Lower Far View

My grandparents bought their property on Sunset Lake in the 1960s. It was a time when a first class stamp was less than a nickel, a gallon of gas was a quarter and you could buy a lakeside cottage for under $5,000. Sunset Lake is our family's watering hole. It is where we go to get our fill -of each other and those endless summer fun filled days. Throughout the years my Grandparent's children, my parents and aunts and uncles, have broadened their summer playgrounds. My parents head up to their ocean view cottage in Maine, my aunt and uncles have permanent summer residences on Lake Ossipee and in Bordeaux, France. But regardless of how far  and wide summer has spread us, we all find ourselves back at The Lake several times throughout the summer. It is a part of how we all grew up and it has become a part of who we are.

My husband and I used to sit on the dock at Lower Far View talking about how fun it would be to own our own cottage. We'd discuss what it would look like, where it would be, what we would do there. It was in the fall of 2006 that our discussions turned real when a property just 'round the bend from my Grandparent's cottage came on the market. The price was right, the work was endless (who doesn't like a project we reasoned) and so we jumped at it. Late that September what was known as the Buxton's Cottages became ours.

That fall was the start of the never ending lakeside cottage property renovation. With two cottages, a barn/garage and bathhouse the property had and still has endless potential. It also didn't have a fully functioning septic system, fresh water (the previous owners used lake water for everything except drinking), safe electric or much of anything else. What the property did have was: tons of pine trees making the half acre lot a virtual blanket of pine needles, sagging walls, strange drop ceilings with the remnants of years upon years of rodent life, old furniture, strange toilets in even stranger places and anything else you might imagine in a 60+ year old  summer cottage.