In this autumn edition of Nest — Seven Days quarterly magazine on homes, design and real estate — we sneak a peek inside Paul Hance’s charmingly rustic ST. ALBANS FAMILY CAMP. It was recently rebuilt from the ground up, but thoughtfully so, in order to retain several lifetimes of memories. Similar themes of mindful building and creative reuse echo throughout this issue, from Vermont towns’ approaches to REDUCING CONSTRUCTION COSTS to HOME WEATHERIZATION TIPS for a changing climate. At southern Vermont’s STONE TRUST, students engage in painstakingly intentional building while learning the art of dry stone walling — those rocks don’t stack themselves. And in Hyde Park, the VINTAGE DEN embraces fresh thinking about retro items, resulting in some of the quirkiest secondhand home décor around. Read on for what’s old, what’s new and a merging of the two.
Building Boost 6 Cities and towns take on the challenge of easing home construction costs BY
ANNE WALLACE ALLEN
Camp Sweet Camp 8
Paul Hance rebuilt a summer home with past and future in mind
BY PAMELA POLSTON
Weathering the Storm 14
Experts offer tips for making your home more resilient to Vermont’s changing climate BY KEN
PICARD
Rock On 16
Dry stone walling? Vermont has a school for that.
BY STEVE GOLDSTEIN
Finders Keepers 21
In Hyde Park, the Vintage Den sells quirky antiques with local charm BY HANNAH FEUER Paul Hance’s
camp in St. Albans
Building Boost
Cities and towns take on the challenge of easing home construction costs
BY ANNE WALLACE ALLEN • anne@sevendaysvt.com
Standing on a verdant slice of hillside near downtown Montpelier, real estate developer Gabe Lajeunesse sketched out with his hands where he’d like to build 61 homes.
Lajeunesse, managing director of Aacred Development, envisions a tidy neighborhood of mid-priced singlefamily homes and fourplexes on 20 acres of the 72-acre forest he and his partners own between two busy roads. The site sits high above the flood-prone downtown and is easy driving distance to grocery stores, retail shopping and the Central Vermont Medical Center.
This location, Lajeunesse said, makes the wooded spot a perfect place for some much-needed housing.
But construction costs are so high that the developers say they cannot build moderately priced homes unless Montpelier residents are willing to invest, as well. City o cials are considering asking taxpayers whether the city
should borrow about $2 million to supply water, sewer, roads, sidewalks, lights and stormwater drainage, all of which would lower the cost of developing the site.
“Unless you want us to build $850,000 homes, which is not what we set out to do, we need to work on something together,” Lajeunesse said. He and his partners would like to build houses that sell for $350,000, he added.
Vermont has been hit hard by the nationwide shortage of a ordable homes. Escalating home prices (up 38 percent between 2019 and 2023) have pushed people to leave the state, blocked others from moving in to take jobs and contributed to record levels of homelessness. Very little mid-priced housing is being built, despite the e orts of state
lawmakers to create incentives and ease development restrictions.
Now, more and more towns like Montpelier are looking for ways to address a crisis that has left the state needing 24,000 to 36,000 new homes by 2029.
Some as small as Montgomery, just south of the Canadian border, are investing public money in community wastewater systems to make it less expensive for developers to build. In June, Waitsfield voters approved a $15 million bond to improve the town’s wastewater system to encourage more housing.
Other communities are considering making town-owned land available for housing. In the southern Vermont ski town of Dorset, where nearly half of all dwellings serve as second homes, that means planning an engineering study to see whether the land it owns would be suitable for a compact subdivision. Dorset Town Manager Rob Gaiotti said
the reasons for taking that step are easy to explain.
“Our school district failed to recruit a math teacher a couple of years ago because she couldn’t find housing,” said Gaiotti, who has an eighth grader at the Dorset School. “Teachers and nurses and essential service folks: The hope is they’re the ones we can figure something out for.”
Still other communities are looking to regulations and new incentives to open up long-term rental housing. The Burlington City Council approved limits to short-term rentals in 2022 and, in March, approved a zoning overhaul that o cials say will create hundreds of new homes over the next decade. Killington and South Burlington also regulate shortterm rentals; Stowe has a new ordinance that will take e ect next year.
Woodstock approved short-term rental limits, too — and then went a step further. The town’s Economic Development Commission has created four programs that provide incentives to property owners to create rentals from existing housing stock and to build new
St. Albans City Manager Dominic Cloud at the Fonda property
units. One, called Lease to Locals, offers cash to owners who convert housing from short-term to long-term rentals. In May, the town also started offering grants of up to $2,400 to homeowners who rent rooms to local workers, although there have been no takers yet.
St. Albans has led the way in creating more housing at all price levels. Since 2018, the city has used public financing to create partnerships with developers on three projects, producing about 175 units of housing.
“St. Albans recognized early on that the market for housing and commercial development is broken,” said David White, the president and founder of White + Burke Real Estate Advisors in Burlington. “It’s an incredible example of a municipality as an entrepreneur.”
Most recently, St. Albans has paid to clean up a contaminated former Solo cup factory known as the Fonda site and has issued a request for proposals from developers to build 87 units of housing there. The city will sell the site for $1. As an added inducement, the parcel comes with a $10 million low-interest loan from the Vermont Housing Finance Agency. Construction on a separate senior housing project at the Fonda site is already under way.
It’s not easy to get developers to build in St. Albans when they can charge higher rents for their projects in Chittenden County, City Manager Dominic Cloud said. But now that the city has spent $6 million in state and federal funding preparing the site, he thinks he can get a developer to bite.
“Our plan is to offer a development package that’s better than anywhere else in the state,” Cloud said. “Nowhere else do you get free land and lower-cost financing than the market.”
Other cities and towns are starting to enter the development world. In Montgomery, the selectboard is looking for ways to help Trout River Developers build homes on 16 acres the group recently purchased in the center of town. The developers live locally, selectboard chair Charlie Hancock said.
“We’re doing this for Montgomery,” Hancock said. “It’s not like these are investors coming from New York City or Boston. These are folks who are part of the community.”
Montgomery is going through the engineering phase of a $13 million wastewater system that would support 32 units of senior, affordable and workforce housing at the site. The money comes from an array of state and federal sources and from $1 million that residents agreed to borrow in 2020.
“There’s no huge disconnect for people that to maintain housing stock,
this project is needed,” Hancock said of the vote. Construction on Montgomery’s wastewater system could start next fall. He said he often gets calls from officials in other towns who’d like to do something similar.
“Hopefully this is a model that can make this process easier for others to follow,” he said.
Upgrading water and sewer systems is one important way that cities and towns can speed housing construction. Other tactics are applying for Vermont’s neighborhood designation programs, which ease permitting requirements; updating zoning; and using tax increment financing, or TIF, where voters agree to invest in infrastructure upgrades with the understanding that the financing will be repaid by the increase in property tax revenue that follows.
White River Junction has updated its zoning and used the TIF program to make it easier for a private developer to build middle-income housing in recent
IF THEY WANT ... DEVELOPMENT TO HAPPEN, MUNICIPALITIES ARE GOING TO HAVE TO STEP UP AND TAKE A LEADERSHIP ROLE.
DAVID WHITE
years, said Ted Brady, executive director of the Vermont League of Cities & Towns. Williston is another town that has changed zoning to ease the path for developers — and has seen results, Brady said.
“Williston has gotten all this criticism about development and sprawl, and now there are neighborhoods with thousands of people who are within walking distance of the shops,” Brady said. “It’s not the cute Vermont story, but they have built more housing in Williston than almost anywhere in the state in the last 10 years.”
Municipal involvement is the only way forward under these market conditions, said White, the Burlington real estate consultant.
“We need to encourage municipalities to take the risks that they have not historically taken,” he said. Successful
housing projects, he added, happen when town officials collaborate with local businesses, banks, hospitals and other institutions that share the goal of seeing more housing built.
“If they want that development to happen, municipalities are going to have to step up and take a leadership role,” White said.
Meanwhile, in Montpelier, city officials expect to ask voters this year or next if they’re willing to borrow about $2 million to help Lajeunesse’s company build his development of modest homes as an extension of an existing 31-home neighborhood. The bond would be repaid by an increase in taxes and fees generated by the homes, the city says.
Lajeunesse contacted Montpelier officials about two years ago in search of support. He and his three partners — including Barre Mayor Thom Lauzon — bought the land at the end of a road called Isabel Circle in 2021 for $1.2 million. He knew Montpelier had paid most of the cost to upgrade the road, water and sewer systems to help Barr Hill build a $10 million distillery and cocktail bar near downtown in 2019, and wondered if his company could get similar assistance.
In return for help from the city with infrastructure, he said, Aacred would sign a 10-year agreement that the lots can’t be sold for more than the original cost plus 10 percent, plus inflation.
“There’s not going to be enrichment off the public dime,” Lajeunesse said.
The city’s plan has picked up opponents already. Aacred’s wooded site is traversed by mown paths that are used by walkers. Some neighbors have vowed to fight any bond campaign, saying the project would increase traffic and create other disturbances.
But Josh Jerome, Montpelier’s community and economic development specialist, said it’s clear that building costs make it impossible for developers to construct mid-priced homes without assistance. Construction costs have soared to as much as $500 per square foot, forcing builders to price their homes well beyond what most working Vermonters can pay.
Homes in the $300,000 or $400,000 range are also out of reach for many locals, but that is better than the high-priced houses that would be built without any support from the city, Jerome said.
“Do we want to have a development of $600,000 and $700,000 homes?” he asked. “Anything the city can do to help grow the grand list, and make it as affordable as possible, is what we want to achieve.”
Camp Sweet Camp
Paul Hance rebuilt a summer home with past and future in mind
BY PAMELA POLSTON • ppolston@sevendaysvt.com
The perimeter of St. Albans Bay is ringed with camps, summer-only and year-round homes that have been there for ages. One of them — a handsome, charcoal-colored house with a distinctive red door — is brand-new yet holds a lifetime of memories. Make that several lifetimes.
When Paul Hance and his seven siblings were growing up in Burlington, they and more than a dozen cousins would play at their grandparents’ camp on the east shore of the bay. Years earlier, their great-grandparents had summered there, too. After his mother died in 2009, Hance served as executor of her estate, which had 19 heirs, aiming to assume sole ownership of the camp on behalf of future generations. The process took seven years. His goal? “I thought if there was any way to save it, I would,” Hance said of the beloved family gathering place.
Built in 1922, the camp had seen better days. Hance, now 63, is an artist and antiques dealer who splits his time between St. Albans and San Jose, Calif. “But I’m not a builder,” he said. It was clear he couldn’t simply renovate the place. With a sinking foundation, it needed to be dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up.
“I didn’t even know if I’d be able to financially afford [it],” Hance recalled. “I did a lot of research and watched a lot of restoration shows.”
That’s how he discovered a way forward: Shelter-Kit, a company in Warner, N.H., that makes custom homeassembly models for DIY builders. “They send you all the lumber, including floor, stairs, et cetera — everything but the foundation,” Hance explained.
Selecting a model called the Patrick, he worked with
Clockwise from top: The living room at Paul Hance’s summer home in St. Albans; a carved-wood duck decoy; a towel rack
Clockwise from top: Paul Hance in front of a St. Albans exit sign on the first floor of his summer home; a view of Lake Champlain from the living area; the upstairs loft bedroom
Shelter-Kit for close to a year on the plan and budget. (According to the website, the Patrick with a partial loft now sells for $76,500; Hance paid $52,000 in 2018, plus $700 for delivery.) Meantime, Hance and a team of handy family members got to work.
Hance wanted some small pieces of the old camp to be included in the new one. So, before he began to dismantle the existing house in summer 2016, “I went in and grabbed what I thought I could use: the front door, tie-rods, some floorboards,” he said.
His rescues weren’t just architectural. He kept objects including his grandma’s dishes and kitchen sink, assorted artwork, an 1820s Sheraton side table, and a plastic train engine that had once been a mailbox.
(Hance’s grandfather had worked for the railroad.) Placing these familiar items in the new house, he said, would help family members hold on to their history.
“Everything has a meaning,” Hance observed.
sanding, painting, staining, framing, sewing and curating would be the envy of any do-it-yourselfer.
Hance’s nephew Chris Hamlin, 37, of Northfield, was one of the family members who arrived to help. He described his role as “whatever Paul needed — first tearing down the old camp, then getting things ready for the new camp.” Though not a construction professional, Hamlin said he had “learned a few things” from his dad, a contractor, who also helped build the Shelter-Kit house.
“One of my favorite days was when everyone in my immediate family and others were all there, ready to put the roof on,” he said.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO HAVE A LOT OF MONEY TO PUT YOUR IMPRINT ON THINGS.
PAUL HANCE
An inveterate thrifter, he also frequented church bazaars, yard sales and secondhand shops with the camp’s future décor in mind. He badgered local public works officials for three years to obtain a particularly large item: a due-tobe-retired interstate exit sign pointing the way to Route 7 and St. Albans.
“It weighs, like, 500 pounds,” Hance said with a chuckle. “Everyone thought I was out of my mind.”
That sign — buckling green paint, vintage reflectors and all — now covers a first-floor wall and makes a very big statement about place.
What’s new at the house is — well, the actual house. Hance remembers the day in June 2018 when Shelter-Kit delivered building materials like so many giant Legos.
One day during the first month of construction, Google Earth happened to capture an aerial view of the property, the front yard filled with workers and equipment. Hance later took a screenshot of the online image, printed it out and tucked it into a small photo book he made to document the building project.
Hance credits a local crew — including more than a dozen relatives and friends — for the foundation, carpentry, plumbing and electrical work. But he’s no slouch himself: His skills in resizing,
To avoid permitting red tape, Hance had opted to erect the house over the original footprint of 26 by 32 feet. But Shelter-Kit’s Patrick model added height: a second floor over roughly half of the first. The open kitchen and living room area has a 22-foot-high vaulted ceiling, which makes the space look and feel bigger. White walls and simple white muslin curtains augment the sense of spaciousness. So does the expansive lake view through a bank of windows at the back of the room.
The red front door is new. The previous one, with a replacement screen and glossy paint the color of a fire engine, now serves as the interior door to the basement. For the benefit of future visitors, Hance added a small label noting its origins.
“I built [the house] for the relatives, not for me,” he said. “So a lot of things are labeled.”
If nostalgia has a comfortable presence at the camp, so does Hance’s unerring sense of style. Call it thrift-shop savvy with the pulled-together aesthetic of a professional.
One way Hance achieved this balance is with pattern repetition. In the living room, for example, he hung 16 lithographs of birds that he had found in a 1960s calendar. He purchased inexpensive frames from ReSOURCE in Williston, painted them white and inserted off-white matting. Stacked salon-style, the 24-by-20-inch framed prints add visual interest without disrupting the room’s airy feel. They’re also an elegant contribution to the subtle avian motif throughout the house.
From top: Vaulted ceilings above the upstairs loft; the kitchen
Camp Sweet Camp « P.8
Camp Sweet Camp
Repeated fabric patterns provide cohesiveness, too. There’s a plaid oilcloth tablecloth in the kitchen and cozy plaid throws on the upholstered chairs. The sofa pillows feature a variety of stripes. Vividly colored quilts cover every bed. In the two downstairs bedrooms, Hance hung quilts on tie-rods to stand in for headboards. Two tiny, white reading lamps affixed to the wall save space and reduce clutter.
All of this is on the cheap.
“Everything is secondhand,” Hance said. “You don’t have to have a lot of money to put your imprint on things.”
Other creative imprints include a yard-sale kayak paddle placed over the living room windows like a wooden eyebrow; a long, slender tree branch turned into a stair railing; a shelving unit that slides aside to reveal a kid-friendly TV room; and two 1940s-era landscape murals adorning twin-bed nooks. The photos had hung in the old camp’s living room.
The huge, yellowed U.S. map covering much of an upstairs bathroom wall was another yard-sale find, Hance said. The antique dresser supporting a modern rectangular sink was from a Habitat for Humanity ReStore; Hance painted and distressed it.
Hance doesn’t simply find objects; he also has a talent for turning junk into art. A barn-red triangle of metal hung in the downstairs bathroom could pass for contemporary sculpture. “It’s from an old sled I found at a yard sale,” he explained. Tucked into a narrow panel by the shower, a floor-to-ceiling stack of “weird little cuts of board,” painted white, looks like an assemblage by Louise Nevelson. Turns out, the panel cleverly obscures the plumbing pipes.
Every inch of this magazine-worthy camp is a result of resourcefulness that Hance attributes to his mother. “[She]
was really thrifty — with eight kids, she had to be,” he said. “So we learned to economize.”
Eventually, Hance hopes to insulate the house to “extend the season,” and he’s extended the family’s ownership, putting the camp in a trust for three nephews. The next generation — four kids so far — has already come out to play. ➆
From top: Paul Hance on the front steps of his summer home in St. Albans; the camp in 2016 before it was demolished and rebuilt
Weathering the Storm
Experts o er tips for making your home more resilient to Vermont’s changing climate
BY KEN PICARD • ken@sevendaysvt.com
In a crisis, sometimes it takes your brain a moment to catch up to reality. Such was the case for me on a particularly rainy night in mid-July. As my wife and I settled in to watch a movie in our den, I noticed a puddle shimmering in the glow of the television.
“For real?” I cried, wondering which of our dogs had peed on the floor.
When I turned on the lights, it was obvious that a dog wasn’t to blame; the room was taking on water like a foundering ship. Though our Charlotte house sits on high ground about 25 feet above a nearby creek, the night’s persistent and intense rain — more than five inches in four hours — had overwhelmed our perimeter drain. In minutes, our basement was ankledeep in water.
We weren’t alone. On July 10 and 11 — the one-year anniversary of Vermont’s devastating summer storm of 2023 — a combination of record rainfall, flash flooding and rivers overflowing their banks once again inundated the homes and businesses of thousands of Vermonters.
We were witnessing firsthand the impacts of climate change: more frequent and intense storms; greater year-round precipitation, more of which falls as rain; faster winds; and higher temperatures. On the flip side, Vermont is also experiencing more severe and frequent droughts, which can wreak havoc for homeowners who rely on wells rather than on municipal water systems.
Ultimately, we were among the lucky ones; our soggy basement was vacuumed dry by the following morning, leaving behind no serious damage. But it was clear that we needed to not only prepare for the next big rainstorm but also reassess our property’s resilience to the changing climate.
Since stormwater management is Vermont’s most pressing climate-change concern, there are things that homeowners, homebuyers and landlords can do to safeguard themselves and their properties.
First thing to consider: location, location, location. Whether you’re building a new house or buying an existing one, it’s essential to know whether it sits in a floodplain, said John Lens, a professional engineer and professor in the University of Vermont’s College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences. Federal floodplain maps are available online, though town o ces can usually provide that information, too. Such info is critical because homeowner insurance policies do not automatically cover flood damage.
It’s also important to know what kind of soil the house sits on — sandy soils drain faster than clay — and how close the house is to nearby bodies of water. A small creek, like the one behind my house, can quickly turn into a raging river after a heavy rain, so it’s helpful to know ahead of time what direction that water is likely to flow.
Homeowners should also assess what lies uphill and downhill of the house and the likelihood that a hillside will slide once the ground becomes saturated. Lens recommends examining steep slopes for evidence of previous slides, such as trees with curved trunks, which indicate that the tree once toppled and needed to right itself. An engineer or landscape architect can help with such an assessment.
People buying an older house definitely need to know what type of foundation it has. Because Lens’ 19th-century house in Randolph Center was built on fieldstones, he installed a plastic membrane around the foundation to keep snowmelt and runo away from the house, then installed a perimeter drain,
ILLUSTRATIONS:
GMP has been in talks with U.S. car manufacturers to pursue what Carlson called “the holy grail” of energy storage: drawing power from electric vehicles when they’re not in use.
Consider the standard battery in an F-150 Lightning, Ford’s fully electric pickup truck, which has 98 kilowatt-hours of usable energy. (For comparison, a Powerwall has 12.2 kWh.)
Theoretically, you could power a typical Vermont house for three days with the Lightning.
basement dry.
Newer homes typically are built on a
concrete slab, and mine had a sump hole already cut in the basement floor. A phone call to Twin State Basement Services in Essex Junction resulted in a relatively quick and inexpensive fix. For $1,900, Twin State installed two sump pumps, which extract the water that accumulates around the foundation and pipe it downhill and away from the house.
That said, there’s more to managing stormwater runo than merely keeping it out of the basement. Stephanie Hurley, a landscape architect and associate professor of ecological landscape design at UVM, suggests that homeowners reduce the quantity of impervious surfaces — driveways, walkways, patios and other pavement — on their property.
“You don’t necessarily have to plan your parking as if it’s Thanksgiving day and your entire extended family is visiting,” she said. “Ask yourself: How much parking do you really need?”
The same goes for the amount of lawn, which provides few, if any, ecological benefits but can sheet water just like an impervious surface. One of the best things homeowners can do,
as “wall-to-wall carpeting but as an area rug” used for picnics, parties or throwing a baseball. She recommends setting mower blades to no shorter than three inches and abandoning the idea that everything surrounding the house should resemble a putting green.
is due to be unveiled shortly, GMP spokesperson Kristin Carlson said.
Backup batteries serve a dual purpose, she explained. During outages, customers have auxiliary power until the grid comes back online. On normal days, GMP can use those batteries to store electricity, then draw it back to the grid during peak usage hours when energy is most expensive and “dirty,” or reliant on fossil-fuel generation. GMP constantly monitors the weather to ensure that customers’ batteries are fully charged for bad-weather events.
That concept is not decades from becoming a reality. Carlson noted that GMP is already using such “batteries on wheels” with South Burlington’s fleet of four electric school buses. When the buses are not in use, GMP can tap their storage during extended outages or peak usage times.
For homeowners who may be considering buying an electric vehicle,
Instead, consider installing a rain garden with native plants that soak up rainwater and provide habitat for pollinators and other species. People can download UVM’s free 2021 Vermont Rain Garden Manual, which o ers advice for creating an inexpensive but e ective one. Hurley also noted that the City of Burlington’s Blue BTV program provides free home stormwater assessments to all city residents.
As storms become more frequent and intense, trees are more likely to blow down on houses, garages and power lines. More ice events and freeze-thaw cycles can also damage trees and snap limbs.
As summers get hotter, homeowners might consider installing mechanical systems that cool and ventilate the house more e ectively. David Pill, of Pill-Maharam Architects in Shelburne, suggests installing an HRV, or heatrecovery ventilation system, which removes stagnant air and brings in fresh air. Air entering the home is cooled in the summer and heated in the winter. And HRV systems can control humidity more e ectively than heat pumps, especially in a tightly sealed house.
a tightly sealed house.
For homeowners who use well water, Pill strongly recommends installing low-flow showerheads and faucets.
low-flow showerheads and faucets.
Hurley said, is to think of their lawn not “I would never fall on your house,” Hurley said. But your trees’ health, remove dead and also increase the consider investing in which more a ordable. Green
“I would recommend cutting down all your trees because they might fall on your house,” Hurley said. But it makes sense to periodically hire a professional arborist to assess your trees’ health, remove dead limbs and treat infestations. Because windstorms also increase the likelihood of outages, homeowners might consider investing in backup power systems, which are becoming more a ordable. Green Mountain Power has a program that o ers its customers two Tesla Powerwalls for $5,500 — or $55 per month for 10 years. An even lower-cost program for income-qualified customers
low-flow fixtures are significantly the only water but also money to
its customers two Tesla Powerwalls for $5,500 — or years. even lower-cost program for
ONE OF THE BEST THINGS HOMEOWNERS CAN DO IS TO THINK OF THEIR LAWN NOT AS WALL-TO-WALL CARPETING BUT AS AN AREA RUG.
Pill recommends investing in a heat-
“The amount of water you save is incredible,” he said. And today’s low-flow fixtures are significantly better than the ones from the 1990s, when “Seinfeld” ridiculed them in an episode called “The Shower Head.” Low-flow fixtures save not only water but also money to heat it. When homeowners are ready to replace their water heater, Pill recommends investing in a heatpump water heater, which is far more energy-e cient than a conventional one and doesn’t use fossil fuels. The yellow EnergyGuide sticker on mine, which we installed last year, says it costs just $132 per year to operate, which is significantly cheaper than our previous gas-powered one.
Now, if only I could convince my teenage daughter to take shorter showers. ➆
INFO
Download UVM’s Rain Garden Manual at uvm.edu/seagrant/rain-garden-manual. Learn about Burlington’s free home stormwater assessments at burlingtonvt.gov/ water/bluerequest.
Rock On
Dry stone walling? Vermont has a school for that.
BY STEVE GOLDSTEIN
Some find solace in the physical feel of stone. Some claim it speaks to them. The permanence of stone is legendary: A sword cannot be drawn from it; a mythical Greek monarch defines futility by endlessly pushing it up a steep hill. Stone represents the past, present and future. It’s an eternally renewable resource.
And with it, we build.
Attending a recent workshop at the Stone Trust Center at Scott Farm in Dummerston, seven mostly middle-aged, mostly able-bodied men aimed to transform a pile of stones into a wall that could stand for eternity. Our task was to accomplish this without mortar, cement or other binding material. We would learn that, in dry stone walling, gravity and friction hold the stones together.
Participants in a recent workshop at the Stone Trust
From left: “Monolith” by Jared Flynn at the Stone Trust’s Stone Wall Park; the Odeon at Mission Farm in Killington, with stonework by Dan Snow of the Stone Trust; dry stone dock by Seth Harris
STEVE GOLDSTEIN
The Stone Trust, a nonprofit established by a group of practitioners in 2010, has a mission to “preserve and advance the art and craft of dry stone walling,” according to its website. Its curriculum follows international standards initially established by the Dry Stone Walling Association of Great Britain. Students in the Vermont workshops — from introductory to master level — explore the craft of making art from stone, some of which is granite quarried nearby.
A single day at the Stone Trust won’t make you a waller, but it might inspire you to become one. Just ask the teachers.
Michael Papile, a 60-year-old Massachusetts financial executive, said dry stone walling is the most difficult
the course mandates steel-toed boots and protective eyewear, you know it’s not an art history class. But if walling is hard on the body, it’s balm for the soul.
“I like the feeling of the stone on my hands, and I like finding the right spot on the wall for a stone,” Rand explained. “And at the end of the day, the feeling of exhaustion and gratification.”
Dry stone walling is not just about, well, walls. Stone is used to build wells, steps, archways, pass-throughs, benches, pagodas and more. Many such designs dot the undulating terrain of the trust’s Stone Wall Park, enthralling pro wallers and wannabes alike.
Amy-Louise Pfeffer took over the Stone Trust as executive director in 2019 and has presided over a major expansion to eight training sites in
Swift Sales, Maximum Returns
JUDY
and exciting thing he’s ever done. After taking a one-day workshop in 2017, he called his wife. “Look,” he remembered telling her, “I have to do this.”
Now, after many more courses, Papile is a Stone Trust instructor and certified Level II professional. His business card reads, “Stone Wall Tony.”
Fellow instructor Judy Rand, a native Vermonter who now lives in Huntington, N.Y., said she came to walling late in life; at 73, she exudes energy and enthusiasm. A painter and photographer, she obtained her Level II certification in Derbyshire, England, adding walling to her art practice. Rand noted that walling is not without risk. Handling heavy stones — some the size and weight of manhole covers — requires focus: Finger pinches and mashed toes are not uncommon. When
North America. The trust has trained more than 4,000 individuals since its inception — 1,800 in just the past three years, according to Pfeffer. Turning a pile of rocks into sculpture turns her on.
Stonework, she said, “connects people to the materiality of earth, of existence and to the historic record of humankind interacting with that materiality for millennia.”
Practitioners, Pfeffer added, form a community “that is really immersed in the tradition and the craft and the artistry. They also find it very Zen.”
Walling also can be deeply personal. Pfeffer recalled a workshop that a mother and daughter attended together. Asked why they were taking the course, the women said they’d recently lost
Experience comfort and convenience minutes from Downtown Burlington with all-inclusive rent covering utilities, wifi, laundry, storage, and access to state-of-the-art amenities
Sunset House is a pet friendly property and offers direct access to the Burlington Bike Path with breathtaking views of Lake Champlain
A workshop at the Stone Trust
Rock On « P.17
a close relative and wanted to build a stone memorial. “It was very moving,” Pfe er said.
Our recent cohort of wallers included a National Park Service ranger, a graphic designer, two college professors, a semiconductor salesman and a journalist. What motivates people — who have never done anything remotely like this — to spend several hundred dollars on lugging heavy stones for a structure that is not their own?
Brian Hennessey of Burlington said he just wants to be knowledgeable about the process when he hires a pro to build a garden wall.
Harvard Business School prof David Scharfstein was an eager and vigorous waller. “I just love the dry stone walls of Vermont,” he explained. He hopes to one day build a retaining wall on his property and, like Hennessey, sought to understand their construction.
Over the seven and a half hours we spent dismantling and rebuilding a 15-foot-long section of stone wall, we learned the jargon of walling. Foundation stones are big flat ones that form the base. Building stones are the guts of a wall, with larger rocks ascending to smaller ones. Throughstones are long, rectangular pieces inserted about halfway up to bind the stones and ensure stability. Copestones are placed vertically at the top of the wall.
Gaps are filled with smaller rocks, a process known as hearting. Think of a jigsaw puzzle composed of 40-pound pieces.
According to Papile, the craft is not di cult to teach. “There’s nothing that you teach that is counterintuitive,” he said. “It may be new to you, but it’s nothing that doesn’t make sense.”
Yet for the students, dry stone walling can be surprising, “like seeing fire for the first time,” Papile suggested.
The fire analogy works for teachers, too. Rand attended high school in nearby Brattleboro and shared an art class with Dan Snow. Years later, she saw Snow’s name attached to a lecture on dry stone walls. When they reconnected, Rand said she was astonished to learn that he had become a master craftsman and was a cofounder of the Stone Trust.
Shortly after, Rand visited Dummerston and realized this was a craft she’d overlooked. “I signed up for a workshop and then took another and another,” she said, “and I never looked back.”
With a few pinched fingers and sore backs, our cohort seemed to agree with Papile: The first walling workshop was both di cult and exciting. We admired our day’s labor — an impressive stone wall — even knowing that another class would soon tumble it to pieces.
What would last was the experience: seven total strangers transformed into comrades in stone. Some perhaps left with the thought, I have to do this ➆
e Stone Trust Center, 707 Kipling Rd., Dummerston, 952-8600, thestonetrust.org
Clockwise from top: Dry stone pathway light spheres in Cornwall, with stonework by Jamie Masefield; a dry stone retaining wall and patio steps in Rockingham, with stonework by Brian Post; Moon Bridge at Green Mountain Orchards in Putney, with stonework by Jared Flynn; a wall at the Stone Trust’s Stone Wall Park
Photo: Marvin Elevate Sliding Door + Marvin Modern Windows| Wadsworth Design Build | Stratton, VT
Finders Keepers
In Hyde Park, the Vintage Den sells quirky antiques with local charm
STORY
&
PHOTOS BY HANNAH FEUER • hfeuer@sevendaysvt.com
Browsing the Vintage Den in Hyde Park, customers might discover a rare copy of John F. Kennedy’s 1961 inaugural address ($800), a “No Parking” sign from Hawaii ($100) or a comic book from the Marvel series Fantastic Four ($2).
Opened in December 2023 by married couple Sasha and Dennis French, the antiques store o ers an eclectic array of secondhand items ideal for home décor. The Vintage Den’s inventory includes collections of film cameras, lamps, vintage toys, road signs, old bottles and music records. The crowded shelves and one-of-a-kind pieces make shopping feel more like treasure hunting.
“There’s all this great old stu that’s out there that you could use or enjoy and not buy new stu o the shelf,” Dennis said. “It’s just way more appealing.”
The Vintage Den’s charm is evident from the parking lot: A “Sorry, we’re open” sign hangs in the window, while quirky items such as a birdhouse, tra c cone, beach umbrella and child-size Mickey Mouse chair are displayed outside.
The Frenches, who live in Waterville, source their wares at estate sales and auctions and through happenstance. For instance, Dennis got the JFK speech for free when he stumbled on it in a stack of books left over after an auction in Montpelier. Other items are the Frenches’ own family heirlooms from Sasha’s grandmother.
The Vintage Den also helps people manage
estate sales, which frequently o er a wealth of antiques.
“All these people get stuck with their parents’ stu , and they don’t want it,” Dennis said. “So there’s tons of inventory that just becomes available all the time, and it’s kind of a service to help people sort through that.”
On occasion, the couple will cater to specific customer requests. Collectors of Star Wars memorabilia and chicken- and rooster-themed art are among the store’s clientele.
“People have certain things where they’re always looking for that stu ,” Dennis said. “So if you know somebody’s into, like, G.I. Joe stu , anytime I see G.I. Joe, that light bulb pops on, and I’m thinking of that person.”
One of those customers was Allen Van
ALLEN VAN ANDA
Finders Keepers
Anda, owner of Lost Nation Brewing in Morrisville, who stopped by to pick up a Miller High Life-branded wall clock he’d bought for $20. Dennis had purchased the clock at an estate sale with Van Anda in mind.
“This place is incredible,” Van Anda said. “I was like, I need something funky, and I knew I could come here and find something.”
The couple’s personalized approach and curation of their store align with their broader mission of combating overconsumption and the waste it creates, Dennis explained. In their personal lives, the couple rarely discard anything and seldom buy new items. Both create art from recycled materials in their free time. Dennis, for instance, crafts miniature gondola sculptures from salvaged wood, for sale at Remarkable Things in Stowe.
Both in their forties, the Frenches met in exactly the manner one might expect antique pickers to find love:
through a Craigslist personals ad. They quickly bonded over their passion for art and secondhand shopping. Early dates involved shopping at thrift stores and getting takeout and enjoying their meal in a parking lot. “That’s still what we like to do,” Sasha said with a laugh.
Small-town retail is a family tradition for Sasha. Her grandfather owned the now-defunct Toy Castle in Claremont, N.H., and her father sold baseball cards at flea markets. Sasha herself studied sculpture art at Johnson State College (now Vermont State University), while Dennis briefly attended the Maine College of Art & Design in the ’90s before dropping out to move to Killington, where he “did the ski bum thing.”
“We’ve both grown up in the thrifty lifestyle,” Sasha said. “We’re always hustling.”
That ethos extends to the store’s pricing practices. Dennis admits that a lot of
the pricing is “guesswork,” and he allows customers to negotiate. Items can also be bundled for discounts.
“We try and keep things reasonable, like what we would want to pay for them,” Dennis said. “You could definitely charge a lot more for some stuff, but then you’re sitting on it forever. I’d
rather just move stuff and have people happy and coming back.”
Van Anda said the personalized customer service and unique finds are what draw him to the store.
“They don’t make stuff like this anymore,” he said. “You’re not going to get this on Amazon.” ➆
