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Reviving a Victorian beauty in Barre
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Summer’s end may be bittersweet, but who doesn’t like a crisp apple and good sleeping weather? And we have to humble-brag on Vermont foliage — even if we had nothing to do with it. Some leaf peepers will surely choose to stay at Barre’s Reynolds House Inn, a gloriously restored Victorian bed-and-breakfast. The rest of us can simply ogle it. Small is beautiful, too — find proof at next month’s Tiny House Fest Vermont. Nancy Stearns Bercaw is always in the market; she’s changed addresses 22 times in as many years; read on for that love-’em-and-leave-’em story. For those of you who prefer to stay in one place: Plant some trees, why don’t you? Fall’s the time.
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FALL 2019
ON THE COVER The Reynolds House Inn in Barre PHOTO BY JEB WALLACE-BRODEUR 6 Reviving a Victorian beauty in Barre
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Back in Time PHOTOS: JEB WALLACE-BRODEUR
A Victorian-age beauty nurtures comfort and connections at Barre’s Reynolds House Inn B Y M EG A N F U LWI L ER
Barre may be known for its granite museum, opera house and sculpture-filled cemetery, but there’s a new reason to visit: the Reynolds House Inn. On Main Street, just south of Dollar General and Aubuchon Hardware, sits the elegant, fully renovated mansion, surrounded by large trees.
The Reynolds House Inn in Barre
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REN OVAT ION The house was built as a single-family home in 1892 by George J. Reynolds, a leader in the Barre business community and founder of G.J. Reynolds & Son hardware supply store (now Reynolds & Son, an industrial solutions company). At the time, the 6,500-square-foot house was a showcase of modernity with electricity, hot and cold running water, two bathrooms, and a motorized dumbwaiter to hoist wet laundry up to the second-floor drying porch. Members of the Reynolds family lived in the house until Reynolds’ granddaughter, Cleora, passed away in 1995. Then the house was a bedand-breakfast until 2014, when a fire gutted half of it. The house sat vacant
home here, we can’t make other people feel at home here,” explained Jeffrey. Many Victorian homes were painted bright colors (called “painted ladies”), but the Reynolds House is a stately mustard. It has a curved front porch, a turret and intricate acorn-shaped shingles. Inside the dark front hall, with its burnished wooden floors and lush green walls, visitors can find a welcome respite from the heat of the day and the bustle of downtown Barre. Artfully placed details, including crocheted lace and peacock feathers, abound. The mauve parlor offers comfortable seating, a fireplace and birdseye-maple trim. Complete with a library, music room and lounge, the house has the feeling
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Jeffrey and Eric Tuper-Giles at the Reynolds House Inn in Barre
until 2016, when Karen Lauzon, wife of developer and former mayor Thom Lauzon, bought it and invited Eric and Jeffrey Tuper-Giles to fulfill their lifelong dream of running an inn. The Lauzons own the building, and the Tuper-Giles couple own the business itself; the long restoration was a true collaborative effort by all parties. Eric, the music director and organist at the Barre Congregational Church, and Jeffrey, a city councilor who formerly worked in IT, now run the inn full time. The couple spent six months cleaning out the house to get it ready for contractors, filling three dumpsters with old bedding, plaster and lath, and insulation. “I never really saw the mess,” said Jeffrey. “I always saw the beautiful parties I was going to have, and with every bag of trash I took out, I was one step closer.” After two years of renovation, the Reynolds House opened for business in May 2019. Eric and Jeffrey live upstairs in the back of the inn. “If we can’t feel at
of being inside a classic game of Clue — but without the fatal encounters. Eric and Jeffrey have spent the last seven years collecting Victorian furniture, and the Reynolds House is filled with their finds. They regularly scour eBay and Craigslist, but their favorite source is Last Time Around in downtown Barre, whose co-owner, Terry Culver, they call “Vermont’s secret.” In addition, Barre residents have begun donating china dishes, sets of encyclopedias and vintage glassware. The inn is becoming something of a local living museum, giving new life to old objects that might otherwise gather dust in an attic. “It’s still a work in progress,” said Jeffrey, pointing to two paintings in the stairwell. “These went up just this week. But that’s part of the fun; it takes time to collect things.” Each of the five guest rooms combines the best of the Victorian age — antique wooden bed frames, polished BACK IN TIME
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Back in Time « P.7 armoires, marble-topped dressers — with modern-day comforts, including fully updated bathrooms and air conditioning. The two innkeepers do everything, including the cooking and cleaning. Their meticulous attention to detail is evident in the ironed pillowcases and tidy stacks of folded towels in the linen closet. Guests can expect a different home-cooked breakfast every morning, from stuffed French toast to omelettes to fruit salad made with local honey. “It’s a lot of work running a bed-andbreakfast,” admitted Eric. “But it’s also really rewarding, because our job is to make a home. We meet people who we may not ever see again, but we make a connection.”
WE WANTED TO DO SOMETHING FOR BARRE. ER I C T U P ER - G I L ES
Weathervane on top of Cleora’s Carriage House
Cleora’s Carriage House
The music room and lounge
PHOTOS: JEB WALLACE-BRODEUR
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The deep quiet inside the Reynolds House is striking. The large curved windows shut out the sound of local traffic, but the restful silence also derives from the absence of all screens, including TVs. When families stay — such as one that recently rented the entire inn to celebrate a 65th wedding anniversary — they converse and play board games. “We’ve had so many people thank us for not having TVs,” noted Eric. In fact, that anniversary party had never been able to eat all together at one table until their dinner at the inn, cooked by Eric and Jeffrey. The Reynolds House’s tagline is “the place to have people over,” and that means more than individual guests. The inn also offers two event spaces — the music room and lounge for small parties and the renovated carriage barn, called Cleora’s, for large events. The carriage barn bore the brunt of the 2014 fire, which burned rafters and destroyed windows. Contractors sandblasted the original beams, installed new windows and sprayed in foam insulation. Now Cleora’s is a bright and airy two-story space with original hemlock floors and a high ceiling that opens up to the cupola. The flexible layout and close proximity to the commercial kitchen mean it can easily accommodate corporate retreats, large family gatherings and special occasion parties. This winter, Eric and Jeffrey plan to work with local
The music room and lounge
chefs and wine distributors to host pop-up events. The couple assumed that restoring the Reynolds House would appeal to Barre’s older generations, but they’ve been surprised by how much the younger community has embraced it, as well. “They’ve grown up here and want Barre to have nice things, too, so they don’t have to go to Stowe or Montpelier for an event,” said Eric. “We aren’t marketing to nationwide tourism. We wanted to do something for Barre.” Recently, they installed a light in the cupola of the carriage barn. “People commented how nice it was to see a light [there] again,” said Eric. The Reynolds House is now a symbol of Barre’s past that offers a chance to slow down for conversation and homecooked meals. Guests relax in wicker furniture on the wide front porch, walk downtown for dinner and perhaps stroll back with creemees, enjoying a quintessential summer night in a small Vermont town. m
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PHOTOS: GLENN RUSSELL
It’s Tree Time Fall planting leads to spring awakening BY S AL LY P O L L AK
Emily Anderson planting slippery elm seedlings at the Intervale Conservation Nursery in Burlington
FALL TREE PLANTING TIPS Burlington city arborist V.J. Comai shared the following advice with Nest. Fall can be a great time to plant due to cooler temperatures and typically more precipitation, both of which are more conducive to establishment of the trees than the hot and dry weather of midsummer. Trees that are balled and burlapped or grown in a container can be planted until the ground freezes. The exception would be evergreens, which I would not recommend planting after early October, as they can be prone to winter injury when not fully rooted in and established. (Other trees to avoid planting in fall include birches, willow and red oak.) Any newly planted tree should be watered regularly after planting with about 20 gallons of water per week when we have not received an inch or more of rain in that week. This should continue up until the ground freezes. Homeowners should thoroughly inspect trees purchased in the fall that have been sitting above ground all summer to be
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certain that the trees have good, viable buds out to the tips of the branches. If they don’t, it may indicate that they may have [been] repeatedly dried out during the summer and be severely stressed, which will compromise their survivability. It is important to make sure that the right tree is planted in the right spot. Considerations include type of soil and drainage, exposure to sunlight, sun versus partial or full shade, and space to account for the future growth of the tree, as well as the future growth of adjacent trees and shrubs. Will there be room for the tree in 20 to 30 years? It is critical that [the] tree gets planted correctly and at the correct depth. Before planting a tree, homeowners should call Dig Safe [see digsafe.com] to have all underground utilities in the area marked to ensure that none will be compromised in the planting process.
On a late August afternoon near the Winooski River in Burlington, crew members from the Intervale Conservation Nursery planted saplings in a bed of soil prepared for growing young trees. Using a tool called a dibbler, they dug holes for the seedlings and planted hundreds of trees per row — a mix of species including speckled alder, red oak, slippery elm and white willow. The saplings that went in the ground that day belong to a set of 30,000 to 35,000 young-stock trees that the nursery crew will plant before winter. Irrigated by river water, the seedlings — about 300 to 400 of them per acre — will grow for two to three years in eight acres at the Intervale. From there, most of the trees will be dug up and planted for riparian conservation and restoration projects around the state. “It’s a production nursery,” said manager Mike Ingalls. “We get ’em in to grow, and we get ’em out to plant.” The nursery, which is part of the Intervale Center, transplants about 18,000 trees a year to locations around Vermont. But the native saplings — which the nonprofit nursery grows using sustainable practices — are also available to the general public. The whips, or unbranched seedlings, are an affordable and accessible option; homeowners can purchase bare-roots saplings or small potted trees from the nursery for $3 to $12 each. They can be
planted in yards and gardens from now into late fall. “Our price point is pretty awesome, and our product is pretty awesome,” Ingalls said, extolling the quality of the soil at the Intervale. “I haven’t sprayed pesticides or herbicides in 10 years. In turn, I think we have some of the healthiest trees out there.” Like other tree experts, Ingalls notes that fall can be an optimal time for planting trees, and he takes advantage of the season. “We plant right up until it starts to snow, and into the snow,” Ingalls said. “We’re also planting native trees — rugged trees and shrubs that are a little tougher than what you’re buying from a nursery center.” Trees planted in the fall have a “jump start” on the season when they awaken from their winter dormancy, Ingalls said. “You can get stuff in the ground, and you just walk away,” he said. “The trees are in place and ready to go in the spring, starting to grow in their forever home. They’re already popping.” He recommends that homeowners plant a variety of native trees, shrubs and flowers to attract birds and butterflies to their yards. In Charlotte, Charlie Proutt and his
Rates are down and the market is hot.
L AN DSC APIN G wife, Eileen Schilling, own Horsford Horsford’s 47-acre nursery grows Gardens & Nursery and its affiliated and sells scores of deciduous and landscape design business, Distinctive evergreen trees and shrubs, including Landscaping. Proutt starting working horse chestnut, crab apple, mountain at Horsford some 40 years ago, when ash, willow, maple and “fake-out” he was a student at the University of hydrangea (the term Proutt uses to Vermont. He’s been connected with the describe a hydrangea bush that grows nursery, as employee or owner, for about from a tree trunk). The inventory one-third of its 125-year existence. includes a selection of sizable trees that The roots of tree planting in Vermont, come in 10- or 15-gallon pots. Proutt observed, are pretty basic: “In For planting, Proutt advises digging a traditional Vermont landscaping, dad digs hole that’s two to three times wider than a tree up in the woods and puts it in the the pot, and no deeper. For faster growth, front yard.” he recommends fertilizing the tree. Transplanting trees in the fall can “One round of fertilizer each spring present a “digging will make a huge differhazard,” Proutt cauence,” he said. tioned, meaning that For homeowners certain trees, including looking to grow their own birches, red maples and fruit, Shelburne Orchards oaks, don’t like to be dug offers a niche market up in the fall. of big plum and apple As noted by trees, with apple varieties Burlington city arborist including Empire, Golden V.J. Comai (see sidebar), Delicious and Gala. The these are among the apple trees, 8 to 12 years types of trees that old and with a trunk should not be planted in diameter of up to four autumn. Alternatively, inches, are dug up in the one could plant such a spring before they leaf tree if it were dug up in out. The orchard typically MIKE INGALLS the spring and properly has a tree sale in late April cared for through the or early May, but it also summer. has fruit trees available for fall planting. Untitled-56 The plus side of fall planting: The “It’s nice to have the trees go through water requirements are lower than in the winter dormancy where they’re going to spring, the tree wakes up in place, and its be,” orchard owner Nick Cowles comcolors will be on display so you can see mented. “They come awake in the normal what it looks like in autumn. Echoing the spring progression.” m Intervale’s Ingalls, Proutt said it’s OK to Contact: sally@sevendaysvt.com plant even if the ground is very cold. “It doesn’t really matter to the tree if it gets into frozen ground,” he said. INFO “The roots need to be protected from the Learn more at intervale.org, coldest temperatures, and the ground horsfordnursery.com and shelburneorchards.com. does that.”
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North Ha tley, Qué bec
Constructing a Life A 22-year relationship built on 22 residences BY NANC Y S TE AR NS BE R C AW
Abu
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When Allan and I were married in 1997, we took up residence in his Officer’s Row condo in Fort Ethan Allen in Colchester. In the 22 years since, we’ve crisscrossed four states and four countries to rack up a total of 22 separate residences. Because both of us were averse to the notion of putting down roots for good, a shared sense of wanderlust became the foundation for our itinerant lives together. No place actually felt like home until we put a “for sale” sign in front of it.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF NAN
Colchester
CY STEARNS BERCAW
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HOME People often question what appears to be our obsession with moving — an undertaking typically considered onerous and best avoided. Why do Nancy and Allan relocate all the time? Why don’t they just rent homes instead of buying? Are they losing their minds as well as their savings? What is the matter with them? I’m happy to report that we have remained emotionally and financially stable as a couple because of our nomadic escapades, not in spite of them. I was greatly relieved when television shows like “House Hunters” and “Flip or Flop” came on the scene, because they gave names, and an air of legitimacy, to our lifestyle. Rather than “Love It or List It,” though, we prefer to love it and list it.
often joke that the Zillow app is our version of Tinder. Our various habitats have become chapters in our vast story — a scrapbook made of bricks and mortar instead of paper. Our memory lane consists of actual roads in North America, South Asia and the Middle East. And our landmark moments have popped up in some of the most unlikely places. While painting the kitchen of our old Victorian in Staunton, Va., in 2003 — I was coaching swimming at James Madison University at the time — I decided that I was finally ready to have a child after years of flip-flopping on the idea of motherhood. When David was born exactly nine months later, Allan and I decided
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OUR MEMORY LANE CONSISTS OF ACTUAL ROADS IN NORTH AMERICA, SOUTH ASIA AND THE MIDDLE EAST. The most important question is, of course, why we do it. Allan, on the road since he was a teenager, has enjoyed a long and winding career as a musician and filmmaker. Meanwhile, I came into this relationship after years of traipsing the nation as a competitive swimmer and then the globe as a writer and educator. To us, it made sense that our life together would continue to be outwardly mobile. But we didn’t anticipate that our marriage would span the seven seas and three times as many structures. The bottom line is that we are madly in love with the world — and with each other. Straying from one place to another has become a binding force. Perhaps we never experienced the seven-year itch because we were too busy scratching at new doors. We
to move north again so we could raise him in proximity to his half brothers, John and Andrew, who still called Vermont home. We settled into a brand-new, bright-red house on a hill in North Hatley, Québec — a setting that vaguely resembled Andrew Wyeth’s painting “Christina’s World.” (Visiting friends and family were required to pose for a photograph on our grassy knoll in the same position as Christina.) When the location started to feel too remote and bleak — also like the pathos in Christina’s world — we moved south of the border to an apartment on Murray Street in
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Burlington. David took his very first steps on the pine floors in that brick house. Two years later, I fell down grief-stricken on the pink linoleum floor in the kitchen of our hexagon-shaped home in Colchester after getting a call that my stepbrother Craig had died suddenly. Allan and I ended up planting two trees on that property — one in memory of Craig and one in memory of Allan’s late brother, David. The trees, set on opposite sides of the driveway, served as witnesses to the lives of our brothers as well as our comings and goings. The trees were harder to leave than the house, although we did have some especially good neighbors across the street. In 2010, thanks to Allan’s later-in-life career as a film professor, we found ourselves in the Little India neighborhood of Singapore, living in a marble-floored, ultramodern condo. The complex featured a 50-meter swimming pool surrounded by lush tropical gardens. David learned to go the distance in that pool and picked up some Mandarin in his nearby kindergarten. A few years later, lounging in a tiny plastic kiddie pool in the backyard of our Colonial in the New North End of Burlington, he announced that he would like to study Japanese. I guess he was establishing his own sense of place, since we’d never set foot in Japan. Five years after that, we landed in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, again because of Allan’s teaching career. It turned out that moving to the Arabian desert changed our trajectory forever — possibly even saving our marriage and my life. Inside our condo in a complex resembling a giant cement stairway to heaven, I began to realize that I’d become a full-blown alcoholic. Inspired by the tenants of Islam and the dry landscape around me, I managed to quit drinking for good. With unconditional love, Allan got me through those dark days of withdrawal and recovery. David, who’d just turned 11, announced that it was about time I chose my family over wine. When we returned to Vermont in the summer of 2015, we settled back into a sweet, small community on Lily Lane in South Burlington, which was conveniently located less than a mile from Burlington International Airport. Our small
ton South Burling
S COUR TESY O
house was the picture of human bliss and energy efficiency. I wrote my memoir, Dryland: One Woman’s Swim to Sobriety, sitting on our orange midcentury couch by the gas fireplace. David started middle school; Allan retired from actual jobs. When the airport bought that house a year later — in preparation for the arrival of the ultra-loud F-35 jets — we seized the opportunity to buy a modern, barn-inspired house on eight acres in Ferrisburgh. But within two months of moving to the country, we packed up for the United Arab Emirates again. I’d been offered the opportunity of a lifetime: the position of chief of staff at Ajman University. Despite a few protests from David, I was determined to throw myself into the job. We rented a spacious condo in the Emirate of Ras Al Khaimah with panoramic views of the Arabian Gulf — about 100 nautical miles from Iran. But the only real threat to our existence was the fact that Allan needed to be in the U.S. for his ongoing music and film projects. The toll of his extended absences proved too great after one year. As much as I loved the United Arab Emirates, I simply couldn’t live there without him. After David contracted dengue fever on a vacation to Sri Lanka, I knew we had to return to Ferrisburgh and stick together as a family. So here we are, all under the same roof in what we call our Asian Farmhouse. We very briefly considered relocating to Florida this year but changed our minds almost immediately after putting the house on the market. Surrounded by treasures from 22 years of global adventures and abode hopping, we came to the conclusion that everything fits perfectly in this space, including us. In honor of our anniversary this year, I gifted Allan with the one thing still inexplicably missing from our lives. Thanks to the internet, I was able to procure our pièce de résistance — a brass door knocker from India, where we’ve traveled several times. Now, when people come to call, we can offer an answer that no longer eludes us. We’re home.
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Khaima
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Christina Kumka swings a hammer to make a hole in drywall during Morgan Over’s We Can Fix It class for women in Rutland
Women learn basic home repair skills in Rutland BY MAR GAR E T GR AYS O N
There was an audible gasp when Morgan Over told her class, “Fiberglass insulation is pretty much useless.” The pink fluffy stuff is a relatively cheap way to insulate a house, but it isn’t as efficient and doesn’t last as long as alternatives such as sprayfoam insulation, she explained at Rutland’s Godnick Adult Center. For cold Vermont winters, Over advised, the foam is worth the investment. It was a Tuesday evening in August and the first session of Over’s six-week We Can Fix It class. A contractor in Rutland who runs Holistic Home Improvement, she’s been offering it since 2017. Over wants to teach women how to handle their own basic home repairs, and she also wants to give them the space to ask questions. That includes discussing the merits of different types of insulation.
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“I find it very important to empower female homeowners to kind of take control of their homes and feel comfortable communicating with contractors,” Over said. This involves being able to unclog a sink, sure, but it’s also about being confident in making larger home repair decisions. The We Can Fix It class introduces
women to tools, basic repair skills and the fundamentals of how a house functions. Over designed the class with NeighborWorks of Western Vermont when she worked there as head carpenter. She’d been rehabbing houses for NeighborWorks and realized that the first three houses she finished sold to single women. “Single women are the driving force in home purchasing at this point. They’re also the heads of household in a lot of regards,” Over said. “So I pitched the idea. I was like, ‘Why don’t we have a home maintenance class for women?’” This year, when the grant that funded the class expired, Over purchased the program from NeighborWorks. Now she’s partnered with the Rutland Recreation & Parks Department. Most of the women gathered for Over’s class were middle-aged. Rutland is small
enough that many of them knew each other. One woman was another’s former English teacher, and one was a neighbor of Over’s family. All were homeowners, and many of their homes date back to the turn of the 20th century or earlier. They talked about the problems that come with older houses, such as lead pipes, sash windows and rubble foundations. Some talked about their husbands — what they could fix and whether the women could actually get them to do the jobs. And they groused that plumbers and electricians were often booked for weeks. “I never fixed a hole in the wall. I just pushed a bed up against it,” one woman admitted. (Has there ever been a more relatable confession?) One said she wants to install a water filter on her sink, and another has been living for years in a house with little insulation.
PHOTOS: CALEB KENNA
Tools of the Trade
Over’s job entails, in part, simply giving advice and answering questions her female students haven’t had the chance to ask before. Dealing with contractors and other home repair people, she said, can be intimidating — even for her, working in the industry. Over has been involved in the home repair world since she was a kid. Her father was a contractor in Rutland, and she used to tag along to job sites. Over got a bachelor of fine arts degree in sculpture but drifted back into construction after college. Home design, she said, satisfies her creative itch. Over worked for her father until 2008, when he retired and she struck out on her own. She quickly encountered a cutthroat market during the economic recession and found that she couldn’t charge as much as a man could. Discouraged, she took a break and went to work in the ski industry, until she was offered the job at NeighborWorks. “I had an organization backing me up. And when that happened, you know — money talks. I was taken seriously right
alone and said she often found herself thinking, If I could fix that, I would do it. Since taking the class, she’s repaired her washing machine, pellet stove, dishwasher, furnace and more. “I know I’ve saved myself thousands of dollars,” Zimmer said. “I think it just made me realize, things are much simpler than I have it in my head. It just kind of gave me the confidence of, like, I’m not going to burn my house down if I replace a valve.” Once bitten by the power-tool bug, Zimmer kept going. She took a woodworking class at the MINT, a workshop and maker space in Rutland. She was recently accepted into the MINT’s entrepreneurship development program and aims to start a woodworking business with another woman. Zimmer now teaches her own classes: basic one-night workshops intended to introduce people — particularly women and gendernonconforming folks — to the woodshop without a huge commitment. “Similar to the sip-and-paints, but you’re using saws,” Zimmer explained.
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In-Store Bakery... Apple Cider Donuts daily! Homegrown Fresh Produce • Garden Mums in many colors Fall Harvest Decorating • VT & Specialty Foods Gifts for Home and Garden Morgan Over teaching a We Can Fix It class for women in Rutland
away,” Over said. “I realized how lucky I was that I had that opportunity. If I hadn’t, I’d probably be the low person on the totem pole in the construction industry.” Making her class exclusively for women was key, Over said. If there’s a man in the room, she’s found, everyone will look to him first for the answer, even if he’s clueless about home repair. In her class, women feel more comfortable asking “stupid” questions — a concept that Over, of course, doesn’t believe in. “After the first class, there’s this level of comfort that they feel, and there’s a camaraderie that they’re all learning this very foreign concept without the man in the room,” she said. For at least one participant, the We Can Fix It course has been life-changing. Erica Zimmer took Over’s class in 2017. She was a first-time home buyer living
“For people who’ve never tried it, it’s really intimidating to walk into a woodshop, especially as a female.” As for Over’s current We Can Fix It class, the schedule includes overviews of plumbing, electricity, windows, walls and doors. There will be “no quizzes, no tests,” she promised — but the women will take apart and reassemble a toilet and a sink. “You’re going to be blown away at how simple they are,” Over told the women during that first class. “You’re going to be able to replace your own toilet.” m Contact: margaret@sevendaysvt.com
INFO
Morgan Over’s next We Can Fix It class will be offered Tuesdays, October 1 through 29, 5 to 7:30 p.m., at the Godnick Adult Center in Rutland. $65-76. rutlandrec.com
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Dreaming Small If you’ve been on Instagram in the past decade, you’ve probably seen a tiny house. These pocket-size abodes are cute, wholesome and minimalist — and can look like an easy remedy to our often overstuffed, overstimulated lives. And the social media hashtags, of course, abound: #tinyhouse, #tinyliving, #homeiswhereyouparkit, #houselessnothomeless.
COURTESY OF VERMOD
October’s Tiny House Fest Vermont in Waitsfield will offer opportunities to appreciate the simple aesthetics of a tiny house, converted camper van or some other alternative form of living. But its organizers are also focused on how tiny houses and their sometimes slightly larger brethren can be used to solve housing and social issues in Vermont. It’s generally agreed that a tiny house has fewer than 400 square feet. Beyond that, there’s a lot of variety. Some tiny houses are on wheels, easily pulled behind a truck; others sit permanently on foundations. Some have full bathrooms and running water; others rely on composting toilets. They’re often a place for architectural innovation, from miniature log-cabinstyle houses to ultramodern designs that look like glamorous shipping containers. But tiny houses can also provide safe, inexpensive housing to people who don’t already have it. Cities across the country are already using tiny homes to address housing insecurity and homelessness. YES! magazine reported in 2018 that the city of Seattle owned nine tiny-house villages that served as emergency shelters. Volunteers were able to build these shelters for just $2,500 apiece. One such village, called Whittier Heights Village, featured 15 houses — each 100 square feet and painted in bright colors — and a
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common house that contained a kitchen, bathrooms and laundry facility. A nonprofit called SquareOne Villages is doing the same thing in Eugene, Ore., where the Eugene Weekly reports that the median sale price for homes is about $300,000. In SquareOne’s tiny-house villages, residents pay only $250 to $350 per month. “People are in the process of learning whether it’s an expression of a need or a fashion,” said Tiny House Fest cofounder Lisa Kuneman. “In our experience, the need is pretty significant … The housing situation is dire.” While Vermont doesn’t have a full-fledged tinyhouse village yet, professors and students at Norwich University are taking the initial steps toward a similar community as part of the university’s Design Build Collaborative. Over the 2018 school year, led by associate professors Tolya Stonorov and Daniel Sagan, the collaborative built a 365-square-foot house called LIFT. The outside is paneled in local hardwood, and the house offers a semiprivate porch with a roof, a remarkably spacious kitchen
Are tiny houses a solution to Vermont’s housing issues? B Y M A R G A R ET G R AY S O N
and living area, and even room for a washer and dryer. It meets high efficiency standards at almost every point. And, thanks to a partnership with Downstreet Housing & Community Development and Washington County Mental Health Services, the house will soon be located on a lot in Barre City. There it will serve a low-income tenant who’s otherwise at risk of homelessness. “We were working with them, looking at, specifically, ‘How can this house address low-income needs, energy-efficiency needs, but also address the needs of people who have issues with mental health?’” Stonorov said. “That was a really rewarding and important thing to be involved with.” Stonorov and Sagan taught a preliminary seminar looking at homelessness and mental health issues before they even began designing the house. A nursing student in the class focused on details such as how to design lighting fixtures that would be calming for the future tenant. “It was the first time we had a nursing student involved on the project,” said Cara Armstrong, director of the Norwich University School of Architecture + Art. “We’re starting to see it as having different, I would call them, ‘circles of support.’” The materials for the first LIFT house are worth about $34,000, and Armstrong estimates about 5,000 hours of work went into building it. Many local
HO US I NG
PHOTOS COURTESY OF NORWICH UNIVERSITY
businesses donated materials and labor. Yet unknown are the costs of manufacturing the house in larger numbers. The Design Build Collaborative will be building another house for Downstreet this coming school year for that same lot in Barre; the goal is to make LIFT 2.0 even more efficient and affordable. The collaborative will present at the Tiny House Fest in October. Another Vermont company that will attend the fest is Vermod. Founded by Hartford developer Steve Davis in partnership with Efficiency Vermont’s Zero Energy Modular program, the company aims to build small, resilient, energy-efficient homes that could serve as an alternative to mobile homes. The company is starting construction on its 100th home this month. According to Vermod’s home ownership adviser Ashley Andreas, Vermod has saved homeowners more than $1 million in utility costs to date — the homes are installed with solar panels, so residents incur no electricity or heating costs. There’s a key difference between a Vermod home and a mobile home. Mobile and manufactured homes are typically built to meet building codes set by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. But Vermod builds its houses to meet the more standard International Residential Code. “That, to me, is the biggest piece in breaking down generational poverty in home ownership,” said Andreas. “Manufactured mobile homes depreciate annually, kind of like a vehicle.” But Vermod houses don’t depreciate in the same way. They’re stick-built, with a full wooden frame, instead of the steel frame that’s traditional in manufactured homes. “These are intended to be forever homes,” Andreas said. The smallest version costs $122,000, but Andreas listed many resources available to low-income buyers, including loans from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Champlain Housing Trust, as well as incentives from Efficiency Vermont and the Vermont Low-Income Trust for Electricity. Andreas said the company has a wide range of customers, but the largest number of their homes go to people downsizing or looking to replace a mobile home. As of October 2018, Vermod had built 86 homes. According to a company report, 71 percent of them went to mid- to low-income Vermonters; 58 percent went into a park, a co-op or a multifamily project. These homes are not necessarily “tiny”: Vermod houses range from 500 to 1,000 square feet. Vermod could be a great option for someone who’s into the idea of a small home, Andreas said, but doesn’t
A rendering of the completed LIFT house
THEY’RE EASY TO MOVE, BUT THEY’RE STILL VERY NICE, AND NICE TO LIVE IN. E TH AN WAL D MAN
Students at Norwich University working on the LIFT house
actually need to be able to haul it down the road. Among the most significant barriers to the tiny-house movement are building codes and zoning laws: They’re different in every municipality. Burlington-based tiny-house educator Ethan Waldman owns a tiny house, but he keeps it in Morrisville. “Tiny houses are one solution that can work really well in the more residential neighborhoods that have backyards, or anywhere that has empty lots. They’re easy to move, but they’re still very nice, and nice to live in,” Waldman said. “I kind of think that they make a lot of sense for Burlington.” But gaining permission to live in a tiny house in Burlington can be tricky.
According to David White, the city’s director of planning, the challenge is partly due to codes and partly due to basic economics. A person could certainly buy a piece of land and build a tiny house on it — but they’d have to invest in connecting it to the city sewer system and building the required number of parking spaces. And with the high cost of land in the city, it would probably make more sense to build something larger, with a better resale value, White said. “Is that small unit really economically viable on a lot that could either accommodate a larger building, or a larger building that has a couple of units in it?” he asked rhetorically. “Therein lies a challenge.” OK, so what about a whole village of tiny homes? Then you run into issues
around how many units you’re allowed to have on a standard residential lot. In low-density neighborhoods, that number is one. “[A tiny-house village] might be possible, assuming that the lot is big enough to allow for you to have multiple dwellings on the lot,” White said. But the minimum size for that lot would probably be about two acres — and who’s out there with the cash to buy two undeveloped acres in Burlington? “If the economics work, great,” White continued. “But I can see the tiny house and the tiny-house village as being economically challenged.” A lot of tiny-house advocates point to the possibility that they could be used as accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, on properties that already have a home. Homeowners could rent out a chunk of their lawn to a tiny house and make some extra cash, and tiny homeowners could find prime real estate within the city. But anytime a new ADU is added to a lot in the city, a conditional use permit is required — meaning going through the development review board and having a public hearing. “That is really onerous,” White said. An additional ADU also currently requires a new parking space on the lot. Many lots also have restrictions on how much of the lot can be covered by buildings or parking. And in Burlington, White said, many properties are already at or over that limit. However, these issues and more were discussed at the second of two city housing summits in September. White said the city is considering proposals that would eliminate both the need for a conditional use permit and a new parking spot for new ADUs. He said Burlington could see potential policy changes presented as soon as October. White pointed out that, in Burlington, developers could face many fewer barriers if, instead of building individual tiny houses, they built an apartment building with many tiny units. Which got this reporter thinking about her own shoebox studio apartment. Somehow, it has never seemed to have the same appeal as a tiny house — but maybe it’s just time for a rebrand. Contact: margaret@sevendaysvt.com
INFO
Tiny House Fest Vermont, Friday through Sunday, October 25 through 27, Yestermorrow Design/Build School and Sugarbush Ski Resort in Waitsfield, $15. tinyhousefestvermont.com. Find out more about the LIFT house at norwich.edu/ programs/architecture-and-art. Learn more about Vermod at vermodhomes.com. NEST FALL 2019
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