Tuesday, June 23, 2009

all to ourselves


Monday, our host for the workshop came and picked us up.  The workshop was at a studio and glass school in Batavia.  She took us there on the back roads, ‘farm to market’ roads we call them down here, through the countryside.  We paralleled waterways, passed old homesteads and farms.  I really loved all the old farmhouses.  Eventually we came to LeRoy where we would be staying during the workshop.


The front of the house.  We never once went through the front.


Lance and Amanda, the owners of Oatka Studio, bought a large victorian on about 3/4 of an acre and are converting it into a bed and breakfast.  They have finished one of the bedrooms upstairs and modernized one of the two bathrooms upstairs.  The house is filled with furniture they have bought, antiques and oriental rugs all pushed into the center of some of the rooms covered with plastic.  They have, so far, managed to remove all the wall paper (every room in the house) and sealed the walls which are waiting for paint.  The previous owners had already modernized the kitchen and added a family room onto the back of the house with a gas fireplace and a concrete deck out the sliding glass doors at the back.  It faces the large backyard which faces a golf course so the view is endless.


The side of the house, the door we used.


Every room upstairs is on a different level.  There are two staircases, the front staircase and the back staircase which comes down into the kitchen.  This is, of course, the one we used.  From the kitchen, you climb the narrow steep stairs, turn left, pass through two rooms to a short hall.  From the hall, the front bathroom is to the right and you step up about four inches.  If you continue down the hall, the front stairs open to the right as well.  Then it’s three steps up to the front sitting room.  Our bedroom was also to the right off the sitting room (another to the left) and it was two steps down.


Lance and Amanda live in the studio which is in an old industrial building in Batavia (about a 20 minute drive from LeRoy).  They have a beautiful little apartment up there separate from the studio.  The students stayed at a motel near the studio so for seven days, we had that huge house all to ourselves.


tomorrow’s installment:  rat roulette


a few more pics:


This little chipmunk scurried around the deck.  He was very shy and this was the only picture I could get of him.  He’s climbing up the pole that the bird-feeder hung on.


More peonies.  So beautiful.


Bunny in the backyard.

11 comments:

  1. Hey, welcome back!

    Wow, what a fabulous house!

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  2. Looks like the perfect retreat from the hectic pace of the conference!
    Feels like I was right there, with those fun pictures!

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  3. It looks great there. My ideal US house. Glad to see you back.

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  4. Thanks for all the welcome backs yesterday and today. It's always fun to see new places and always good to be home again. I just wish it wasn't so friggin' hot. Set a new record yesterday...triple digits in June. That doesn't usually happen til August.

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  5. How lucky you were to stay in that beautiful retreat! It looks so peaceful. However, I'm anxious about your upcoming rat saga!

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  6. The house sounds interesting as well as gorgeous. Funny about houses where the front door is just there for pizza delivery. In in-laws house was like that. No one ever came and went from the front door.

    Cute little chipmonk and bunny!

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  7. A true American home. Gorgeous.

    We have peonies in our yard, a beautiful light pink, and they just finished blooming for the year. First in, first out!

    Pearl

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  8. Oh, I love Peonies, they're so lovely.

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  9. The house reminds me of colonial America.

    Adorable pic of the chipmunk... I really want one as a pet.

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  10. Aren't chipmunks cute? Wonder if his name was Alvin? They bite, you know. My husband is still a little boy at heart and trapped one while we lived in MN. He put it in a hampster cage and as you have already guessed, it escaped. He caught it, intending to cage it again (even though his wife reprimanded him and told him to set the critter free. It bit him and delighted me because he set it free.

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  11. Yes, the chipmunks were very cute. I delighted in watching this one. It would scurry around the deck and flower beds every morning.

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I opened my big mouth, now it's your turn.