Nest — Winter 2020-21

home design real estate WINTER 2020-21

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Inside a Winooski man cave of wonders

Hi, refi!

Vermonters act on low interest rates

Plant swappers spread joy during the pandemic

Architects design with the climate in mind

A lockdowninspired apartment makeover

Getting fired up about kachelรถfens

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Ah, winter: a time to hunker down, hibernate and contemplate. And we’ve certainly got plenty on our minds as this dreadful year draws to a close. But “going within” also means making your house as cozy and engaging as possible. Toward that end, in this issue we visit a farmhouse with a stunning fireplace, an urban apartment whose dweller has discovered decorating, and a snug man cave with an international flavor. We also get propagation tips from a houseplant enthusiast and — speaking of green — learn about Vermont architects devoted to sustainable building. And if saving green is your thing, read all about home refinancing here.

Stay warm, stay safe.

Man Cave Art ............................ 6

A Chilean-born interior designer turns a shed into a museum of his travels

L SKETC H

BEFORE AFTER

BY K E N P IC AR D

Borrowing Time .......................10 With interest rates historically low, “refis” are on the rise

10

BY S T E V E G O L D S TE IN

Cutting Edge ............................13

On the joy of propagating plants during a pandemic

BY M A R G AR E T G R AY S O N

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Vermont architects address the climate crisis through the built environment

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Hi, refi!

Vermonters act on low interest rates

Plant swappers spread joy during the pandemic

Architects design with the climate in mind

A lockdowninspired apartment makeover

Getting fired up about kachelöfens

Winooski man cave of wonders

A home in Middlebury, designed by architect Adam Ginsburg and built by Salamander Construction

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Macao Bravo and his dog in his Winooski man cave

Man Cave Art A Chilean-born interior designer turns a shed into a museum of his travels B Y K EN P I C A R D • ken@sevendaysvt.com

Upon first glance, Macao Bravo’s backyard man cave isn’t a structure that immediately beckons for further investigation. From the street outside his Winooski home, the decades-old outbuilding, which once served as a garage and toolshed, looks like nothing more than a dry place for stacking firewood — that is, until one notices that its creatively arranged grid pattern of “firewood” in front is actually an ingenious privacy screen.

Tools on a wall of the man cave MAN CAVE ART

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A bicycle wheel mounted on the ceiling near the entrace

A guitar on the workbench

Horseshoe crab shells

Macao Bravo’s backyard man cave in Winooski

A bookshelf

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A tree-root chandelier

Macao Bravo in his man cave

Man Cave Art « P.6 “Outside, you look at this place, it’s ugly,” said the Chilean-born Bravo in a thick Spanish accent. “But inside, people are surprised by what it can be.”

Indeed, entering the 52-year-old’s man cave is like taking a tour of Bravo’s life: the places he’s lived, the things he’s done, and the rare and unusual artifacts he’s gathered along the way. Its many small and eclectic touches MACAO reveal the personality of an interior designer, formally trained in Spain, who is always seeing new potential in old and discarded objects.

Inside, visitors pass through a narrow passageway where Bravo stores his tools and woodworking supplies. Along one wall, an electric guitar body in midrepair sits in a vice. Does Bravo play? “I try,” he said with a chuckle.

From there, we passed under a bicycle wheel mounted decoratively on the ceiling and entered the man cave’s main

chamber, where an old woodstove abuts one wall. Three refurbished chairs, all covered in furry white mountain-goat skins from Chile’s Patagonia region, face a flat-screen television mounted on the opposite wall. On the day of my visit, the TV displayed BBC video footage shot high in the Andes Mountains.

The ceiling is lined with the flags of the various countries and regions B R AV O where Bravo has lived or traveled: Chile, where he was born; Spain, where he spent most of his childhood, and where Bravo’s 15-yearold son still lives; the European Union; Spain’s autonomous Galicia community; and Vermont, the last of which Bravo has called home for eight years.

Hanging above the back wall is a curtain-covered loft spacious enough to sleep in, though it’s currently used for storage space.

“I love it in here. It’s so comfy!” Bravo said with obvious glee. “When it’s cold

I LOVE IT IN HERE.

IT’S SO COMFY!

A collection of figurines and helmets

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out, I start a fire inside, watch TV, read books. It’s good!”

Still, it’s hard to envision Bravo sitting still for very long. The walls and ceiling of his man cave are decorated with objects that pay tribute to his active outdoor lifestyle and connection to nature: deer antlers, horseshoe crab shells, skis, mountaineering gear — snowshoes, climbing ropes, crampons, an ice ax — as well as a fishing pole that Bravo’s father-in-law gave him for sea casting. There are even flashing colored disco lights, presumably for use in more gregarious times.

There are some signs of more placid indoor pursuits, including a card table and bookshelves for rainy days. On one shelf sits a row of Chilean pisco liquor bottles, whose black clay shapes resemble the massive stone carvings on Rapa Nui, aka Easter Island, off Chile’s Pacific coast. Elsewhere in the room, Bravo displays hats once worn by his various family members.

“It’s really Macao and who he is,” said Bravo’s wife, Amy Houghton, a landscape architect with Wagner

Hodgson Landscape Architecture in Burlington. “I come in here and find new things all the time.”

“This part here is my small museum,” Bravo said, leading me to a wall of cubbies full of artifacts he’s accumulated in his global treks. Though most are easily recognizable — fossils, skulls, a large condor feather — there was one unusually shaped object I couldn’t pinpoint.

It’s about the size of an adult’s fist and resembles a conch shell. Bravo explained that it’s the inner ear bone of a whale.

But not all the décor in his man cave has such exotic origins, such as an irregularly shaped, polished wooden shelf with intricate grain patterns. Though it looks like a slab of hardwood harvested from a South American rain forest, Bravo explained that he took it from a white maple tree cut in his backyard.

Bravo’s heavy use of wood, Houghton noted, reflects the cultural influences of his Spanish and Chilean heritage.

“For me, it’s really interesting to see how he uses wood,” she said. “I feel like anything he does, even if it has a functional use, it still has to be aesthetically pleasing, as well.”

Bravo’s passion for repurposing the space began about six years ago, when he recognized that the old bones of this shed were more substantial than he had initially assumed. After Houghton bought their Winooski home in 2012 — the couple married the following year — Bravo was cleaning out the old shed, thinking of tearing it down, when he realized its potential. Apart from some oil stains on the concrete floor, he recalled, it had sturdy maple construction and a lot of life left in it.

Soon, Bravo was bringing home old and broken lamps, tables and chairs, repairing them and finding them spots in his man cave. Once, while the interior of the historic Champlain Mill in Winooski was being renovated to create the Waterworks Food + Drink restaurant and bar, Bravo salvaged a pile of discarded wood chunks that had been cut from the mill’s old beams. He then repurposed them to create a support post for a new interior wall in the man cave.

“Hopefully, no one thinks I’m crazy, having a lot of garbage inside!” Bravo said.

That seems highly unlikely. Despite its abundance of once-discarded objects, there’s nothing junky about the interior design of this space. In fact, Bravo said he’d enjoy designing man caves for other people, too, if and when he finishes this one. His wife agreed.

“I think he needs to do other people’s places,” she said half-jokingly, “because he can’t stop working on this one.” m

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Borrowing Time With interest rates historically low, “refis” are on the rise

BY ST EV E GOLDSTEIN

“Hey, Erin. I think I can save you about $250 a month if you refinance now,” Negron said. Torres was surprised. “I’m a Realtor, so I live and breathe this stuff every day,” she told Nest. “But I honestly hadn’t thought about it for myself.”

Negron said she could get an interest rate of 3.25 percent, significantly lower than what Torres was paying on her current loan.

In the end, Torres cut her monthly mortgage payment by $410 a month. After she posted news of her windfall on social media, she got a dozen requests from Vermonters wanting to connect with a lender.

“Mortgage refinancing” is a phrase destined to bounce off the ears, but “free money” gets through the thickest of skulls. And that is how Negron, a senior executive with Homebridge Financial Services, described the historically minuscule cost of borrowing money right now. An economy weakened by COVID-19 has triggered a free fall in interest rates and a strong demand to refinance — that is, restructure — the deal you made when you bought your home.

“Basically, you take the current loan you have from when you bought your home,” Negron explained, “and we replace it with a new loan that has a lower interest rate and saves you money on a monthly basis.”

Refis, as they are known in the trade, are the wild cards of the mortgage deck.

To be effective, you have to play them at the right time. If you’re planning to stay in your house for a while, play the card.

If you’re thinking of selling, then a refi is a poor choice. Why? Because, just as when you bought your home, there are closing costs associated with refinancing. To make financial sense, your savings should exceed your closing costs.

In Torres’ case, she needed to remain in the house with the newly reworked mortgage for 11 months. That would cover her closing costs of $7,600; from then on, it’s all savings.

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“Another question to ask yourself is, what is your goal?” said mortgage lender David Hogan, also with Homebridge.

Some homeowners want to refinance to bring down their monthly cost, he explained, while others would prefer to pay more each month and finish paying off their home sooner.

Hogan offered this hypothetical example: Five years ago, Betty Boop took a 30-year, $325,000 mortgage; her monthly payment was $1,600.

Refinancing now, with 25 years remaining, the low rates would save her $356 a month, or more than $4,200 annually.

“FREE MONEY” GETS THROUGH THE THICKEST OF SKULLS. Wowee, right? But let’s say Ms. Boop took the long view. “If she refinanced with the lower rate and shortened the term to a 15-year loan, her monthly payment would increase to $2,000,” Hogan said. “But by cutting 10 years off, her total interest over the course of the loan would be $85,000 less.”

Still, as Hogan noted, most homeowners take the bird in hand — the lower monthly payments — instead of the golden goose in the future.

Vermont is experiencing an unprecedented flare-up of refinancing and home buying. Call it “freak-out economics.” As Negron explained: “When bad things happen, nervous investors take money out of the stock market and put it in bonds, which are safer. That causes interest rates for mortgages to drop, because their rates are based on bonds. When COVID hit, the market got a shock, and interest rates plummeted to numbers we never thought we’d see — they were in the twos.

“It feels like free money,” she continued, “because essentially it is!”

Her numbers tell the tale. In 2019, Negron handled 53 refis. “Through mid-November this year I have 93,” she marveled, “with probably six more to close by the end of December. So, double last year. Crazy!”

The other side of crazy is how the refi binge is affecting the housing market. It’s gone bonkers since March, with bidding wars for homes and out-of-staters buying Vermont properties, in some cases, sight unseen.

“The boom in refinance hasn’t really been seen before like this, so there is a lot to play out,” said Claire Kavanagh of the Malley Group at KW Vermont. During her scant downtime between showing houses to eager buyers, she’s analyzed the trends.

The boom in refis, Kavanagh explained, means that homeowners are staying put instead of selling.

This reduces what Realtors call “inventory” — the number of houses available for sale. With the current buying frenzy, demand for the reduced supply of homes ratchets up, which explains why houses for sale are drawing as many as a dozen offers.

Moreover, the reduced supply of homes, said Kavanagh, “very likely at least delays the market from swinging to a market favorable to buyers,” which typically happens in slow winter months when demand decreases.

Kavanagh’s colleague Andrew Mannix added: “From a purchaser’s perspective, though, and for that matter sellers’, low rates are very beneficial to the market.” The downside is that when interest rates rise significantly in, say, five to 10 years, anyone buying a home now at these historically low interest rates would feel they can’t afford to move because the mortgage cost would be much greater.

So, to refi or not to refi? That is the question. As long as we’re all wearing masks and giving others a wide berth, COVID-19 will keep interest rates low and the advantages of refinancing high. That sort of fever will break only when a vaccine is generally available. m

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Cutting Edge On the joy of propagating plants during a pandemic

BY MAR GAR ET GRAYSON • margaret@sevendaysvt.com

In the spring, my spider plant had a baby. I can take no credit for this development. I missed labor and delivery completely and only realized that new life had emerged when it was already established, a tiny baby spider plant dangling from a long stem.

I clipped the baby and dunked it in a glass of water. Within a couple of weeks, it had sprouted a tangle of roots. I planted it in a tiny pot with fresh soil, waited until I was reasonably sure it wouldn’t die, and then passed it off to a friend who’d just moved into a new apartment.

This success made me curious about ways to multiply my other plants. Half of mine seemed constantly on the verge of failing, but I picked out the healthiest, a Thanksgiving cactus, and did some research. This one turned out to be even easier to propagate. All I had to do was sever a few connected segments of stem, leave it out for a few days to harden off, and then stick it in a pot. That plant’s offspring is now thriving on another friend’s windowsill.

I called my dad, who sells trees for a living, to brag about my newfound propagating prowess. “Once, I was in the grocery store and on the floor I saw a leaf and flower that had fallen off a Christmas cactus they had for sale,” he told me. “I didn’t have that color of bloom yet, so I took the leaf home and grew it.”

All right, Dad, I get it. I am but a grasshopper.

Learning to propagate my houseplants felt like being let in on a secret.

All this time, I’d been buying (and sometimes killing) plants without ever

stopping to think about where they came from — that is, other plants.

Plants make more plants. This might not sound like a revelation, but it felt like one to me. I really started propagating plants after the pandemic hit the U.S., my work office closed, and I started spending the majority of my day inside the one-bedroom Burlington apartment I share with my partner.

Several plants were already crowding our windowsills, but I went a little bonkers for greenery during lockdown and its aftermath.

I wasn’t the only one. Across the country, people were regrowing scallions, sprouting avocado pits into tiny

I WENT A LITTLE BONKERS FOR GREENERY DURING LOCKDOWN AND ITS AFTERMATH. JULIANNA BRAZILL

trees and, when the ground thawed, planting gardens.

They were also engaging in mutual aid. In the early days of the pandemic, people began making voluntary grocery runs, sewing free face masks, and offering emotional and mental support. The combination of those impulses — to grow something and to share something — led me and many others to BTV Plant Share and Swap, a Facebook group created in 2018 by Old North End resident and organizer Laura Hale.

The group, which started when Hale sprouted a few dozen citrus seeds as an experiment and needed to give

them away, ballooned to about 2,900 members this year, up from fewer than 900 at the end of February. The rules are simple: no plant sales, only trades or gifts; feel free to ask for plant-related advice or resources; and don’t be a jerk.

“My entire purpose behind this was to make this as low-barrier as possible,” said Hale, a grant writer who founded the ONE Good Deed Fund. “I know how expensive it is trying to buy plants and start up. And it just seems so silly, because if you knew people who already had plants, they would just dig up part of their perennials and CUTTING EDGE NEST WINTER 2020-21

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give them to you. I kept thinking how inequitable that was, because what if you don’t know anyone?”

Help is free in the group, too, and members post frequently about their struggles with fungus gnats or finicky varieties. Failure and accidental plant slaughter are accepted, never shamed. Sometimes people offer up established plants that aren’t thriving or simply don’t spark joy.

“I really hadn’t anticipated people just giving away plants that they didn’t want anymore,” Hale said. “But I think it takes a load off your shoulders to be like, ‘I can specifically not like this plant, and it’s not a failure.

Someone else is going to love this.’”

Susan Eisenstadt joined the group after attending an in-person plant swap that Hale organized. While she’d always been an outdoor gardener, Eisenstadt didn’t really invest in houseplants until the pandemic cut her off from some of her social communities. She started picking up plants that group members offered.

“You get these little gamey plants and then, all of a sudden, you have to transplant them because they’re growing so fast, and they look so beautiful,” Eisenstadt said. “And there’s an incredible amount of knowledge in that group ... People are very willing to share the plants, their knowledge, different tips. It’s a community.”

Hale does her best to maintain that community through group moderation, which she describes as a skill. She said she wants to make sure people of color feel welcome in the group, and her efforts have generated a few accusations of “reverse racism” from white members who think that race issues shouldn’t come up in plant sharing.

“You can’t disassociate what you’re talking about from marginalization just because you don’t think that they go together,” Hale said. “I don’t think you can talk about gardening, which is cultivating land, without acknowledging that many white folks have generational wealth because of land … Do I want to bring it up every day? No. But if someone brings it up, I’m not going to shy away.”

In the group, I orchestrated a contact-free swap to trade a cutting from my pink aglaonema for a bit of wandering dude (a nickname for a plant whose most commonly used name is considered anti-Semitic and is prohibited in Hale’s group). I picked up a haworthia pup — a pup is an offshoot from the plant’s roots — that another person was giving away. I asked about a succulent that wouldn’t stop drooping.

The advice: Behead it and plant the top part in its own pot. Once that’s established, I’ll probably give it away, too.

All this giving and receiving has been fun, and it even feels a little subversive.

I still love nurseries, but removing the financial investment of growing things made me wonder how plants — which populate the planet with enthusiasm and give so much without asking in return — became so deeply commoditized in the first place. I floated this idea by Hale.

“Everything I do is anti-capitalist,” she said. “Not because I’m rabid about it, but because it seems so unfair to have money as a reason why you can’t share something.”

Recently I noticed that my wandering dude, which is thriving, needed a haircut, so I propagated two of the stems and gave them away. The cycle continues; the joy spreads. And the plants? Well, they’re just doing their thing. m

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AR CHI T ECT UR E

Last month, I had a heat pump installed in our Burlington home. The centrally ducted system helps address the climate crisis by replacing some natural-gas-fueled heat during the shoulder seasons with heat generated by electricity. Burlington’s electricity comes from allrenewable sources — the wood-chip-fired McNeil Generating Station, hydro and wind — rather than fossil fuels.

So the Burlington Electric Department, which also serves as the city’s energy-efficiency utility, is incentivizing such carbon-reducing measures with rebates. Of our total bill, $6,900, BED rebated $4,500.

That made me feel good, of course.

But, considering that the built environment accounts for 39 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations Environment Programme, it’s a drop in the bucket. A more comprehensive approach to reducing buildings’ fossil fuel use and carbon emissions is urgently needed. And that’s increasingly the focus of Vermont’s architects.

The state chapter of the American Institute of Architects, AIA Vermont, has committed to reducing climate change through two initiatives that mirror the national organization’s efforts: the Committee on the Environment, or COTE, a group that researches and advocates for green building techniques; and the AIA 2030 Commitment, a pledge that all new buildings will be net-zero by 2030. (Nine Vermont firms have signed on to the latter.)

Nest talked to leaders of these efforts about the latest climate-change-reduction measures, including the biggest one possible: no new buildings at all.

By far, the most effective ways to reduce a building’s energy use are by increasing its envelope insulation and making it tighter through sealing air leaks, according to Megan Nedzinski, who cochairs COTE-VT.

Vermont’s energy building codes, both residential and commercial, are “actually pretty good,” she says, but COTE’s advocacy at the Statehouse led to 2020 versions requiring increased levels of insulation and tightness, and the latter now must be tested in commercial buildings.

Architects are also beginning to take into account carbon-dioxide emissions caused by the manufacture of materials — known as embodied carbon. Nedzinski practices with Vermont Integrated Architecture in Middlebury, which she

which consists of glued or nailed layers of wood. Mass timber products have less embodied carbon than steel but are just as strong.

Morrow is an expert in passive-house design — the super-insulated buildings that use energy even more efficiently than net-zero houses, which merely produce as much energy as they use. For a passive-house design in Charlotte that will be built in the spring, he designated using mass timber and prioritized placing windows where they can capture heat from sunlight.

Vermont, are sometimes unaware of or unable to execute efficient designs.

For those reasons, Morrow has pursued public advocacy. Calling himself a “local citizen-architect,” he cofounded and serves as steering committee chair for the Burlington 2030 District — an agreement among 22 cities nationwide to ensure that all new buildings are net-zero and all existing buildings are at 50 percent energy use by that year.

In part because of Morrow’s efforts, Burlington code now requires that all large-scale projects

Passive house design and drawing by Eric Morrow

THE BENEFITS ARE REALLY BIG, AND IT DOESN’T HAVE TO COST A LOT.

describes as “a missiondriven firm on highperformance buildings and low-embodied carbon.”

For instance, not all insulation is created equal. Nedzinski advises against high-embodied-carbon foam board (aka blue board or XPS for extruded polystyrene) and spray foams, which can use blowing agents with a high potential to increase global warming. Instead, she recommends blown-in and dense-pack cellulose, made from recycled newspaper and reconstituted wood pulp. “It’s not fancy or expensive, it outperforms fiberglass, and it’s readily available,” she says.

Eric Morrow, who has a solo practice in Burlington, notes that architects are shifting from using steel framing — an energy-intensive product, from mining the ore to manufacturing the beams — to mass timber. One emerging type of mass timber is cross-laminated timber, or CLT,

E R IC MO R R O W

Nedzinski generally advocates for using local materials — “things that grow and things that are close to home. I think a very, very cool thing about practicing in Vermont is that we have local mills, stone yards, [and] this stock of craftspeople who work with their hands and are very good at it.”

Morrow adds, “We should be making CLT right here in Vermont.”

Climate-aware design in Vermont is limited because it’s largely the choice of building owners. The energy building codes are mandated by state statute, but few towns have the resources to enforce them. The state requires that multifamily and commercial buildings be architectdesigned but does not require the same of single-family homes. And contractors, who don’t have to be licensed in

in the downtown core be certified LEED Gold, net-zero or passive house. And, as a Burlington Design Advisory Board member, he often suggests that building designs incorporate the possibility of solar to “give the owner a chance to consider it.”

“I think the unsung story is about policy advocacy,” Morrow declares.

Matt Bushey, an associate principal at TruexCullins in Burlington, points out that the costs of energy efficiency have decreased significantly in the last 10 to 15 years. After signing on to the AIA 2030 Commitment last year, his firm began to use 3D modeling software that predicts energy use and facilitates redesigns to reduce that usage.

His most recent project, a Community Bank branch in Williston, is an allelectric building that will have almost SUSTAINABLE BY DESIGN NEST WINTER 2020-21

» P.18 17

AR CHI T ECT UR E COURTESY OF VERMONT INTEGRATED ARCHITECTURE

A home ready to be insulated

BURLINGTON CODE NOW REQUIRES THAT ALL LARGE-SCALE PROJECTS IN THE DOWNTOWN CORE BE CERTIFIED LEED GOLD, NET-ZERO OR PASSIVE HOUSE.

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Sustainable by Design « P.17 no energy costs yet doesn’t have solar panels. “We exceeded the energy code just through careful attention to craftsmanship,” Bushey explains. “It’s just about quality construction and a better understanding of the building envelope. It’s nice to know that practices are coming along such that we can achieve this without spending a lot.”

Bushey’s colleague, principal Rolf Kielman, designed a moderately priced house for his daughter’s family that is equally attentive to climate change.

Built in 2018, Lewis Creek Cottage in Hinesburg is a 2,200-square-foot net-zero house that cost $440,000.

Outfitted with heat pumps and a solar array with battery storage, the house uses no fossil fuels and has so far generated no energy bills, Kielman reports in an email.

Vermont architects are thinking more about location and land use, too. Building on forested land results in shrinking the planet’s largest carbonsequestering system: trees. Vermont’s seminal land-use legislation, Act 250, prioritizes clustered development and discourages sprawl, but Gov. Phil Scott recently vetoed an update that would have required developers to “avoid, minimize or mitigate” fragmenting forests.

Rep. Amy Sheldon (D-Middlebury), who spearheaded the Act 250 update and will continue efforts

this legislative season, notes that Vermont is “losing forest land for the first time in 100 years.

“Although we are a state that is not growing, we are being parcelized and second homes are being built … at a time when climate change is making the need for intact forests more urgent than ever,” she says.

That’s what architects need to remind clients who want their 10 acres and three-mile driveway.

“It’s a difficult conversation, but we prioritize conversations about virgin land,” says Nedzinski.

“Can we infill somewhere else? Can we reuse [a building] somewhere else? Reusing all that carbon that’s already been expended is so, so good.”

Morrow says he recently turned down a job designing a four-unit apartment building in Winooski because the owner was not interested in investing in energy-efficiency measures. “It’s tough. I don’t think it’s a big ask,” he says. “The benefits are really big, and it doesn’t have to cost a lot.”

Architects can always educate, Nedzinski says.

At her own Starksboro home, the builders handling a renovation recommended she “just pick up some blue board” for insulation. “It sparked this whole conversation,” says the architect. “I think people in Vermont care, but if they don’t know, they just don’t know.” m

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Antique steamer trunk and Lego cassette tower

PHOTOS : JORDAN ADAMS

Finding Space The pandemic is a perfect time to make your good apartment great

BY J ORDAN AD AMS • jordan@sevendaysvt.com

Music nook

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Until about three years ago, I had never lived alone. Throughout my twenties, and a little bit of my thirties, I bounced around from apartment share to apartment share, racking up more than 30 roommates in the process.

Almost every new abode was fully furnished by the people with whom I’d moved in. This kept me from accumulating basic things, such as furniture and décor. And with every move, including two cross-country relocations, I purged much of what I did have.

I finally moved into my first solo apartment in 2018. The first few days there were hilarious, because I had nothing but a mattress on the floor and my stereo.

During year one, I spent a lot of time and money filling out the space. I ordered a bed frame. I snagged some stuff from my parents’ house. I found an excellent secondhand sectional couch. I happened upon an exquisite orange velvet wingback armchair at a local thrift store.

DÉCO R

Foreclosure: 5BR/4.5BA 2019 Custom Built Home on 5± Acres in Robinson Springs Location

tables. When I decided to move a bookshelf and a stationary But then I just kind of stopped. After taking my apartment bike into the space, I realized I’d created a quasi health spa to perhaps 65 percent of its potential, I lost my drive. I’ll get to and reading room. it someday, I thought.

I didn’t change much in my living room, other than moving “Someday” came around the end of March this year when, you guessed it, the pandemic ensured I wouldn’t be leaving my my record shelves and turntable from in front of a window Tues., January 19 @ 11AM to an adjacent wall. After fussing with a few different chairs house much for who knew how long.

Open House: in the newly opened space (including the orange wingback), Since then, I’ve brought my place up to about 95 percent.

I decided to pull out one piece of my sectional to create a But I didn’t do so just by throwing money at it. Yeah, I did Tue., January 5 from 3-5PM music-listening nook. some of that, strategically spreading out my purchases over 1325 Wade Pasture Rd., Making small changes like this can be a bit like disrupting a months. But I got the most satisfaction from figuring out how to organize and enhance the space with items I already owned. house of cards. Relocating the sectional piece created a small Stowe, VT vacuum that needed to be filled. I’d been trying to stay out of My apartment is one of seven in a three-story 19th-century enclosed spaces, including retail stores, as much as possible, so Victorian. The floor sags, making right angles scarce. The I scoured online marketplaces almost hourly. paint is so thick that some of my doors don’t properly close.

I finally found the perfect end table And the house has been chopped to fill that void, but it was a 90-minute up, added onto and Frankensteined drive from Burlington. Normally I into the crisscrossing mess of units wouldn’t go that far for something I it now holds. I often joke that it’s could eventually find closer to home.

Burlington’s Winchester Mystery But the table was perfect, and what House, minus the ghosts. else was I doing that weekend?

Technically, my apartment is clasBesides, to make the trip more sified as a “one bedroom-plus.” I have worthwhile, I made a 45-minute two legitimate bedrooms, each with a detour to pick up an adorable ceramic window and a closet — but you have to purple lamp I found on Craigslist. walk through one to get to the other.

Later, while spinning some vinyl Again, the layout makes no sense. from my now-cozy listening area, I The back bedroom doesn’t get as realized I needed to reorganize my much light, so I initially chose the records. I have a bunch of different brighter room for my bedroom. The 802-888-4662 shelves of various sizes, all with other one became a dumping ground THCAuction.com different capacities. My organizational for excess stuff — including even system is a hybrid of genres and eras, more items I took from my parents’ and each section was packed to the house when they sold it in the spring gills. of 2019.

N8v-hirchakbrothers121620 1 12/10/20 This is a problem for a music nut.

I managed to sell a bunch of Was I just supposed to stop buying that stock at a summer yard sale. records because I didn’t have space for Whatever didn’t move I returned to them? Hell no. After shuffling things my spare room, thinking I’d sell it around, I managed to rehouse my online or something … someday. wax so that each section had plenty of Eight months had passed when Pre-approval is the first step. room to grow. The space was there; I we entered the pandemic shutdown. just had to find it.

Call me!

After the culture shock of the new Newly acquired spindle-leg table, purple ceramic lamp and art wall This vinyl victory made me think reality wore off a month or so later, I about my collection of cassette tapes. became incredibly motivated to make Check me out on Macebook@ I browsed some display cases online my home as cozy and wonderful as Kelly Deforge, Mortgage Guide but didn’t like anything. Then I had possible. After all, I wasn’t spending a brainstorm: Could I make a castime anywhere else.

Top VHFA sette tower out of my massive Lego First, I took all of the junk out of Lender! collection, one of the only childhood the back room and photographed treasures I hadn’t sold off? everything I wanted to sell. Retail I quickly discovered that buildhadn’t fully reopened yet, so the secing Legos sans blueprint is a brutal ondary market was booming. I listed exercise in trial and error. After about a solid wood folding game table with Senior Mortgage eight hours of tinkering, spread over four matching chairs on Facebook Loan Originator two days, I successfully constructed a Marketplace. Within seconds of finalNMLS: double-sided, 48-cassette tower that rotates on a special lazy izing the post, a buyer contacted me. Forty-five minutes later, 103643 Susan Lego piece. I put it in my reading room, along with a the table was gone and I had an extra $150. cheap portable cassette player and powered speakers.

My selling hot streak continued. I sold an enormous I’ve made countless other little organizational improvetelescope, five boxes of vintage hardbound books, and all of my ments, too: I put up shelves I’d ordered ages earlier but never childhood toys that I didn’t want to keep. opened. I shifted the contents of my closets so everything fits After clearing out the back room, I decided to make it better. I finally framed and hung a bunch of art, including an my bedroom and do something else with the front room. amazing abstract painting I made in the first grade — it had Endowed with a little extra pocket money, I ordered a few been sitting in a box of memorabilia my mom had saved. plush green rugs, a floor lamp with a cork shade, and a faux 30 Kimball Avenue, Suite 200, All of this reminded me of something a friend’s mom midcentury-modern armchair.

South Burlington, VT said shortly after I moved in to this place. She asked how I accented the room with a 100-year-old steamer trunk that my mom’s paternal grandfather brought to America when everything was going. I told her it was a work in progress. She ublocal.com • 802-318-7395 laughed and said, “Jordan, that’s what having a home is.” he and his family emigrated from Italy. And a colleague who kdeforge@unionbankvt.com I really get that now. m sells antiques gave me a great deal on a couple of smaller side

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NEST WINTER 2020-21 N8v-unionbankkellyd121620.indd 1

21 12/3/20 2:13 PM

Feeling the

Heat

How I learned to let go and love my kachelöfen

B Y D A N B O L L ES • dan@sevendaysvt.com

When my girlfriend and I set out to buy our first home over the summer, our list of musthaves was pretty minimal.

You can keep your white kitchens and man caves. For us, the ideal home basically needed three things: yard space, a soaking tub, and a wood-burning fireplace or woodstove. As a native New Englander who’s never lived in a home with a real fireplace or woodstove, that last one was especially important to me.

My whole life, I’ve dreamed of having a crackling hearth in the winter.

A Biofire masonry heater

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF KEILANI LIME

After several months of searching and visiting just about every relevant listing within an hour of Burlington — and within our modest budget — we finally settled on a house with a big yard and a nice tub. And, yes, I got finally my woodburning stove, though it’s a bit different from what I’d imagined.

In October, we became the proud owners of an 1870s farmhouse in Vergennes and, with it, the rather mystified owners of a kachelöfen. What’s a

H EAT I NG

COLOR SCHEME

kachelöfen, you ask? That was precisely our question.

In the United States, kachelöfens are better known as masonry heaters — that is, if they’re known at all. While they’ve been popular in Europe for centuries, these large, often ornate wood-burning ovens are nowhere near as common here as their cast-iron cousin, the woodstove.

But masonry heaters, I soon learned, claim several advantages over conventional woodstoves. For one, “kachelöfen” is fun to say in a bad German accent.

More importantly, they’re more efficient and require less fuel to operate, despite providing continuous, even heat for up to 12 hours per firing. Not only that, they burn cleaner. And finally, they look really cool.

Do a Google image search for “masonry heater,” and you’ll discover a wide variety of styles and configurations. Some are freestanding and rustic, made of tile or brick. Others are sleek and modern, built into stucco walls and lined with benches. Regardless of the design, masonry heaters tend to be large with comparatively small fireboxes and lots of surface area. In other words, they make an impression.

Ours, in particular, is hard to miss.

Covered in off-white ceramic tile, it stands about six feet tall, not including its large stovepipe, and is pretty much the first thing you see when you walk through our front door. It’s a monolith in the middle of the living room.

Admittedly, the size and placement of our masonry heater presents certain interior design challenges, especially in an old farmhouse with an already funky layout. But this is more than overcome by the literal radiance of the kachelöfen.

Conventional woodstoves heat mostly through convection — in other words, they heat the air in a given space.

While masonry heaters also provide some convection heat, they primarily emit radiant heat. What’s the difference?

For one thing, radiant heat is gentler and cleaner than convection, because science.

“What radiant heat does is, it heats objects — people, furniture, floors, walls, ceilings,” Heinz Flurer told me. He likened the effect to sitting in a car on a sunny winter day. “The sun is shining through your window, and it doesn’t take long for you to become warm,” he explained. “That’s because the sun is warming you directly through radiant heat.”

So, basically, I have a miniature sun in my living room. (I’m only half joking. Witness the subhead of Ken

Matesz’s kachelöfen bible Masonry Heaters, released in 2010 by Vermont’s Chelsea Green Publishing: Designing, Building, and Living With a Piece of the Sun.) Back to Flurer: He’s the Salt Lake City-based distributor of Austriandesigned Biofire masonry heaters in the United States. Flurer has been selling Biofire kachelöfens in the U.S. — including the one in my living room — since the early 1980s. But he noted that the company, which is based in Salzburg, Austria, has been around for 300 years.

(By the way, Flurer pronounces the brand BEE-oh-fire.)

THE IDEA IS TO START A FIRE AND

BURN IT HOT, FAST AND CLEAN. H E INZ F L UR E R

In my quest to learn more about our masonry heater and also avoid blowing up the house, I’ve been sporadically bugging Flurer with dumb questions via email and the occasional phone call for about two months. Even though I’m not technically a customer — my kachelöfen was built and installed more than a decade ago — he typically responds within an hour or two with helpful insight or advice.

So, how does it all work?

“In a masonry heater, you put your wood and your kindling in, and you light that sucker up,” Flurer explained. “And

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MADE IN VERMONT, USA Indeed it does. The firebox of our masonry heater can reach more than 1,500 degrees on a load of 30 to 40 pounds of seasoned wood — small pieces, about enough to fit in a fivegallon bucket. That fire, which burns for about an hour, sends searing gases through a “labyrinth of channels” made of firebricks, which absorb the heat.

“The idea is to start a fire and burn it hot, fast and clean,” Flurer continued.

“The design is such that it gives that heat back out slowly and evenly over approximately a 12-hour period of time.”

And that’s precisely what happens. Despite the inferno inside, our masonry heater is never hot to the touch; it simply radiates coziness all NOW AVAILABLE AT day long. The exterior generally stays at a huggable 150 to 170 degrees — yep, sometimes we hug it — which I know from the thermometer in the warming oven atop the heater. That feature came in handy at Thanksgiving. (The warmOR VISIT ing oven can also be used to slow-bake PLEASANTRANCH.COM apples, I recently discovered.)

So far, I’ve encountered only two downsides to kachelöfens. One, which didn’t affect me directly, is the initial N8h-pleasantranch121620.indd 1 12/3/20 10:05 AM cost. On average, a Biofire will run about $30,000 to design and install — the cost of a nice new car, Flurer noted, or more than three times the cost of a typical high-efficiency woodstove.

The second is that our masonry heater doesn’t have a hearth, per se — a fact that initially bummed me out. The firebox has a small opening with a solid, cast-iron door that needs to be closed once the fire burns to coals in order to seal in the heat. (It needs to stay closed for at least six hours to allow the hot gases inside to dissipate, otherwise you could damage the oven.) Some masonry WISHING EVERYONE heaters do have windowed fireboxes.

A HAPPY HOLIDAY But since the idea is to burn hot and SEASON! fast, even those don’t quite provide the lingering ambience of a fireplace or Work with an agent woodstove. who knows your market.

“You don’t put another log in the fire Cady is a native Vermonter with a masonry heater,” Flurer said.

Still, you’d be hard-pressed to find a who understands the value more efficient or elegant wood-burning Vermont offers as heating system than the kachelöfen. a place to call home.

Even Mark Twain said so.

As he wrote of German masonry Reach out today! heaters in 1891 for his book Europe and 802.238.5879 Elsewhere, published posthumously in cady@rrvermont.com 1923, they are “by long odds the best stove and the most convenient and economical that has yet been invented.” m FONT: FUTURA MEDIUM

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