonders do you have in store?
Searching for Poetry Amidst Architectural Salvage (Photo: Geo Davis)
Searching for poetry, questing for questions that need no answers to matter and guide and enrich.
This might be my epitaph. Some day. But not yet. I hope.
Today, the vernal equinox, I awoke at 4:00 AM, eager to start cooking a wild boar roast I had thawed. Actually it wasn’t the roast that caffeinated me prior to my first cuppa MUD\WTR, that zero-to-sixtied my green gray matter within seconds.
If the human brain were a computer, it would be the greenest computer on Earth.
You with me? Caveat emptor: it’s going to be that kind of post!
It wasn’t anticipation of the pulled wild boar that I enjoyed for lunch (and soon will enjoy for dinner) that prevented me from falling back asleep. (I love variety, but if it ain’t broke… And if you’ve cooked 5.4lbs of wild boar shoulder, then share, eat, share, eat, share,…)
It was one of those light-switch-on awakenings. Sound asleep one moment, wide awake the next. 100% alert, cylinders thumping away, and focus dialed in. Monday morning’s are often like that for me. And with an ambitious punch list for the icehouse rehab, I needed to hit the ground running. Or jumpstart the week by roasting a wild boar shoulder?
Both.
But, after talking through exterior trim and clapboard siding with two contractors, explaining how to prune watersprouts (aka “growth shoots) out of our mature American Linden to another contractor, and various other midmorning miscellanea, I headed into the carriage barn for some, ahem, research.
I’m still sorting through architectural salvage and surplus building materials, endeavoring to make final decisions for the icehouse. Woulda-coulda-shoulda tackled this many months ago, and I tried, but the process continues to evolve. In some cases, it’s continues to elude me. So my endeavor continues.
Today I ruled out a couple of ideas I’ve been developing, visions for upcycling deconstructed cabinetry from Sherwood Inn days. The visions have faded, but all is not lost. In the shadowy space they’ve left behind, I stumbled upon something else.
A poem.
Searching for Poetry Amidst Architectural Salvage (Photo: Geo Davis)
Searching for Poetry
Wabi-sabi wandering,
wabi-sabi wondering —
reimagining relics,
architectural salvage,
weather worn detritus,
offcuts, rusty remainders,
time textured tatters,
pre-mosaic fragments,
and dust mote mirages —
so much pulling apart,
so much pushing aside,
searching for poetry.
Today I concluded that the vision I’d been pursuing — a vision of upcycling deconstructed cabinetry and paneling from the Sherwood Inn’s colonial taproom — had been little more than mirage. However as this mirage vanished, I happened upon a glimmer of clarity, fleeting but encouraging, around an even bigger mystery that I’ve been chasing. Also mirage-like, also elusive, also a problem that persistence might hopefully tame, also a quest for questions that illuminate and instruct even when their answers evanesce.
This glimmer of clarity (try to imagine a spark that just might benefit from attention, a flickering flame that invites kindling with promises of a roaring bonfire) materialized briefly where moments before a mirage had danced and vanished. And what did I see? Companionship. Kinship. Similarity. Affinity. Between poetry and architectural rehabilitation and adaptive reuse. A glimmer and gone. I exaggerate, but the picture is at once protean, subtle, and elusive.
Nevertheless, I will continue to strive, risk, and experiment. I will continue essaying to illustrate the intimate overlap between poetry and construction — especially between composing lyric essay and adaptive reuse of existing buildings and building materials — until my wandering and wondering renders an oasis. Or admits a mirage.
Rendering for Icehouse Rehabilitation: East Elevation Gable Window (Source: Tiho Dimitrov)
I mentioned recently that framing for the expansive gable window in the west elevation of Rosslyn’s icehouse was completed, and the change was monumental. Now we’re on hold, anticipating the big reveal in a few months when the new windows arrive and the sheathing can be trimmed. For now that facade is concealed behind a plane of green ZIP paneling, effectively shrouding the dramatic transformation until springtime. Anticipation, I tell my dog, is have the pleasure…
Today, however, I’m able to update you on Hroth‘s gable window framing for the *east elevation*. Hurrah! As you can see in Tiho‘s rendering above, the openings on the lake-facing facade will remain virtually unchanged except for a shift from opaque (solid wood openings) to transparent (glass window and door). But the the east elevation gable window will be integrated into a whimsical Essex sunburst motif that echoes the same detail on the third story, west elevation gable end of the main house. I will focus on this detail separately once we’ve made a little more progress.
In short, we’ve endeavored to maintain the public view shed much as it has appeared in recent decades albeit with a reimagined sunburst embellishment that weaves the icehouse together with the main house, the gates, and multiple additional sunburst motifs throughout Essex and the Champlain Valley.
Envisioning the icehouse rehab from within, the photo below helps orient the new window as it will be experienced from the loft (still not framed) and, to a lesser degree, the main room. Morning light will illuminate the interior, offering a restrained prelude to the magnificent afternoon lighting that will bath the icehouse as the sun sets into the Adirondack foothills.
Icehouse Interior, East elevation gable window (Photo: Hroth Ottosen)
The closeup below captures Hroth at the end of a long day of carriage barn carpentry looking a more than a little bit ready for some heat and a more comfortable perch. But it also captures the just completed window framing below the header, perfectly echoing the slope of the icehouse roof.
Another closeup, gets a little closer to imagining the perspective when standing on the future loft floor.
Icehouse Interior, East elevation gable window (Photo: Hroth Ottosen)
Framing East Gable Window
Shortly this aperture will be concealed behind insulated paneling much like the west elevation, but for a fleeting moment longer we can appreciate the natural light entering through the east elevation gable window framing, and we can try to imagine the daybreak view of Lake Champlain, warm sunlight illuminating the north elevation of the main house as it rises up into the summer sky.
A new perspective is emerging as Hroth frames my future office window (from the icehouse loft). Looking east (actually southeast in this photo), this will be my morning view. Panning to the left 10 to 15° the view will be filtered through the enormous American Linden (basswood) tree and across the upper lawn, through the ancient ginkgo tree and across the front lawn to Lake Champlain. (Source: Loft Office View)
Holes in walls. Such rudimentary changes to a building envelope. And yet such profound transformation!
By strategically introducing apertures and maximizing transparency in this small structure we’re endeavoring to dilate the living experience beyond the finite building envelope, to challenge the confines of walls and roof, and when possible and esthetically judicious, to improve porosity with abundant new fenestration, dynamic interior-exterior interplay, subtle but impactful landscaping changes (including a new deck) that will work in concert to amplify the breathability of the interior and temptingly invite insiders outside. (Source: Gable End Window in West Elevation)
The photo below hints at the future porosity of the this space. Imagine the window near bottom right once it is glass.
Icehouse Interior, East elevation gable window (Photo: Hroth Ottosen)
Of course, framing in the balcony and eventually adding blisters will shift add interesting layers, shadows, textures, and other nuances to the transparency looking east from within. Perhaps an interior rendering or two will help imagine forward…
Mornings offer me moments of introspection, mostly optimistic meditations catalyzed by the dawning of a new day. A fresh start. So much pent up potential swelling. And like morning, springtime fills me with enthusiasm for what is possible. A seasonal morning. And so I’m finding myself lately absorbed in this liminal zone of daily and seasonal reawakening. Yes, it’s been a meditative March…
Meditative March (Photo: Geo Davis)
This morning’s March 16, 2023 sunrise over Lake Champlain — with new snow still covering Rosslyn’s lawns and fields but the lake lapping languidly, never having frozen this winter — conjures exuberance and anticipation, both overlaid with dark silhouettes. There is heightened contrast and a lingering darkness. There is also explosive blooming of color and light. Our winter world is reawakening.
With the official start of spring only days away, even the calendar acknowledges this liminal moment. Meditative March is not subtle in its instruction. Pause. Consider. Mindful morning meditations happen unbidden, but wonder wants throughout the day. Allow for it. Tea and rumination. A muddy meander. A hunt for green shoots parting the leaf rot, swollen buds bursting along stems and limbs, the Doppler effect of Canada geese migrating high overhead, locating last season’s allium stems hung for drying in a carriage barn horse stall,…
Meditative March (Photo: Geo Davis)
There’s something about the light in that snapshot above — weak, filtered through cobwebs, illuminating edges, painterly, flirting with chiaroscuro — that mesmerizes me. It conveys that meditative March moodiness, as if the carriage barn, as if Rosslyn itself were ruminating, introspective, contemplative, wondering and wandering inward… Can a home brood?!?!
I invite you to enjoy Mischa Maisky’s cello performance of Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals: The Swan coupled with the same photo below.
What wintery wonders shall I share with you today? How about a celebration (and showcase) of upcycled Christmas gifts dreamed into existence by three allstar members of our icehouse rehab team?
Upcycled Christmas Gifts from Pam, Hroth, and Tony (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
[pullquote]These upcycled Christmas gifts are a product and symbol of renewal.[/pullquote]
I talk and I type, but these three creative characters have reimagined and reinvented deconstruction debris into functional art and decor. They transformed a piece of old garapa decking and a handful of icehouse artifacts (uncovered during laborious hand excavation for the new foundation) into a handsome coatrack, and they transformed a gnarled piece of rusty steel back into a museum-worthy ice hook that turns the clock back 100+ years.
Let’s start with the photograph at the top of this post which Pam accompanied with the following note of explanation.
Hroth, Tony and I wanted to wish you both a very Merry Christmas. We came up with the idea to make a coat rack out of repurposed items. The wood is old garapa. I found the spikes in the icehouse during inventory and the hook was also discovered in the icehouse during excavation for the concrete floor/footers. Hroth custom made a handle for the ice hook. We also wanted to add a new hummingbird feeder to the garden outside of the breakfast area. Merry Christmas! — Pamuela Murphy
Perfection! Garapa upcycled from Rosslyn’s 2008-9 deck build and miscellaneous ice hauling artifacts reconciled and reborn as a new coat rack that will greet icehouse visitors upon entering the miniature foyer, and a restored antique ice hook that will be displayed prominently in the main room. Bravo, team.
Upcycled Christmas Gifts from Pam, Hroth, and Tony (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
I was curious how Hroth had fabricated the garapa handle for the ice hook out of old decking boards. It’s so round/cylindrical that it looks as if he’d used a lathe.
Two pieces of garapa laminated together. Started out about a 16 inch because it was easier to run through the table saw. I made an octagon out of it on the table saw, then used the big belt sander… I roughed it up a little bit. Didn’t want it to look too perfect. Then Pam suggested that we take a propane torch to it. Made it look older.
It was a fun project. I still need to seal the wood and the metal. Penetrating sealer works well on metal. It’s sharp… We were thinking you might want to put some corks on the ends… or garapa balls. That was the first thing I thought of. We can certainly do that. — Ottosen Hroth
Carving tiny garapa orbs to install on the spikes strikes me as the perfect way to complete the coat rack so that jackets can be hung without getting spikes. It’ll be a difficult-but-intriguing challenge! There must be some technique for creating a small wooden sphere out of a block of wood. Hhhmmm…
I can’t imagine more perfect Christmas gifts. Their collaboration has rendered layers of Rosslyn history — from the late 1800s and early 1900s when the icehouse was in use, through 2008 when we built the deck that yielded this garapa, to 2022 when the old deck was deconstructed and the icehouse rehabilitation was initiated — into timeless beauty that will adorn the icehouse when it is introduced/revealed next summer. These upcycled Christmas gifts are a product and symbol of renewal. Our gratitude is exceeded only by Hroth’s, Pam’s, and Tony’s collaborative accomplishment.
Upcycled Christmas Gifts (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
Upcycled Christmas Gifts (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
Upcycled Christmas Gift 2022: antique ice hook with handmade handle (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
The flip-through gallery above offers a few more details, and all three (as the two featured photographs above) are documented inside the icehouse with mid-construction backdrops: old studs with new spray foam insulation and new subfloor ready for interior framing and hardwood flooring. It’s tempting to offer tidier or even fancier backdrops, but authenticity prevails. Future decor created from old materials, documented midstream the icehouse’s transformation. Future, past, and present. Concurrent history and hope, a timeless present, an artistic representation of this liminal moment.
Backstory to Upcycled Christmas Gifts
Susan and my gratitude to Pam, Hroth, and Tony is (and obviously should be) the focus of today’s Rosslyn Redux installment, but I can’t conclude without first considering a slightly more amplified retrospective, the backstory, if you will, to the new coat rack and restored ice hook.
Let’s start by rewinding the timeline to 2008-9. Building the new deck and installing garapa decking was the proverbial caboose in a virtually endless train of construction that started in the summer of 2006. (Source: Garapa Decking 2008-2009)
In the photograph below, taken exactly fourteen years ago today, Warren Cross is putting the finishing touches on our first deck build. Although the perspective may be misleading given the still unbuilt garbage and recycling “shed” which today stands directly behind Warren, this is the northernmost extension of Rosslyn’s deck. The stone step (actually a repurposed hitching post chiseled from Chazy and Trenton limestone (aka “Essex stone”) and the rhododendron shrubs are not yet in place either.
But it you imagine the perspective as if you were standing just north of the morning room, looking back toward the carriage barn and icehouse, you’ll be oriented in no time. Oriented, yes, but nevertheless a bit disoriented too, I imagine, as you look upon a carpenter laboring in the snow to scribe and affix the garapa deck skirting / apron that will complete the installation that had began in the autumn with far more hospitable conditions.
Warren Cross completing garapa decking installation on December 22, 2008 (Photo: Geo Davis)
It’s worth noting that Warren, already in his mature years when he worked on Rosslyn with us, not only threw himself into difficult endeavors like the one above, he contributed decades’ of experience and an unsurpassed work ethic that inspired everyone with whom he worked in 2008 and 2009. But there’s an even more notable memory that describes Warren. He was a gentleman. And he was a gentle man. It was a privilege to witness Warren’s collegiality, and Rosslyn profited enduringly from his expertise. But it was his disposition, his consideration, and his kindness that make me nostalgic when I hear him mentioned or when I catch sight of him in photographs.
In terms of memories conjured by this repurposed garapa decking, I should include Hroth’s “research” this past autumn into how best we might reuse the lumber. There was such anticipation and excitement in the hours he experimented and explored. The image below perfectly illustrates the hidden gold just waiting to reemerge from the deconstructed decking material.
Hroth is continuing to experiment with the garapa decking we salvaged from our summer 2022 deck rebuild. I’m hoping to repurpose this honey toned Brazilian hardwood as paneling in the icehouse bathroom. (Source: Upcycling Decking Debris)
Hroth’s discoveries underpin our plan to panel the interior of the new icehouse bathroom with what for a decade and a half withstood the Adirondack Coast elements season after season, and a rambunctious parade of footfalls, barbecues, dog paws, wetsuits, etc. It’s as if the new coat rack exudes the anticipation and optimism that many of us brought to the journey of upcycling the old decking into the new paneling.
And there is an aside that I’m unable to resist mentioning. Pam’s late husband, Bob Murphy, who worked as our property caretaker and became an admired and dearly respected friend, several times removed and reinstalled Rosslyn’s garapa decking over the years — monitoring, triaging, and compensating for the failing TimberSIL substructure. He knew that we would need to rebuild the entire deck soon, and yet he waged a relentless campaign to extend the useful life of the deck as long as possible. I think he’d be proud of the work accomplished by the team this summer, and he sure would have loved being part of that team! And the icehouse rehab would have thrilled him. Needless to say, these upcycled Christmas gifts from Pam and Hroth and Tony also exude Bob’s smile, familiar chuckle, and that mischievous twinkle in his eyes.
And what about that antique ice hook?
I mentioned above an antique ice hook, and the photograph below illustrates exactly what I was referring to. Disinterred by Tony while cleaning out and grading the dirt floor of the icehouse, this badly corroded artifact bears an uncanny resemblsnce to a common tool of yesteryear: the handheld hook. This implement was most often used for 1) grabbing and hauling ice blocks and/or 2) carrying hay bales. The location where this relic was discovered (as well as plenty of examples uncovered by quick research online) strongly suggest that this is an antique ice hook. (Source: Icehouse Rehab 01: The Ice Hook)
Isn’t a beauty? Well, rusty and corroded, but a beauty nonetheless, I think.
Antique Ice Hook, artifact unearthed during the icehouse rehabilitation, 2022 (Source: R.P. Murphy)
The prospect of restoring that ice hook crossed my mind at the time. But it struck me as a challenging proposition given the advanced state of decay. What a surreal transformation from rust-crusted phantom to display-ready relic! It too is marinated in memories, some recent and personal, others vague and distant. In the near rearview mirror are the painstaking efforts made by our team to secure the historic stone foundation beneath the icehouse while ensuring the structural integrity demanded by modern building codes. A labor of loves on the parts of so many. And today we can look back from the proud side of accomplishment. As for the more distant rearview, the antique mirror has succumbed to the influence of time, the glass crazed and hazy, the metallic silver chipped and flaking. And yet we can detect traces of laughter and gossip as blocks of ice were cut from the lake, hooked and hauled up to the icehouse, and stacked in tidy tiers for cooling and consumption during temperate times ahead.
A Glimmer of Springtime
In closing this runaway post, I would like to express my warmest gratitude for the upcycled Christmas gifts above, and for a new hummingbird feeder to welcome our exuberant avian friends back in the springtime. Taken together this medley of gifts excite in Susan and me the enthusiasm and optimism for the coming months of rehabilitation and mere months from now the opportunity to celebrate a project too long deferred and so often anticipated. With luck we’ll be rejoicing together in the newly completed icehouse by the time the hummingbirds return to Rosslyn.
Hummingbird Feeder 2022 Christmas Gift from Pam, Tony, and Hroth (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
Thank you, Pam, Hroth, and Tony for these perfect presents. And thank you to everyone else I’ve mentioned above for enriching this home and our lives. I look forward to rekindling these memories when I hang my coat or my cap up each time I enter the icehouse. Merry Christmas to all!
Yesterday I meditated a minute on bygone barns. Ancient farm buildings. Tempered by time, tempted by gravity, and sowbacked beneath the burdens of generations, these rugged utility structures retain (and sometimes gain) a minimalist elegance long after design and construction and use fade into history. My meditation was meandering and inconclusive. In part this was due to the wandering wonder these timeworn buildings inspire in me. And in part it was because my observations are still evolving and inconclusive. I’m not a barn expert, an agricultural architecture preservationist, or even a particularly astute student of barns and farms. But I am a barnophile.
a person with a fondness for structures used to house livestock, grain, etc.
an admirer and/or collector of agricultural outbuildings
Aside from the hubris I’ve just exercised in birthing this barnophile definition, I’m generally inclined to a humbler and less presumptuous relationship with the mostly agrarian artifacts we categorize as barns.
[As an unabashed barnophile with a] weakness for wabi-sabi, I’m especially keen on bygone barns.
By “bygone barns” I’m conjuring an entire class of rural farm and utility buildings belonging to an earlier time. Classic lines, practical design, form following function, wearing age and even obsolescence with pride,… I’m even smitten with buildings so dilapidated that they’ve been reduced to their skeletal essence by the forces of nature. Sunlight, moonlight, weather, wildlife, and vegetation permeate these carcasses. The sparse assembly of materials — beaten by the elements for more years than anyone alive can definitively claim to know — endure erect, monumental, lavishly adorned with forgotten functions and the patina of passing time. (Source: Bygone Barns)
Barn Vernacular (Source: Geo Davis)
But why do forgotten farm buildings enchant me? What reason lurks beneath the tidy text, what foundation for my unusual fascination with these vestiges of a simpler, more local, perhaps even a slower time? Katie Shepard, so very rarely off target, suggests this childhood reminiscence might play into my barn-centric attraction.
My parents, living and working in New York City, had purchased an 1840s farmhouse on 85 acres in Greenwich, New York five months after getting married. I was born less than two years later.
Although The Farm served primarily as a weekend getaway for the next five years, it dominates the geography of my earliest childhood. A stream of nostalgia gilded memories flow from this pastoral source: exploring the time-worn barns, absent livestock except for those conjured up by my energetic imagination and the swallows which darted in and out, building nests in the rafters, gliding like darts through dusty sunbeams; vegetable gardening with my mother; tending apple, pear and quince trees with my father; eating fresh rhubarb, strawberries and blackberries; discovering deer and raccoons and snakes and even a snapping turtle. (Source: The Farm)
As usual, Katie is right. Woven into the earliest tapestries of my childhood are fond associations with barns. This was undoubtedly further reinforced during our years at Homeport given the inordinate amount of time that my brother, sister and I occupied ourselves in the mysterious old barn complete with ballroom and servant’s quarters long since adapted to other uses. And in my grade school years my siblings and I memorized Dylan Thomas’s “Fern Hill” to recite as a birthday gift for my father. I wish I could take credit for this creative gift giving tradition, but it was my mother, Melissa Davis, who gently guided the three of us each winter to select a poem that would appeal to my father, and then to memorize it during our daily 45-60 minute commute to school each morning and and each evening. Three days after Christmas, on my father’s birthday, we would recite the poem together, and (with one notable exception that’s better reserved for another day) my father enjoyed the gift, leaning back, sometimes closing his eyes, and listening attentively. I think “Fern Hill” may have been the best received, and it became a go-to for family recitation over the years, hypnotically weaving itself into the ethos of our childhood the way a prayer might.
Boundaries of a Barnophile
There comes a time to focus the “philos”, or at least to try and narrow or delineate the subject of interest.
I’ve talked around my fascination with barns, barn architecture, barn construction, and barn aesthetics… But I haven’t outlined the tenets for my enduring intrigue, nor have I articulated exactly what I mean when I refer to a barn vernacular. It’s time to draft at least a preliminary look at my love of barns. […]
In the vernacular vocabulary of quintessentially North American architecture, the barn endures as a practical yet proud icon of rural living. […]
Although my fascination with barn vernacular isn’t limited to Yankee barns, it is my most consistent and encompassing vision.(Source: Toward a Barn Vernacular)
In other words, I’m inclined toward classic geometry, roofs steep enough to shed water and snow (with a particular fondness for 9:12 pitch), and unembellished details. And I will always favor bygone barns to new construction. The quality of workmanship and materials stands out, but so too does the story stretching across decades, even centuries.
I consider aging utility buildings — barns, boathouses, icehouses, sugarshacks, etc. — to be at least as intriguing as old houses. More sometimes. So many relics, unselfconscious, candid. Less penchant for concealing, fewer makeovers, more concurrently present years and lives. Sometimes it’s the old, banged up subjects and objects that look the best. Thank goodness for that! (Source: Horse Stall Haiku)
And what of other barn-like buildings, rural utility buildings designed and constructed after the same manner?
School Bus Stop Ahead (Photo: virtualDavis)
They appeal to me as well. In fact, the agricultural DNA isn’t essential to me at all. I suppose I’m somewhat “barn androgynous”, equally smitten with similarly origined buildings even if they’ve never seen a horse, cow, chicken, pig, or hay bale.
That said, it’s worth acknowledging that the architecture of New England barns, Yankee barns, and even — drifting a little further southeast — tobacco barns are especially appealing to me. And if it’s fair to assume that my affinity is at least partly nostalgia-driven, then it’s probably worth adding another influence the those sited above. Four year of boarding school in Old Deerfield, Massachusetts definitely instilled in me an appreciation for early colonial building, and there were a couple of barns that still loom proud in my memory.
Beyond Boundaries
Although I wish I could gather these strings and call it caput, I must further complicate the boundaries I’ve endeavored to delineate above.
While there’s something alluring about the volume and the efficiency of barns, the unpretentious posture with no attempt to conceal functions or mechanism, scale isn’t essential. The small corn crib above, for example, intoxicates my imagination nearly as much as the grand barn at the top of this post.
Baked into my identity as a barnophile, into this somewhat esoteric aesthetic and philosophical appetite, is a tendency to stretch my definition of barns to include other similar outbuildings.
While Rosslyn didn’t fit squarely into the vision of an old farm or a collection of dilapidated barns that I originally was hunting for, this stately home does have three remarkable outbuildings, all three of which lured me as much as the house. In fact, well before we completed our top-to-bottom rehabilitation of the home, we tackled the icehouse, boathouse, and carriage barn. All of them were on the brink. Actually much of the house was as well. But just as we committed to salvaging the home, returning it to its former grandeur, we likewise undertook laborious, challenging efforts to salve the icehouse, boathouse, and carriage barn. All buildings were dilapidated, but the icehouse and boathouse were both succumbing to the omnipresent challenges of weather and neglect.
I’ve posted plenty in the past about Rosslyn’s boathouse, the lakeside folly that beckoned to us from the beginning. For a whimsical mind like my own, smitten with boating adventures — real and imagined — becoming irreversibly enchanted with our small dock house protruding out into Lake Champlain was pretty much inevitable. Although its mission has always been tied to watery locomotion, it is for all practical purposes a sort of barn. A diminutive lakeside barn purpose-built for boating. A utility outbuilding conceived and specifically confected to serve the Kestrel just over a century and a quarter ago.
And Rosslyn’s icehouse, occupying much of my attention these last few months as we cartwheel through an ambitious rehabilitation and adaptive reuse project, is likewise a barn. We often refer to the carriage barn and icehouse, standing as they do side-by-side, as “the barns”. As a utility building designed to complement the architecture of the carriage barn and home, it was nevertheless first and foremost a utility building constructed to support the residents with year round cooling at a time when refrigeration did not yet exist. It was an ice barn!
And so you see perhaps the elasticity of my identity as a barnophile. A barn might not immediately appear to be a barn. But the rudiments, the purpose, and likely the longevity have profited from the heritage of barn building. And this, my friends strikes me as the right place to wrap up. If this this post was intended as a more intimate look at the romance of bygone barns, those that have endured a looong time and even those no longer viable, then I’ve covered my bases. And too, I’ve revisited my original hope of locating an old barn to convert into a home, a hope that has not altogether faded away.
In fact, Susan and I have been for a few years brainstorming a barn-inspired for the future, our future, that just might begin to emerge in the years ahead. Stay tuned…
Night.
Light.
Nightlight.
Summer light.
Winter window.
Carriage barn
chiaroscuro.
Contextualized.
Fragments of a whole.
Wholesome fragments…
Carriage Barn Abstract (Photo: Geo Davis)
In abstract, fragmented. Contextless chiaroscuro. Fenestration defenestrated. Disembodied nightlight beacon phare illuminated but decontextualized. Dark of night. Light of day. Lightness of art illuminating lofty levity… obscurity. Art of darkness.
Chiaroscuro: Clear & Obscure
These are images of the second story window in the west façade of the carriage barn behind our home. Perhaps they’re not *chiaroscuro* but crystal clear verses of a solitary song sung in the obscuring night, for the obscuring night. Perhaps they are *chiaroscuro* but only subtly so, muted meditations on a moment the light within eclipses the light without. Perhaps.
