Nest — Spring 2023

HGTV’s “House Hunters” comes to Lake Champlain

In St. Johnsbury, Haven puts secondhand style first

Woodworker Nathan D’Aversa carves out a niche

It’s still early spring, but things are heating up out there. And it’s the beginning of the busy season for homes and gardens, as this issue of Nest attests. Lake Champlain-adjacent listings garnered national attention in a recent episode of HGTV’s “HOUSE HUNTERS,” and the state is seeing a bumper crop of MILLION-DOLLAR HOMES. e housing crisis persists, but new solutions are sprouting, from MASS TIMBER to VAN LIFE. Meanwhile, community is blooming in St. Johnsbury as a new home goods store, HAVEN, brings folks together around secondhand style. Another growing biz, D’AVERSA FURNITURE, is rooted in custommade modern design. Finally, for a more literal take on planting puns, we gleaned gardening tips from Shelburne-based AMERICAN MEADOWS, which hopes to rewild lawns and help save the planet. Here’s to flower power!

BY ANNE WALLACE ALLEN

RACHEL MULLIS

BY CAROLYN SHAPIRO

BY SUZANNE PODHAIZER

Getting new stuff? Don't discard the old Donate to repurpose it instead

BY KEN PICARD

Your donations of resellable items keep them out of landfills and helps local families build affordable places to call home.

Drop donations off, or call 802857-5296 to schedule a free pick-up! For more details, visit vermonthabitat org/restore

Last Quarter

Mass Appeal

NEK entrepreneur pursues housing solutions with engineered wood wood

A Northeast Kingdom entrepreneur hopes to set up a mass timber manufacturing facility to help solve the region’s housing crisis.

Josh Oakley, who lives in Waterford, is working with local economic development o cials to find factory space where he can make building components such as beams, posts and panels from the engineered wood product. Proponents say the relatively lightweight pieces can be transported and assembled at a lower cost — financial and environmental — than the traditional steel and wood that they replace. The product itself uses local forest materials and sequesters carbon dioxide.

Mass timber is more commonly used in large buildings, but Oakley said the conditions in heavily forested northern New England are right for experimenting with other forms of housing. He noted that o ering year-round factory-based construction jobs might make it easier to attract a workforce to the rural area. The rising cost of conventional building materials and the severity of Vermont’s housing crisis make the use of this new technology more feasible than in the past, Oakley said.

“We have this housing crisis. We have a labor crisis. And we have a forest economy crisis,” Oakley said. “We are talking about

Vermont housing news

BY ANNE WALLACE ALLEN anne@sevendaysvt.com

things now that we weren’t talking about two or three years ago.”

Oakley has purchased a derelict church building in St. Johnsbury where he plans to build apartments using mass timber as part of a demonstration project. Ultimately, he’d like to use mass timber to construct singlefamily homes in Vermont.

Mass timber is known to builders on

the West Coast, but it’s still an emerging technology on this side of the country. Many of the region’s mass timber buildings are found at educational institutions, such as the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Boston has a mass timber accelerator program that helps developers with technical assistance and grants as an incentive to use the product.

“The use of mass timber for housing is kind of like the next wave that is coming,” said Jennifer Shakun, bioeconomy initiative director at New England Forestry Foundation. “As people are learning to build with this stu , costs are coming down.”

Shakun said one of the most popular mass timber products, cross-laminated timber, isn’t made anywhere in northern New England, and many people are looking for ways to manufacture it. East Coast developers who use mass timber typically buy the product from the West Coast or Europe; Oakley plans to buy the initial products he’ll use from Chicago.

St. Johnsbury’s Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium is using mass timber for a science annex that’s now under construction. The material fits into the museum’s mission of environmental stewardship, executive director Adam Kane said. It’s also something of an experiment.

“You need institutions to be able to take a little bit of risk,” Kane said. “That makes it easier for those who come next.”

St. Johnsbury assistant town manager Joe Kasprzak, who is trying to help Oakley find a manufacturing space in town, said Oakley’s ideas are gaining local attention.

“There are people who are really energized and understand the problem he is trying to solve,” Kasprzak said. ➆

Josh Oakley in the St. Johnsbury church he recently purchased

An addition at the Fairbanks Museum in St. Johnsbury using mass timber technology

49,764

By the Numbers

BUILDER TALK

17,000

357

Emily Koons has always had an affinity for van life. When she was working at a camp for adults with autism in Colorado, she lived in someone else’s van for months. e lifestyle suited her, but the van didn’t meet her own high standards.

So she worked with her dad, who restores and refurbishes classic wooden boats, to outfit a van. With a lifelong love of math and problem solving, Koons found the work a perfect fit.

When she and her partner put down roots in Vermont last year, she turned her skills into a business, retrofitting vehicles for others to take on the road. rough her company, Ozzie Vans, Koons installs custom cabinetry, appliances and furniture into the tiny interiors that roll into her shop. She’s now putting the finishing touches on a 17-foot Dodge Ram cargo van with 100 square feet of space inside.

“Nothing is square; it is not like trying to outfit a room,” Koons, 27, said. “ ere are a lot of curves and contours to account for.”

She has several projects lined up at her workshop, located inside a horse barn near her Westford home. While Koons has started thinking about bringing on some help, she’s also committed to keeping the business small.

“Living a minimalistic lifestyle allows you to understand how much space you really need to thrive,” she said.

Million-Dollar Market

At a listing price of $1.3 million, 32 Sleepy Hollow Road in Essex, a four-bedroom house on 10 acres, illustrates a new trend in Vermont: the proliferation of homes valued at $1 million or more.

Last July, at the peak of the market, there were more than 200 such homes listed in Vermont, with many in the eight figures. In February, there were 145, including a seven-bedroom house in Woodstock for $18 million and a two-bedroom house on 239 acres in Stowe for $17.5 million. ese high-end homes move slowly; many have been on the market for several months. Twenty

Dig It!

e University of Vermont Extension’s Master Gardener program and some of its partners will offer a GARDEN SOIL HEALTH DAY, including free soil lead screenings for home gardeners, on Saturday, May 13, 1 to 4 p.m., at the UVM Horticulture Research & Education Center in South Burlington. Bring a soil sample and get tips on soil health and fertility. Learn more at uvm.edu/extension.

homes costing a million dollars or more sold in February.

Vermont home prices have been climbing for the past few years, and they’re now well out of reach for most of the state’s wage earners. High construction and land prices are hindering efforts to build more housing.

e median home price in Vermont climbed 15 percent in 2022, to $310,000. Nationally, home prices have risen 33 percent in the past five years, according to realtor.com. In Vermont, they’ve risen 50 percent in that time.

“I love creating something that is useful and compact.”

EMILY KOONS

e number of residential heat pumps in Vermont — a tenfold increase in the past seven years.

Vermont’s total number of public EV charging stations — the highest per capita in the country.

e number of smallscale solar netmetering systems in the state — most of them residential.

A four-bedroom home on 10 acres in Essex listed at $1.3 million

PHOTOS COURTESY OF OZZIE VANS

Emily Koons in a van she recently retrofitted

Yards Gone Wild

American Meadows aims to bring meadowscaping to the masses

BY RACHEL MULLIS

Wildflowers at Charlotte Addison’s home in Charlotte

At the end of a long industrial drive in Fairfax is a warehouse piled floor to ceiling with seeds. Workers weave between aisles of neatly stacked bins with labels such as “Partial Shade” or “Northeast Mixture.” Ultimately, the seeds will be packed up in little muslin sacks and shipped o to all corners of the country. It’s almost planting season, and American Meadows’ wildflower business is booming.

The Vermont e-retailer, with headquarters in Shelburne in addition to the Fairfax warehouse, has been selling seeds for 25 years. It specializes in wildflower mixes, including preplanned garden kits — that is, professionally chosen collections of flower varieties that come with a map showing where to plant them. American Meadows moved trillions of seeds last year and is planning for more growth this year.

While wildflowers are beautiful to look at, American Meadows hopes these seeds will sow a greater purpose: The company aims to rewild 1 million lawns across the United States.

A perfectly manicured lawn has long been a symbol of status and leisure in America. And lawns do make nice places to sit. But they’re also mowing headaches and water hogs that contribute to climate change and pollinator habitat loss. Lush lawns may rely on chemicals that pollute natural bodies of water and harm beneficial insects, including bees and butterflies. As people learn more about the cumulative negative impacts of lawns, many are reevaluating their place in our landscapes.

“Yes, You Can Do Better Than the Great

American Lawn,” a New York Times headline implored last spring.

Enter American Meadows’ new tagline: “Meadowcaping Makes It Better.”

Meadowscaping, for those unfamiliar with the term, “is a form of landscaping design that embraces natural growth,” according to the website House Digest.

“Meadowscaping reflects English countryside gardens and cottagecore aesthetics, with colorful wildflowers, tall grasses, and freeform garden beds ... Another step forward in the anti-lawn movement, meadowscaping aims to create lowmaintenance gardens that are better for people, the planet, and pollinators.”

As American Meadows’ chief revenue o cer, Brian Galloway, put it, “Consumers are more aware than ever before of what’s going on with our climate, what’s going on with Earth, what’s going on with water. Your yard is in your control. It’s one of those few things you can do.

“You can take out things that are eating up fossil fuels and taking chemicals to maintain, and you can

Mike Lizotte, aka “the Seed Man,” of American Meadows

Coneflowers at Charlotte Addison’s home

COURTESY OF AMERICAN MEADOWS

COURTESY OF AMERICAN MEADOWS COURTESY OF AMERICAN MEADOWS

YARDS GONE WILD » P.10

An urban mini-meadow

A spring-into-summer wildflower mix from American Meadows

replace them with feeding pollinators,” Galloway continued. “That’s you making a difference to transform not only your yard but your community and your world.”

American Meadows unveiled its new vision-driven mission in February to help more people tap into sustainable yard solutions. It’s not so much that the business has changed its practices — the company has championed meadowscaping for decades — as that the market finally caught up.

“We saw ourselves as a gardening company 10 years ago,” president Ethan Platt said. “And now it’s much bigger than that. I mean, a lot of our customers don’t identify as gardeners. They’re just, ‘Hey, I’ve got a yard. I’ve got a balcony.’”

As commercial sales director Mike Lizotte, aka “the Seed Man,” champions in his 2019 book, Mini Meadows: Grow a Little Patch of Colorful Flowers Anywhere Around Your Yard, you don’t need acres to plant a meadow; you can “grow wildflowers in containers, along your walkway, to replace your lawn — truly anywhere.”

A learning center on the company website welcomes users to the “Meadowverse” and provides resources, from growing guides to before-and-after success stories. Customers can shop “ready-made” meadows to fit their needs, whether they want to create a pollinator paradise (milkweed attracts monarch butterflies) or keep their homeowners’ association happy (microclover creates a lush lawn but requires less water, fertilizer and mowing than traditional grass).

Over the years, American Meadows has built up credibility with customers. Its seeds are free of GMOs and neonicotinoids — an insecticide that has been linked to declining bee populations. And it doesn’t use fillers to bulk up the product, which reduces shipping costs and carbon footprint. American Meadows also guarantees its products for a full year.

“Everything you see in here is lab-tested to make sure it hits certain germinations and purities that are the highest quality possible,” said Lizotte, who began working at American Meadows as a teenager and became an owner in 2009.

The company’s ethos and products have earned it a passionate customer base. One repeat client is Mike Kiernan, cofounder of Bee the Change, a Weybridge-based nonprofit that aims to create an acre of pollinator habitat in every Vermont city and town. American Meadows is his biggest seed supplier.

“We’re very happy with their product,” Kiernan said. “American Meadows is one of the companies that has ... planted an

equal square footage of pollinator habitat to offset their warehouses.”

Charlotte Addison is another regular customer. She moved to Charlotte four years ago, into a house on a steep hill that was difficult to mow. She needed plants that could keep the hillside from eroding but also wanted to explore making the space friendlier for wildlife and the climate. Wildflowers fit the bill.

“[American Meadows] really does cater to specific needs,” Addison said. “If I have a hillside that’s dry or I just need lowgrowing wildflowers … it’s really easy on their website to figure all those things out.”

Addison documents her meadowscaping progress on her Instagram account, @addisonsvt. Come summer, her fields are a riot of daisies and colorful cosmos, zinnias and coneflowers.

“I will say, it gets very addictive,” Addison said. “The hummingbirds in the summer here are just everywhere. It makes you want to do more and more. By doing so, you’re creating this whole habitat in your backyard, and it’s really, really cool.” ➆

Learn more at americanmeadows.com.

CHARLOTTE ADDISON

PHOTOS COURTESY OF AMERICAN MEADOWS

An urban meadowscape

A Bee the Change pollinator meadow at a solar installation

A meadow bouquet

Meadowscaping Tips From the Masters

Wondering how to create a meadowscape in your yard, or even on your balcony? Read on for advice from American Meadows.

Get the lay of the land. Whether you’re planning for an acre of wildflowers or a small container garden, you’ll need to assess some basic details about your space. How much sun does it get? What’s growing there now? One thing you probably won’t need to worry much about is adding nutrients to the soil. “ e beauty of wildflowers, and I think one of the reasons they’re so attractive, is that they don’t need to be pampered with good soil or fertilizer,” American Meadows commercial sales director Mike Lizotte said.

Choose your mix. Looking for a blaze of colors ASAP? Or are you willing to wait an extra season for a longer-lasting bloom? Annual wildflowers will look great this year, while perennial flowers will grow more slowly but endure. You can always buy a mix for the best of both worlds. If you can afford it, try a native seed mix — these plants have evolved over millennia to provide added benefits to the local ecosystem.

Prepare your plot. “ e more work you put into the preparation, the better results your planting is going to yield, both in the short and long term,” Lizotte said. For a small plot, you might be able to get away with roughing up the surface with a steel rake. For bigger areas, you’ll want to thoroughly till the soil, in multiple directions, to a depth of about six to eight inches. Alternatively or additionally, you can cover the area with heavy tarp for at least 90 days to kill all the grass and weeds.

Easy

does

it. Don’t make the mistake of overseeding your wildflower garden. Each wildflower needs enough space to reach light, water and soil nutrients. “One of the reasons that some of our customers fail is they think, Oh, if a little seed is good, then a lot is better, and they end up planting too much,” American Meadows president Ethan Platt said. “ e plants then compete with each other and crowd each other out. It’s a different mentality than planting grass seed.”

Wait for warmer weather. Don’t be fooled by that first 70-degree spring day. As any seasoned Vermont gardener knows, it’s worth waiting until the last frost date to sow your seeds. at’s usually between mid-May and Memorial Day weekend, depending on your region. However, if you’ve succumbed to temptation before a late frost, your seeds won’t die — they’ll just “lie dormant until the proper soil and air temperatures come together that promote germination,” Lizotte said.

Don’t forget to hydrate.

It’s important to have some moisture on the ground, especially those first few days after planting your seeds. If you have access to a water source, you can water the seeds every other day until they get established. But plenty of wildflower gardeners don’t have a water source for their meadows. Instead, they plan their sowing around the weather forecast. “Take advantage of the spring rains that Mother Nature will give you, and then you may not have to end up watering your meadow at all,” Lizotte said. “It doesn’t take much.”

Cut back once in late spring. Once wildflowers are established, they’re pretty much set for the year. Maintenance generally includes cutting everything down with a Weedwacker or brush hog once a year — preferably after the last of the pollinators have left the ground. “I’ll go down and cut my meadow in the spring after I’ve had a couple of weeks of above 50-degree weather, because by then anything that’s nesting there will probably have moved out,” Lizotte said.

Screen Tested

BY CAROLYN SHAPIRO

Kaitlynn and Ian Donahue at their lake house in North Hero

Kaitlynn and Ian Donahue wanted a second home close to Lake Champlain that they could use to get away, host friends or rent out for extra income. Starting the search in late summer last year, they expected to deal with limited options in the tight market and high asking prices, even for buildings in terrible condition.

The Milton couple didn’t expect that millions of television viewers would end up watching them during the process.

The Donahues star in an episode of the popular HGTV cable series “House Hunters” that aired April 13. The 30-minute show follows home buyers as a real estate agent helps them find the perfect property, usually touring three places that meet their criteria before they pick a top choice.

aspirational-but-attainable appeal of “House Hunters,” Ryea said. “It’s just that American dream kind of thing.”

Kaitlynn, 34, works as a speech language pathologist for South Burlington High School and coaches the varsity girls’ cross-country team. Ian, 36, is a mechanical engineer for a Burlington-based heating, ventilation and air conditioning consulting company that designs systems primarily for

“House Hunters” producers reached out via email to the Donahues’ agent, Leland Ryea III of Rockstar Real Estate Collective in Essex, and asked if he had any enticing clients who would want to appear on screen. “We encourage you to apply,” they wrote.

He had shown the Donahues three or four houses at that point and thought they reflected the concept of the show.

“Lake Champlain always makes a good story,” Ryea said. “Everybody wants to live on the lake, especially if you live in Vermont, so that was a big part of it. I think that Ian and Kaitlynn are both very normal people, which allows consumers to relate.”

Their normalness fit the

commercial clients. They met in college in upstate New York, bought their house in Milton in 2014 and married three years later.

The Donahues said they were prepared to spend up to $500,000 for a year-round second house — not a camp or unheated cabin — with lake access. They’ve done major renovations to their Milton home themselves, and Kaitlynn hoped to avoid that with the new abode.

They often looked at available houses as a hobby but got serious when they saw an opportune listing on the Zillow real estate website. The Donahues left an online inquiry and heard back from Ryea, who showed them the property.

Colorful Shades of Spring

READY FOR YOUR NEW BATH?

The house was in terrible condition yet cost a bundle despite that, and it wasn’t near the water, Ian said. But the couple immediately connected with Ryea. They discovered that they lived minutes from each other in Milton. Ryea and his wife have a lake house near Sand Bar State Park, where they like to hang out with family and friends, just as the Donahues envisioned.

“He was so laid-back and chill,” Kaitlynn said of Ryea. “There was absolutely no pressure whatsoever to decide on anything. It was almost like we were friends, like we had been friends for a while.”

Ian appreciated that Ryea had walked through that first house before the buyers arrived and alerted them to possible concerns, he said. “I thought that was a very smart move by him,” Ian continued. “He’s honest, and it’s not a quick-sale-type thing.”

Ryea still has no idea why the “House Hunters” producers came to him. He asked other local agents if they received similar solicitations. None had, he said.

Ryea called Ian first to float the idea of house hunting in front of a national audience. Ian hesitated. “I didn’t have any desire to be on TV,” he said.

Then Ian called Kaitlynn, who had the opposite reaction: “I absolutely want to be on TV!” she recalled telling him. “Yes, let’s do it.”

The Donahues and Ryea had separate initial interviews with the show’s producers over Zoom and several “screen tests” over video calls. They filled out reams of paperwork and answered questions about themselves, their marriage, their finances and their home desires.

Ryea said he knew the Donahues would make the cut. Not only was their home quest unique and compelling, but they also have dynamic personalities and a palpable rapport, he said.

Kaitlynn brought enthusiasm and loved aspects of each prospective home, Ryea said. “And Ian knew what to look out for. If there was something concerning, he treated it very much like an inspector.”

Representatives of Discovery, the entertainment behemoth that owns HGTV, declined Seven Days’ request for an interview with a “House Hunters”

producer or behind-the-scenes information about the Vermont episode. Before his interview with Seven Days, Ryea shared the company’s restrictions on the details he could reveal about the show.

“House Hunters” employs a classic reality TV format, shadowing home buyers as they walk through properties and cutting to on-camera revelations about their impressions of the places they see.

“Being in front of the camera is a very odd experience,” Ryea said. “To treat a camera like a person is very, very difficult, especially in the beginning. I think during the course of many hours — and I won’t say how many, but we’ll say a day’s worth of recording — you become comfortable.”

Ryea, 37, had some performance chops going in. He and his wife, who are expecting their first child in June, play classic rock, pop and country music in the band Before This Time.

He and the Donahues said the warmth of the director and crew from Pie Town Productions, which creates “House Hunters” for HGTV, helped ease any awkwardness. After long days of filming and chatting during downtime

while the team set up shots, they consider them friends.

The Donahues received specific instructions about how to appear on camera, down to the clothes they wore: no bright colors, no patterns, no logos.

“Ian and I had to go out and basically buy a whole new wardrobe,” Kaitlynn said. “We would lay out all of our options. Our director would come and say, ‘Yes, no, no, no, yes, no, yes.’ We kept all our receipts. It was actu ally astounding how many restrictions there were.”

The director encouraged them to act naturally and do what they typically do. They had to reshoot a scene when Ian came home from work while Kaitlynn was emptying the dishwasher. She greeted him, and he responded, with uncharacteristic enthusiasm, “Can I help you with the dishwasher?”

They laugh about it now. “It’s my favorite story,” Kaitlynn said.

They also had to voice their thoughts about everything they noticed as they walked through houses — the weird color of a ceiling fan and the stains on a bedroom carpet. Ian’s sense of humor came out when, for example, he dryly commented on the big windows surrounding an area for a hot tub in one house.

Cookie, their 8-year-old shih tzu-bichon frise mix, appears in several scenes, too.

“The feeling I had when it ended, I was so sad, knowing that I would never see these people again,” Kaitlynn said. “It was such an amazing experience, far beyond what I think we both ever imagined.”

After editing of the show wrapped, the producers told Ryea they’d like to work with him again if other clients would make worthy “House Hunters.” Buyers who are interested in having a TV crew chronicle their search should get in touch, he said.

By the end of their episode (spoiler alert!), the Donahues had found their perfect property: a three-bedroom, three-bathroom house on a private road in North Hero for $353,000. It does need work. The couple has already ripped out and started to redo a bathroom and has plans to replace the siding.

“It felt like a home to us immediately,” Ian said. “We could immediately picture ourselves living in this location.” ➆

A home goods store in St. Johnsbury is a hub for community and secondhand style

BY SUZANNE PODHAIZER

Saving up for a treasured object is a childhood rite of passage. Some kids stash cash to purchase snazzy bikes. Others dream of having the coolest pair of kicks at school. When Maggie Gray was in third grade, she pocketed her allowance money until she could bring home a deep-green steamer trunk — with cute, floral-patterned wallpaper lining the interior — from her favorite antique store.

Gray grew up in Rutland and, at a young age, began asking her mother to take her to the antiques store in Mendon so she could scan the furniture, dishes and knickknacks.

“I’ve been obsessively rearranging my bedroom and decorating since I was 8 or 9,” she said. “It’s always been a way to clear my mind and focus my hyperactivity.”

Until just a few years ago, Gray viewed her interest as a hobby, not a career path. Now, she’s the owner of Haven, a small, impeccably curated used furniture and home goods store in St. Johnsbury, which she opened in December 2021.

Her mission? “I want to show people that you can buy secondhand and it doesn’t have to be dingy,” Gray said. With a strong Instagram presence and an ever-changing selection of funky and elegant furnishings and artwork, Haven has quickly become a cornerstone of St. Johnsbury’s newly thriving downtown.

Haven’s products reflect Gray’s a ection for fashionable furnishings and her penchant for cleanliness. Glass-topped tables are polished to a sheen. Light streams in through windows that look out on Eastern Avenue, gleaming o dozens of pieces of glassware displayed on minimalist wall-mounted shelving. The room feels spacious and uncluttered, but there’s a lot to see.

Recent treasures included a white ceramicand-glass French press with matching mugs; a metal rack resembling a spiral staircase suspending six smoked wine glasses in midair around a decanter; petite crystal salt cellars; and a wooden-handled aluminum ice bucket with penguins in relief marching around the perimeter.

In other corners of the store, shoppers might find a mirror framed with live-edge log slices, a Gustav Klimt co ee-table book, a framed print of Edward Gorey’s “Bacchanalia” or vintage hi-fi audio equipment. Gray used to sell LPs, too, but stopped when a record shop opened up nearby.

Emily Maclure, co-owner of the Genny general stores in Craftsbury and Albany, is a “huge fan of Haven,” she said, and not just because it’s where she found the hutch for her dishes, a table and chairs, and various art pieces. “Maggie sees the importance of community building,” Maclure said. “Collaboration seems to be her superpower. She wants to see other businesses flourish.”

In fall 2021, Gray was the first business owner to sign a lease in Haven’s building, a new construction down the street from Catamount Arts that combines storefronts with a ordable housing. The building is also home to Cosmic Cup Café, the Printshop by Jackie Fox, Art & Joy, and St. Johnsbury Academy’s adult education program.

Starting this month, Gray is furthering Haven’s community focus with the

B e s p o k e g a t h e r i n g s t h a t i n s p i r e c o n n e c t i o n I n t e n t i o n a l l y c u r a t e d l o c a l p r o v i s i o n s , l i b a t i o n s , d e l i c a c i e s + d é c o r , s e l f - c a r e a c c o u t e r m e n t s , g i f t s , a c t i v i t i e s + r e s e r v a t i o n s r e a d y f o r y o u r e n j o y m e n t

I WANT TO SHOW PEOPLE THAT YOU CAN BUY SECONDHAND AND IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE DINGY.

MAGGIE GRAY

Final Friday artist series. The last weekend of each month, from April through August, an artist will exhibit work at her shop. First up: ceramics by Utah-based artist Alyce Carrier.

The art, and the maker, will be celebrated during St. Johnsbury’s recurring Final Fridays events. Haven will host an open house with natural wines, nonalcoholic beverages and “antipasto-style snacks” catered by Alexis Hurley’s cooking business, Agatha Italian.

It took Gray some time to find her path and her community. After finishing high school in Rutland, she tried a stint as an English major at the University of Vermont, but it didn’t stick. “Showing up to class was a real challenge,” she recalled. “I dropped out, went back and dropped out again.”

She tried out a different school, in Boston, but struggled with the high

cost of living. So she headed west to Salt Lake City, which she’d heard was less expensive. There she managed the local American Apparel store and took classes at a community college. Later, Gray landed at Bastyr University’s Seattle campus, pursuing a degree in nutrition with a minor in culinary skills. She graduated in 2019 at age 28.

Longing to return to Vermont, Gray lined up a job at Revolution Kitchen, a vegetarian restaurant in Burlington, starting in February 2020. We all know what happened then.

Getting by on COVID-19 unemployment money during lockdown, Gray floated from her parents’ home to an apartment in Montpelier. When the pandemic funding dried up, she found an affordable spot in St. Johnsbury with plenty of garage storage.

That’s when Gray truly “started hoarding antiques,” as she put it. By March 2021, she had a large enough collection to start an online business.

She registered with the secretary of state and created an Instagram account. Haven was born, and the storefront soon followed.

Thanks to many “supportive friends,” she said, her following grew quickly. Because of the reach of social media, Gray was able to sell to buyers all around the state, provided they

were willing to come to the Northeast Kingdom to pick up their purchases.

Nicole Bull, one of Haven’s early customers, discovered the biz on Instagram. “I started following along before the brick-and-mortar existed,” she said. When Bull and her husband bought their first home, in 2022, they didn’t own enough furnishings to fill the space. Gray came to their house for an in-person consultation, took measurements and discussed the couple’s style preferences.

“She would send us images of pieces as they became available, to see if they would fit the bill,” Bull explained. “Maggie has been such a dream to work with.”

How does Gray find the items she sells? Some of the answer is a trade secret, but it’s no mystery that her work involves a lot of driving and muscle. Gray attends auctions and estate sales throughout New England, acquiring items that fit the aesthetic of her store.

Currently, she said, many of her wares are midcentury modern and postmodern, but she’s excited to offer “beautifully designed and eye-catching conversation pieces” from other eras.

“I’m excited about weird medieval stuff,” she added. Victorian? Not so much.

Because sourcing takes so much time, Haven’s storefront is open Friday through Sunday and by appointment. Other days are filled with bidding, moving goods to Gray’s Lyndonville home for cleaning and transporting newly sparkling furnishings to the shop — except for the pieces that Gray falls in love with and keeps for herself.

This combination of roving and nesting perfectly suits Gray’s sometimes restless nature. The acquisition of decorative objects, and the opportunity to lovingly care for them before offering them to customers, holds her attention in a way that other work has not.

“It’s the only thing I’ve ever been focused enough on to dedicate myself to making it tangible and real,” she said.

It will take time before the business turns a comfortable profit, but Haven pays its bills, and Gray said she feels “furniture rich.” She also has a wealth of supporters: her friends and customers, as well as the romantic partner with whom she shares a home.

“I’m not running the shop as a hobby, and there are times that it feels very hard,” Gray said. “But I hope that it will build and grow and eventually be a more sustainable livelihood.” ➆ INFO Haven,

The showroom at Haven in St. Johnsbury

Pitch Perfect

BY KEN PICARD • ken@sevendaysvt.com

A former soccer player and coach now gets his kicks out of making custom furniture

Nathan D’Aversa in his Jonesville showroom

When Nathan D’Aversa first moved to Vermont from New Jersey in 2013, pursuing a career as a furniture maker wasn’t even on his long-term radar. Despite the fact that his father is a carpenter whose interior work includes refinishing and upholstering chairs, “I didn’t have much carpentry skill myself,” D’Aversa said. “I was very much focused on soccer my whole life.”

D’Aversa, 33, grew up in Hunterdon County, N.J., then attended the New Jersey Institute of Technology to play Division I college soccer, with dreams of going pro. But when his professional athletic aspirations failed to materialize, D’Aversa channeled his lifelong love of the sport into coaching. For a few years, he coached club soccer in his spare time while working in Vermont schools helping students with behavioral issues. However, he soon realized he lacked a passion for teaching that he once had for competitive soccer.

So, a few years ago, D’Aversa turned his attention to a different kind of pitch — the kind that gives wood some of its distinctive colors and patterns. He decided to pursue a career building home furnishings out of locally sourced timber.

“I’d always shied away from furniture and woodworking,” he said,

“because that’s what every dude with a beard does.”

After enrolling in a six-week class at the Vermont Woodworking School in Fairfax just to see if he liked it — “I

then searched for a job as a furniture apprentice. Finding none, D’Aversa taught himself how to build stand-alone home furnishings such as tables, chairs, beds, mirrors and dressers. For a time, he worked at Generator in Burlington, experimenting with new designs there before opening his own woodshop.

Today, D’Aversa’s contemporary pieces are sought by homeowners and interior decorators from as far away as California who are drawn to his clean, simple, modern designs. His pieces, which are typically custom-made, blend artistry with functionality.

made a box,” he said dryly — in 2018 D’Aversa got a job at Stark Mountain Woodworking in New Haven. There, he honed his carpentry skills on home furnishings and kitchen cabinetry,

“We all see furniture that makes zero sense. It’s art, and that’s cool,” D’Aversa said. “But I wanted to make nice, in-between furniture that’s something you’re actually going to use.”

In short, D’Aversa wasn’t interested

I’D ALWAYS SHIED AWAY FROM FURNITURE AND WOODWORKING BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT EVERY DUDE WITH A BEARD DOES.

NATHAN D’AVERSA

Furniture by Nathan D’Aversa, including a chair, side table, cabinet, kitchen table, coffee table and mirrors

in building a $5,000 chair that no one would ever sit in.

His first woodshop was in Waterbury “in this beautiful mill house that was hanging over a waterfall,” he said. “It had no business being my first-ever shop, but it was great.”

Despite that locale’s aesthetic appeal, it was off the beaten path. So D’Aversa relocated a few miles east of downtown Richmond two years ago, hoping he’d attract more walk-in traffic along Route 2.

His current woodshop and gallery is still largely unfinished. It’s located in an old, slate gray warehouse that abuts the New England Central Railroad line in Jonesville. The warehouse could be mistaken for a vacant building from outside, except for the North Star Guns shop at one end. Yet D’Aversa is one of several craftspeople who now occupy the old railroad building — mostly, he said, because the rents are so low.

D’Aversa sources all of his

Vermont-harvested wood from the Tree House Hardwoods & Millshop in South Burlington. His preferred wood types are walnut, white oak, maple and cherry. In his showroom, which is as minimalist as his designs, D’Aversa has about a half-dozen pieces on display, all of them sanded very smooth, with few embellishments or extraneous touches.

Those pieces include a round, bleached-maple kitchen table. But as D’Aversa explained, if that look isn’t to his customers’ taste or their existing décor, he keeps swatches on hand for them to choose their preferred wood and finish. He can just as easily make that same table out of ebonized cherry, a process that involves the use of iron acetate, dissolved in vinegar, to darken or blacken the tannins in the wood.

D’Aversa finishes all of his pieces with a hand-rubbed oil polish. He only uses Odie’s Oil, a product that contains no toxic chemicals, solvents or volatile organic compounds. Most of his pieces take him about a week to build and another week to finish. Thus far, D’Aversa

has done no advertising — in part, he said, because he can’t afford it yet. Most of his customers find him through interior designers or his Instagram account, where he posts photos of his designs.

“I like his furniture choices, as they have a timeless look that would fit into lots of different houses and décors,” noted John Handrik, a retail specialist at Tree House Hardwoods. “As a one-man show, he’s taking rough lumber and making classy-looking furniture. That is rarer and rarer these days, where woodworkers tend to compartmentalize and specialize in one aspect of the profession.”

Some of D’Aversa’s more recent pieces, Handrik added, “incorporate leather in a cool way that looks like it will wear into a well-loved baseball mitt as it ages.”

D’Aversa’s pieces aren’t cheap. They range from a wall mirror that sells for $350 to a leather-upholstered sofa that costs $7,400. For now, when he doesn’t have a client’s project in the works, he

produces smaller pieces to minimize material costs.

About a year ago, D’Aversa returned to Generator — as an instructor. Program coordinator Sam Graulty thought D’Aversa might be a good fit for teaching woodworking, which is among the Burlington makerspace’s most popular classes. D’Aversa periodically teaches an introductory course as well as a more advanced class on furniture making.

“It’s been a good outlet for people to have a first foray into woodworking,” Graulty said about the former course. “As an instructor, he’s been great.”

Asked how he developed his approach to furniture making, D’Aversa answered with characteristic minimalism.

“Honestly, I started with stuff that I thought was cool,” he said. “And then it hit me: I have a style. I’ll just keep going with that.” ➆

Instagram.

Pitch Perfect « P.21

Nathan D’Aversa in his Jonesville woodshop