Collecting Antique Clothes

 I have been collecting antique clothes since the 1960's and was married in a dress of all handmade early embroidered & pierced white cotton, with my sister in finer white Victorian laces. While cleaning our attic, I decided to gift my collection to a young, enthusiastic woman to wear, share, mend and maintain.

The collection was over 30 pieces including some long vintage dresses and early hats. I sold my wedding dress to a collector and kept 2 white Victorian walking outfits. All lovely!

Note: We got married in our house the day the electricity was completed, and served 50 guests dinner in our back studio room. "Soup Du Jour" (now Nomad Pizza) catered the dinner and the flowers came from a farm across our street and shop in town. Some guests came by train in the one passenger car still stopping at the Hopewell Train Station.

New Roofs & Skylights

All our houses had roof work this summer. My roof was 25 yrs. old, skylights twice that and porch roof older. "Bella Roofing" 908 797 7887 replaced everything including two back shed roofs and five large Velux skylights, in two days beautifully!

Leif had shingles we sourced & bought installed near recent chimney work, while our chimney was repointed and given a 3-flu cap by Velasco Chimney. 

Even from a distance, the new brick pointing & chimney cap are lovely with copper flashing.

Christian hired Damiano & Sons Roofing 609 695 0854 (who did a stupendous job on his garage barn roof) to replace the asphalt shingling on his house additions.

Updating Velux skylights is great as they come fixed with remote controlled shades to be installed in 20 min.. Our back room was terrific with our first 50 yrs. ago and now affordably (total $1500 ea. installed for the largest size MO8) sensational.

New Ceramic Tables

Bill has created two new ceramic side tables which can be used with a beveled glass top to be a bit wider. They are both ready to be bisque fired and a lovely pair.

A New Laundry Center

Living in a Pilgrim's house is like driving a Model T Ford to work. Replacing our broken laundry center in the bathroom here, meant taking out antique doors and some wall to replace it. Alex removed the back door and some framing to get a new refrigerator inside.

 

However, we removed bath door trim pieces to fit a compact laundry center 23 3/4" which fit the smallest 24" opening since plumb, and it cleared 6' 3" ceiling beams. Success, surprising doubtful delivery men.

Bill completely took apart the old so Home Depot took it away and installed the new in 1/2 hr..  A feat in 4 days.

A set of sheets or towels wash quickly in the new machine and large loads (slipcovers etc.) at the laundromat. The original 2' wide bathroom door below has hand carved panels, and I use reupholstered vintage slipper chairs to fit in and the scale of this house.

Garden Sculptures

We have a garden of Ostrich Ferns bordering woods, which has some of my favorite tall sculptures of Bill's. Soon the ferns will fade to entirely expose them, while it is lovely to see them surrounded by greenery outside my workspace windows. 

In the sun...

Limelights On The Cape

August on the Cape is for Limelight Hydrangeas to light up landscapes. Old Farm has a limelight portal we pass under to enter the house and the shed is flanked with same species; Bridal Veil Hydrangeas.

Under the small kitchen window are 2 new cultivar "Little Hottie" Hydrageas with many lime green panicles turning to white & 3'-5' tall.

We also have 3 Standard Limelights around the property.

 

Lovely to enliven the living room at night with them.

Splitting Wood

 A tornado took out many trees in its path through the Takaezo Studio grounds where Bill works and fires his ceramic art. This year he has cut up and hauled home enormous tree parts we've split to burn. We rented a Home Depot splitter, and 3 of us split 8 hrs. here and split dead Ash trees 3 hrs. at Christian's farm.

Our entire barn foundation is now stacked three rows deep with Maple & Oak logs.