We love our little house in the big woods. It’s an open floor plan on the first floor, with a little bathroom, and the second floor has three little bedrooms and a bathroom. One of the rooms is actually too little to be any more than a nursery, and right now it’s being used as my husband Todd’s office. Since retiring from the independent school business, he had a consulting business, served on the boards of several nonprofits, and spent a year in Boise, Idaho, as interim head of an international school. He is now officially retired but enjoys serving as a selectman for the Town off Sandwich.
My “desk” is a sweet little drop leaf table under the window next to the wood stove in the living room, but I consider the kitchen to be my “office.” Each floor is about 700 square feet, and the unfinished basement houses the washer and dryer, Todd’s work bench, and tubs upon tubs of storage.
summer porch
Our porch is an extra room in the summer — a wonderful extension of the house that we use for eating, visiting, reading, and napping in the rope swing chair. Screens are a must for New Hampshire summers, keeping out mosquitos, deer flies and other uninvited guests, making the space a lovely place to listen to bird songs and enjoy the flower gardens and mountain views. In the winter, the porch becomes a very convenient wood shed that enables us to feed the wood stove, keeping the house cozy, without having to take off our slippers. (See the other photo of the porch below.)
The house was lovingly built by my brother Peter. He and his wife Diane started the farm in the 1980’s, and their daughter Rachel lives across the street with her husband Steve and two children, Parker and Elsa. We lost Peter in 2010; he died of sarcoma, but that’s another story. Peter built our house, like the farmhouse and my parents’ retirement house, hauling logs out of the woods with a team of magnificent black Percheron horses and milling them on site for beams and boards. Todd and I designed our house on graph paper and Peter brought it to life. This is a real DYI family!
The house sits on the apron of Mount Israel, facing Northeast towards the Sandwich range with a glorious view of Mount Chocorua. Behind us are the big woods of the White Mountain National Forest, and in 10 minutes by car or 30 minutes by bicycle (mostly downhill!) we can be at lovely, peaceful Squam Lake. The town of Sandwich has about 1,200 year-round residents (the population swells at least threefold in the summer), and we’re delighted to be living in this patch of heaven!
Here are some photos of the inside of our little house:
living room
dining room
kitchen
bedroom
view from the bedroom
fall porch, ready for winter
Little House in winter