Christmas 2019 at the VOGTs’ NEW House
Another dull Holiday letter from the VOGTs… but wait! Not so dull this year! We retired! We remodeled and expanded our vacation home in Maine. AND we moved to Maine!
Once we decided we wanted to retire to mid-coast Maine, we had three options; sell what we had and buy something better, tear what we had down and start new, or expand. We couldn't bring ourselves to sell it or tear it down, so that left only option 3... expand. So we expanded! We kept the basic house and all its charm, but bumped out six feet in the front (south) to add to the tiny kitchen and dining cubby, added a 4-season sunroom on the west side, built a 3-bay, 2-story garage on the east side (at a slight angle to the main house) with 2 bays for cars and the third bay for a tool shed and a woodworking shop, the entire top floor of the garage as a quilt studio with half-bath, and we connected the house to the garage with a heated entryway/mudroom. Construction started 18 September 2018 and as of this writing it still isn’t completely “finished,” but it is livable so we moved in 30 August 2019. The Woburn house was sold in late November.
Gene retired from MITRE in January 2019, the day he turned 66, but we don’t feel retired yet with all the work associated with merging two households into one and paring down 30+ years of “stuff” from two houses into one! It’s still ongoing! We’ve traded in our “Masshole” moniker for “Mainiac!” The first things we did were to reregister our cars, get new drivers’ licenses, and register to vote. And we voted in the November election! ²
We’re still trying to figure out places for the stuff we want with us in the new house… where do we keep books? Where does the crockpot live when not in use? Do we have enough counterspace to keep the knife block on the counter all the time? Even where do the winter coats get hung? It’s effectively a brand new house that has a lot of things that remind us of the old vacation house we had in this same spot, but with a LOT of things that have changed!
We were able to get rid of a lot of “stuff” before we moved, but nowhere near enough, so the entire garage was full of boxes and furniture with no specific home. In Maine, you want your cars under cover in the winter if you can, so most of that stuff got put into a few storage bins in a storage facility a few miles away, and we’ll work on whittling that pile down over the winter (and probably into spring!). Thank goodness they have FreeCycle up here too!
That’s all for now! Our email addresses³ followed us up here, so write and say HI!
Gene & Lynn
¹ We actually carried the old 781 phone number with us up to Maine, but it’s for voicemail only (it’s on silent ring)
² One local vote to pick a replacement for a retired selectman in town, and two state referenda