Windsor Cottage Chronicles

This blog is starting to look suspiciously like a love letter to New Hampshire—with a few passive-aggressive footnotes about the weather. It’s a far cry from other places I’ve lived: Houston, Phoenix, Santa Monica, San Francisco, London, Boston… and Anchorage (which, to be fair, is the closest match—minus the volcanic ash, wandering moose, salmon runs, and the deeply questionable concept of a midnight-sun tee time at 2:00 a.m.). March in New Hampshire means one thing: Town Meeting . For the uninitiated, this is a centuries-old New England tradition where residents gather to govern themselves directly. Yes, really. No filters, no middlemen—just your neighbors, a microphone, and a strong opinion. I used to think Texas politics had a flair for the dramatic. Then I attended Town Meeting. Picture a room full of people, with seriously opposing viewpoints, debating municipal budgets and whether the town should build much-needed infrastructure (tax funding required). Now add just enough unpr...

Between decorating decisions, connecting with family, doom-scrolling eye-popping headlines, and temperatures that make you seriously question past life choices, this month’s update qualifies as a modest triumph: I’m here, the house still exists, and progress—while slow—is real. A major shout-out to Dan the Man , who has once again earned the nickname Dad. At this point it feels less like a nickname and more like an inherited title. Just for fun:   What do you call a dad with three children? (drum roll please .....)  Outnumbered    (Ka-boom!) I haven’t posted much because it’s been that kind of quiet—the kind caused by weather so cold it shuts down both construction and conversation. We’ve had a brutal cold snap, ridiculous snow, and evening temperatures hovering below 0°F for much of the last two weeks. Very cold indeed. ICE'd out, too.  Or, as a 17th-century Yorkshire expression puts it: colder than a witch’s teat . A phrase best left unexplored in poli...

We still don’t have all the concrete, and the weather is freezing, so I won’t bore you with that (you’re welcome). But— hey hey hey —my heart positively sang when I learned from our loyal community that seven, yes SEVEN , building framers were hard at work on our house today while we’re away. The beat goes on… even without a slab.. There is real hope—actual, tangible, don’t-jinx-it hope—that we might have this expansion buttoned up before the depths of February. Hope is doing a lot of heavy lifting these days, but we’re sticking with it. With that optimism firmly in place, I wanted to pause and wish all of you—mostly close friends, neighbors, and a sprinkling of distant relatives—an absolutely fabulous, joyful, and, in these complicated global times, especially peaceful Christmas. Peaceful in the physical sense, and peaceful in the psychological sense too (the harder one). Since the slab has become something of a taboo subject, I’ll pivot to what is decidedly not taboo: travel. We mana...

Zoom ba-dee-zoom—we fled! After weeks of house-project intensity (All work and no play make Jack a dull boy), our youngest daughter wisely booked us a Thanksgiving escape. Not to the Overlook Hotel—no ghost twins inviting us to “come play”—but to the Mountain View Grand Resort & Spa in Whitefield, NH , a Norman Rockwell sort of place that still had quaint dial up phones on each floor. The Thanksgiving feast was superb, at least one busy bartender tried hard to adopt us, and our bedroom window framed  Mt. Washington like a very expensive screensaver. We even saw a Christmas play, visited the  longest candy counter in the world,  and I vigilantly watched hubbie take up double-blade axe throwing with suspicious enthusiasm. But the prize moment? Driving past the Old Man of the Mountain —or more accurately, where he used to be. For thousands of years he perched on that cliff, becoming a legend of Native People's folklore, and unofficial mascot of New Hampshire, seen...

I went quiet for a bit because I swore I wouldn’t write about concrete again. If you’ve ever seen Peppa Pig , you may remember Daddy Pig’s favorite overdue library book: The Wonderful World of Concrete , which he discreetly used to read his collection of girlie magazines. When he actually read the book out loud, he reliably put the entire family to sleep. I didn’t want my blog to have the same effect. But neighbors have been asking what the holdup is. So, here we are. Concrete again (we've been told). Our first real construction crisis hit when the nights turned freezing and the local concrete company couldn’t fit us in until what felt like the next Ice Age. Because of our tricky access, getting a concrete truck in would require closing down Lake Avenue, special rigging and a special pump truck, with a very long hose on supports or swung over the house into the wall molds. Translation: slow, expensive, and scheduled perilously close to deep winter. So the team decided to do it t...

Right now, the world feels a bit surreal. Just a week ago, I was in leafy-green England celebrating life — playing Rat-A-Tat-Cat with the grandsons (a game that reveals far too much about one’s poker face), helping build electrical kits that miraculously didn’t electrocute anyone, and cheering at swim practice and soccer under bright floodlights. The nine-year-old’s moves had me seeing Beckham-in-training, while the seven-year-old’s piano practice had me seeing… patience-in-training.     Now I’m back at Lake Sunapee, where the wind howls under both sun and moon, the temperature dips below freezing, and the lake is as moody as I am before coffee. But oh, the progress! You may not think this is sexy but I do! The hole is dug, the footings are in, and we’re waiting on the elusive concrete truck. Once it arrives and the curing time is done, we’ll have a foundation — both literally and spiritually.  Getting to this point wasn’t easy. Rain and runoff turned our exc...

When we bought our lake cottage, we were living in England — happily straddling life as both American and British subjects. This was the dual-citizenship version of having your cake and eating it too. Windsor Castle was an easy drive, and we found ourselves close by every week or two. So when Hubbie hung a sign on our New Hampshire abode that read Windsor Cottage ,  how many of you assumed we were hopelessly nostalgic for England — or even angling for a royal connection? Go ahead, ponder that. The history of our sliver of lake land begins long ago. Native Americans first inhabited Lake Soo-Nipi  or "Wild Goose Waters". Then, European settlers — mine among them (maybe yours too?) — arrived, saw the land, drew up deeds, and declared ownership. 

Wednesday called for the big guns! The challenge was two-fold: the old foundation had to go, and the space to work in was tighter than a toddler’s fist around a cookie. Enter Doug the Excavator —endearingly named by my family and now a full-fledged member of the crew. Doug is small but mighty, the bulldog of excavators, snorting and scooping his way through layers of dirt and rubble. The only catch? That little bucket means a lot of trips to the trailer-dumpster. So, out went our makeshift dumpster (in a trailer that would fit the space), and in rolled an additional piece of construction equipment with two serious attachments: one a mini concrete drill bit to chew through the old foundation, and the other a big digger bucket ready to carry the spoils. Doug had a rental friend to work with.   Out with the makeshift dumpster, In with the concrete bit By mid-afternoon, the air was buzzing with the clang of metal, the rattle of rock, and Doug’s steady growl. By day’s end...

Prepping for Demo: Goodbye Windows Why is it that watching a construction site is so mesmerizing? Little kids press their noses to the fence, and apparently I do too. It’s like fireworks—loud, colorful, and slightly dangerous—but in this case, the sparks are flying because someone’s wielding an electric saw instead of a Roman candle. The last few days have been all about demolition. We’re saying goodbye to the little ell on the back of the main house, soon to be replaced by a bigger, bolder ell that will rise three stories high. Out with the old, in with the structurally sound. Still, that small ell held so many memories: Christmas mornings with family crammed in, our little cocker spaniel’s favorite corner for toy-chewing and miniball-fetch, and even our epic binge of Jackson Lamb and his misfit agents in S low Horses —still one of my favorite TV moments. Watching it go was a reminder that remodeling isn’t just about walls and beams; it’s about tearing down pieces of yo...

Blodgett Landing wasn’t exactly designed for heavy machinery. The cottages here sit on tiny slivers of land that once held tents. Think adult dorm space, except you get your own front door and there are fewer keg parties.  Lakefront strip of cottages in Blodgett Landing Anticipation was sky-high when our builder rolled in today. Picture this: a huge truck pulling a trailer with an excavator creeping down a one-way road the size of a driveway. Cue the entrance of our unofficial “mayor” of Blodgett Landing. Captain Kara saved the day by offering her driveway so the crew could back the behemoth down between the houses. Without her, that excavator might still be stuck on Middle Street. This was also the moment hubby and I realized we’d been wildly optimistic about just how much space we had to work with. Spoiler: not much. At the southern back corner of our lot, we negotiated with our back neighbors for permission to cross a sliver of their land. The crew eased the excava...

      Windsor Cottage in 1893   Windsor Cottage 1985   Windsor Cottage 2004 and as it appears today Welcome! Not sure how much we’ll learn along the way, but I thought it might be nice to chronicle this ten-month remodel adventure. We love our little lake cottage in Blodgett Landing—the tiniest census area in New Hampshire, which makes us feel very fancy, like we live in a three-road hamlet. Pine needles dust the streets, sunsets are gorgeous, our dock doubles as a Michelin-star restaurant (if you bring your own food and vino), and our old boat still chugs along each summer like it’s stuck in a 1980s family movie. The neighbors? A fabulous mix—diverse for New England (though let’s be real, this isn’t Miami or Berkeley). Still, it’s a patchwork of personalities, values, and quirks. Mostly they’re kind, warm, and helpful—which is lucky, because the climate here is not. Winters bite, summers bake, spring is basically a swamp, and autumn turns our quiet ...