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Saturday Say It: Ayn Rand, Badass

The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.
— Ayn Rand

Design Diary: Sharon Kitchens’ Great Cluck Egg Farm

Sorry I missed posting yesterday. Sailing camp started this week and with it a way too early rise and shine time, resulting in more napping than productivity. Thankfully next week high tide is at noon! Of course today it’s raining and I promised the boys I’d pick them up early, so let’s get this going.

This past spring I wrote about my friend Sharon Kitchens‘ foray into rural living in “Homestead Act” for the Boston Globe Magazine garden issue. We met five years ago when I wrote about her factory-turned-loft in Somerville’s Davis Square for Stuff Magazine (I should post those photos one day.)

Although she was already on the cusp of becoming the Earth Mother she is today, having joined a community-supported agriculture farm-share and a local fish-share, and growing vegetables on the roof. we totally hit it off. She had worked in film, as well as for a fashion photographer, so we had plenty in common. : )

After a stint in California, in 2011, Sharon bought an 1830s farmhouse with an attached barn and chicken coop on about 2 acres of land 20 miles outside Portland, Maine. Today, she writes two blogs, The Root for the Portland Press Herald, as well as her own, called Delicious Musings, and works her land. She’s enrolled in a master gardening course, keeps bees and chickens, and grows all sorts of vegetables. Check out the Globe article for all the fun details.

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Shop artisanal style wares at West Elm.

Design Diary: Twin Peaks by Estes Twombly Architects

Back when we were building our house on the Cape, (long before Pinterest and before I started this blog), I saw a photo of a house designed by Estes Twombly Architects and fell in love. It was too late in the process to think about hiring them (and probably beyond our budget), but we took inspiration from that home by incorporating subtle tower forms for the front and back stairwells.

Now that I write about design pretty much all the time, I’ve had the chance to send them queries when I’m looking for particular types of houses for the Boston Globe Magazine home issues. I’ve yet to work with Estes Twombly, but they recently submitted this house for consideration. It almost worked out, but not quite.

The house is a new construction in a neighborhood of modest cottages in Warwick, RI. At first glance, the house reads as two separate cottages, but a closer look reveals one house under two roofs with a postcard view at its center. By creating two structures joined by a glass entry, Peter Twombly was able to maintain the scale of original summer cottages and preserve the view of the bay which is framed by the new buildings. The south “house” is for living and the north “house” is for sleeping. Between the buildings is a sheltered courtyard. And as you’ll see, there’s even a boat garage.

Happy weekend.