motor bike ride

The lawn behind Goodspeed Opera House offers a river view and most civilized surroundings. While catching rays on the lawn one can hear the surrounding dining at Gelston House & nearby bridge traffic & boat traffic. I do not find this background noise to be a distraction and the quiet busyness is actually part of the draw...been down here a few times already on the bike. It makes a worthy destination for an evening spin on the motorcycle. The 40-minute ride down from Hebron is scenic and hardly traffic.

Below is the view of Connecticut River from the lawn. This is East Haddam, CT and across the river is Haddam. The lawn is a great place to rest, catch some rays, or read before turning back.





View of Gelston House from lawn. That terrace on the right, with the tent-cover is the outdoor dining and beergarden. Unfortunately this fine establishment is too far from the office otherwise I would drag my drinking comrades here regularly.

Below, view of the swing bridge from lawn:

What is a swing bridge?? It is called a swing bridge because the bridge rotates, to let boat traffic through, by swinging on a pivot.


Photo below, lawn, & opera house in background. Can you imagine taking a boat to the opera? These premises were built in the mid 1800s. The aristocracy along the Connecticut river no doubt lived well.

Where to dock for the Goodspeed!

Goodspeed Opera House is a neoclassical Italianate marvel on CT route 82. Connecticut river in background.

Gelston house, next door to the Goodspeed and of the same vintage.

Approaching the swing bridge. It is a steel-deck bridge, which causes a weavy feeling on the motorcycle. Takes getting used to.

Map of places talked about in this Blog:

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Before the Canterbury tales, a little bit about motorcycle controls

Most of the motorcycle controls are on the handlebars, except for the rear brake and gear shifter. Those are controlled by foot pegs. Turn the right hand grip (throttle) to speed up.

Friday afternoon up in the Northeast Corner:

View from downtown Scotland, CT

Scotland General Store. That is about it for destinations in Scotland Center. A few towns in eastern Connecticut still have general stores.

Photo below, Route 169 between Canterbury and Pomfret is scenic. The road is usually scenic before you see these signs, so my reaction once was something like "this gets even better?"

cornfield, Canterbury CT

Brooklyn, CT

Brooklyn Ct

Before heading home, lunched at Vanilla Bean Cafe, Pomfret. It is biker-friendly and a guy there tried talking me into riding in the Hoka Hey Challenge, a bike race from Key West to Alaska with a $500,000 purse. It's $1000 to enter and there's no second prize. I had to say no thanks!

antique door hinge replacement

In this post I prepare an antique door to replace a hollow-core door. This door will go in an upstairs bedroom. The house came with all hollow core doors and this is the final hollow-core that I want to replace.

The antique I got from New England Salvage & Demolition, New Bedford MA. Their long aisles of old doors were organized by number of panels. As you can see, this is a four-panel and it was $80.

The antique was 1/4 inch too narrow so here I prepare to widen it. First I fill in the old hinge mortise. A mortise is just a cut in the wood so the hinge fits flush, see?
Here in photo below, I'm raising the hinge location using a mount that I cut from a piece of scrap wainscoting.

In photo below, can you see how I raised the hinge?

I used really long screws for the hinges because 1) screws that came with the hinge are too short to go through both the new mounts and then anchor into the door itself. And 2) shorter screws loosen more easily, 3) the door was manufactured as an exterior door and is therefore very heavy; 4) the hinge area already had many holes in it due to past re-hinging. Here I use 2 1/2-inch long deck screws to firmly seat the hinge.

In photo below, I widen the rest of the door using lattice wood (1 1/2 x 1/4 inch), which makes the door 1/4 inch wider.

Currently I've sanded and primed the door. I will paint it a historic cream color.


Part 2: Garden

The rose bush is blooming like crazy. There's the famous motorcycle behind the roses.

Below is the layout of the garden. I have been fastidiously weeding by dragging a large hoe over the soil 2-3 times a week.

From another angle...

Kale from mom's friend, just planted

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Spring in Conn.

Although the deck project is far from finished, I ended up going with antique white for the deck. The color is Valspar's Woodrow Wilson Cream, from the Historic Preservation series. It looks very white in photo below, but in reality it is not as bright.

Normally it is not a good idea to paint a deck. This is because paint doesn't expand and contract with wood as much as stain does. The result is possible peeling and rot occurring earlier than intended. My deck was already painted so don't worry this is not making it any worse! Anyways I will replace the entire deck with a new larger one sometime. The bright paint sure seems to highlight the low-quality stairs and I may make a nicer starcase/railing sooner.

I got home from NJ today in time for some afternoon sun. In the background, in the next picture, you can see the hole in the stone wall, between the two big trees, that I made to drive the tractor through.

I do not tire from this view in the side yard.

Late afternoon sunlight through sugar maples

Sunflowers, circled, if you can see them at all in this image:

spring planning

sprouting

The deck in photo below is beige & to be repainted. I have painted it gray this weekend but am not sure that the Gray works in this setting. I will probably paint it over in Antique White. In photo below, I've prepped the deck by sanding, mopping & hosing off.

The door frame & rail etc called out in yellow reflect my current vision for the deck project. I will use a combination of historic cream & gray colors on the fence & rail which should tie it together. The challenge for me is always to organically integrate the home with itself & its environment. Usually after one phase is finished, such as painting trim, I have a better vision of the end product and end up changing plans for the next phase. Therefore it helps that I can only do one thing at a time on these projects. For the deck, for now I plan to use italianate door & gothic rail elements, which incorporate curvature and thus should help the cosmic energy flow and blend the house with its surroundings.


Garden ready for planting, in picture below. Sunflower seeds are planted. There was Much weeding by hoe in the past few weeks.

pruning the gnarly apple

Pruning is best done before the blossoms. I was told as much at a pruning lecture last summer. In this post I pruned the apple tree, successfully beating the blossoms. The buds were just forming. The tree was 60+ yrs old and very tall so that the top part shaded the lower part, such that the lower easy-to-reach fruit was unnecessarily small due to not enought light. In this post I pruned the upper branches off.

Below, partway done pruning. Sorry no official "before" photograph. I cut the branches using an electric pole chain saw. Standing up on the truck bed got me within reach of everything. This apple variety is Baldwin or Winesap, according to a guy at the local orchard.

Cut branches, saving the bigger logs because apple wood is supposedly great for smoking meats.

Electric saw made easy cutting. The pruning took four or five hours, most of the time positioning the saw, and lugging branches into the woods. Thanks to my neighbor for lending me the saw.

Picture below, this branch was high up, blocking sun from the one underneath.

After cutting the branch.

Hard to tell in picture below, but the pruned tree is nice and low now. From some angles it looks decent. From this angle it looks a bit like it was hit by lightning, split down the middle, but should fill in over the summer.

The dreary two days of rain causes all sorts of pond in the yard.

Garden flood

french door & antique Morris chair

My house was built with a door opening between the kitchen & living room, but did not have an actual door. Since this opening at the central point in the house, I installed a door there to give definition to both of the rooms.

The wall opening was 36 x 80. This is a standard door size, which means no additional expense to buy a custom size. Unstained pinewood French doors go for $160 at Home Depot.

In this post there are no pictures of the actual installation which included:

mortising, sawcutting, aligning, prestaining, staining, drilling, installing knob, installing latch, installing jamb.

Stain color is Early American. Knob is brushed bronze.

The actual door was about 1/2 inch too wide, if you allow room for swing & hinges. I narrowed it along the hinged side using a circular saw. Narrowing it along the knob side would have required the knob be installed too close to the glass, which might give it an unbalanced appearance.

Morris Chair


The rearranged living room allows much more space, having moved the entertainment center to a far wall against the stairway. Part of it I filled with a Morris chair bought at the Putnam Antique market. This Morris chair was made by the Quaint Art Furniture Co. of Syracuse NY. The antique cost about as much as a new one.

Mission style is part of the American Craftsman style of early 20th century. The craftsman decorative style was contemporary to the Arts & Crafts bungalow style architecture movement which featured clean lines and natural forms. Frank Lloyd Wright was of this genre.

The Stickley Furniture company was started around 1900 by Gus Stickley and run by five brothers. It soon split up and spawned several other companies making similar furniture.


Quaint Art Furniture was in business 1909-1916. They say an original Stickley is the real deal, but that spinoffs, including Quaint Art, were of similar quality, and the company was probably run by someone who worked in the original Stickley business. The shop label underneath indicates the authenticity.


The Morris is a bit awkward next to the Ultrasuede couch. I will be looking for a secondhand dark table or bookshelf to complement it.

Snow 2/10

A few inches so far