Living in another locale--but still in Very Barre, MA

Last October, we moved into a new house on the other side of Barre. This house has almost 3000 sq. ft. on two levels and a huge master bedroom suite with a cathedral ceiling and loft. And by cathedral, I don't mean it has a Sistine Chapel mural :). The back of the house has a 10 X 40 foot deck. The house has an open first floor plan with a kitchen island (with counter-top stove), a walk-out basement, a two-car garage, a farmer's front porch and is ten years old but looks newer. In fact, there's not much evidence that anyone lived here for the last ten years. The entire house has high quality construction.

This property abuts the Phillipston Wildlife Management Area. We have two somewhat distant neighbors, although they aren't really visible through the trees. Well, not at first. Both neighbors seem to have some aversion to their own privacy and have cut down a lot of trees. But for the most part, we're still pretty secluded.

There is a 600-foot dirt driveway that feels like a road as it winds around curves in between the numerous tall trees. As you can imagine, it is quite a lot of work to clear snow from this driveway in the winter. At the roadside, there's no indication that you've arrived at our driveway. The only clue is our mailbox across the street with a house number on it.

The house came with a pool, and this summer we put in a new filter and pool liner and have the pool up and running. As it turns out, I love having a pool! I do a lot of work outside on the property, planting bushes, trees, perennials and making paths, rock "sculptures" as Allen calls them and lots of other landscaping projects. Whenever I get too warm, I either walk over and stick my head in the pool or jump right in.

We've made a lot of improvements to the house in the past 8-9 months. We removed all the carpeting from the 3 bedrooms and small office upstairs as well the master bedroom on the first floor and installed red oak flooring. All the walls were painted and major electrical projects were done. This summer, a fence will be built around the pool's deck and some rather large looming pine trees will be taken down before they rudely fall on the house.

The biggest project of all is adding solar panels to the roof; they're being installed today! They are expected to produce all our electrical power. How cool is that?

This house is very modern in comparison to the log home we previously owned. It's taken me all of the 8-9 months we've been here to get a handle on a decorating scheme that makes sense. The log home was rural and country-casual. This house isn't "casual" at all. Its style is colonial. I don't know why it's called that, the name colonial sounds like it would be reminiscent of the architecture of colonial times, but that's not the case. At least not to me.

Over the last 14 years, we've moved three times and this is our third house in Barre, MA. I think we like it here in Barre and we will stick around for a while.