As we worked on the lake house every spare moment, living on a dirt road on top of a mountain in Hinesburg Vermont became less than ideal. We decided to sell that house and find one in a more suburban setting. After lots of looking we put a deposit on a house in Williston and had a contract on our house in Hinesburg. At the last minute the house we were buying fell through. We decided to go forward with the sale of our Hinesburg house. I took a few weeks off work and made our basement livable so we could stay there while we house hunted. I bought cabinets at lawn sales and put together a kitchen, a living room, a shower and a bunk room in the basement. I quickly installed a toilet on the first floor. My cousin, Todd Malbon, did the electrical in the basement while I did the rest. We moved in for what we thought might be a month. One month turned into nearly three months, but it was summer and there are worse places to stay than on the lake.
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| July 1994 sunset, our 1985 Sea Ray Seville on her mooring. |
We had some amazing sunsets in the summer of 1995.
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| Ted's Sailboat, 1996 |
Ted Lattrell helped me with the construction, he also built his own house. He moored his sailboat at our place for a few years.
We did find a nice spec house in Williston very close to the house we were going to buy, in the end it was a much better house for us. It was not in a development and had two acres right in the Historic district of Williston. The kids could even walk to school.
The good news was we now had a fully functional kitchen, etc in the house. This came with a price, I had to insulate it enough to keep the water from freezing. I installed 1 inch foam in the basement ceiling, insulated the first floor bathroom and put a propane heater with the stack out a basement window. It was not optimal, but worked.