If I Lived Here
This 12-acre property within Bangor city limits has all you need for country living, including a pond, an apple orchard, and a banister for sliding.
When I walk into this home, I can’t take my eyes off the staircase. It’s not fancy, but it is perfect. The lip of stairs that extends past the banister is large enough for decorations, or a small pair of shoes, or for a wily child to walk up and slide back down.
I grew up with a staircase much like this one. My mother, however, had painted the mahogany stairs and banister white and the wainscoting a deep rose. She was a master at hiding natural beauty along with the flaws.
Although the original part of this house was built in the 1860s—the rest added over a hundred years later—it feels flawless, as if each room, each nook were designed for comfort in an old-world charming sort of way. Cherry floors and wide pumpkin pine floor boards are equally at home here. Skylights and dormers. A large master bedroom in the new part and small intimate bedrooms in the old. A Monson slate sink in the laundry room with a wall-mounted wooden drying rack, and in the kitchen, a huge, sleek center island with sink and fixtures, all modern and pristine white.
If I lived here, I would already be kneading the bread dough on the massive counter, pulling and punching and rolling it up into thick cylinders, pinching the ends, stuffing each one into an oiled pan. Soon the yeasty smell would waft through the air, insisting everyone who was home come together here in the kitchen. The power of fresh-baked bread is irrefutable.
A built-in bookcase holds a few wooden bobbins, a polished copper kettle, and many cookbooks. I notice the well-used spine of The New York Times Cook Book, all 719 pages, published in 1961 when I was 13 years old and couldn’t even boil water. Now, I would add my Dori Sanders’ Country Cooking and Recipes for a Small Planet, equally battered from years of constant use.
Today, a sprinkling of sunlight creates a lacework pattern with the light dusting of snow that has settled in the exterior corner of a ceiling-to-floor window that overlooks the open field and the cluster of slender birch trees and the pond that is almost frozen.
I’m no ice skater, but I am certain I would have skating parties. I would break open the loaves of bread and warm up the cider I pressed from the apples in the orchard with Great Gramp’s old wooden cider press. In the dumbwaiter, I’d haul up wood from the cellar and feed the fire in the red enamel woodstove. And I’d be grateful for all of the voices in the room, for the laughter and for the way so many different opinions and viewpoints can share the same space—much like this house where both the new and the old, the past and the present, value each other.
In the background, a Seth Thomas clock with its large round face with the Roman numerals chimes one, two, three, four. Day is done. I head outside, walking by theperennial gardens, now winter fallow, and the post-and-beam, three-story barn resting on its 125-year-old, stacked-stone foundation.
I start the car and turn onto the quiet road. I am both minutes from the bustle of the city, and a lifetime away. I remind myself to savor it all.
Features of this home:
- Living the Good Life—4,294 square feet of living space, with 12 rooms, including 4 bedrooms and 4 baths.
- Space and the Possibility of More Space—12.2 acres, with the option of purchasing an additional 80 acres (22 tillable, 58 wooded).
- Custom-Designed Kitchen—with Sub-Zero refrigerator, Bosch dishwasher, Gaggenau gas cooktop, electric oven, two sinks, breakfast nook.
- Relaxation—cathedral ceiling, skylights, sunroom, family room, master bedroom with raised-hearth fireplace and French doors opening onto a deck.
- Plus—apple orchard, 2-car attached garage, decks, 3-story barn, perennial gardens, in-law apartment, office space, attic, central vacuum.
Maine Ahead has no stake in the sale of this house, and it may be sold by the time this appears in print. It is listed at $859,900 by Better Homes and Gardens/Town and Country. To learn more, contact listing agent Russ Harrington at 207-942-6711, ext. 136, or email rkh@tcreal.com.
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