The Addition to Our Home in Athens, Vermont

This may seem a strange section to a web site originally set up for our cattery but there is a connection. We will get to that soon. This story used to be on a family web site that was lost when AOL shut down their customer web servers

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Our Vermont home started out as a cabin in the woods built by my father, Gerald Pugh, Ph D, back in 1937. The land came from a sheriff's sale and amounted to $6 per acre. Not really a low price for that year in history. The cabin was designed as a Swedish farmhouse circa 1750. We had no electricity back then. A great hideaway but not very good as a full time home. We decided to finish the plans that my parents were never able to complete and build an addition to the camp.

My dad left behind a portfolio of the original drawings for the camp including the planned addition. Even though we had no electricity the construction included wiring should the lines ever be extended into Athens. That happened just before World War 2. I visited an outdoor museum of Swedish houses in Stockholm and found the house that my dad fashioned our camp after. Even the size and glazing of the windows were the same. The one exception is that the Swedish building has a roof made of sod. That was in the works but the war spoiled that project.

Original plans for the addition called for a kitchen, family room and two bedrooms. By the time our blueprints were finalized we had all that but about double the size, an upstairs, balcony and an additional bathroom. Did I mention that a bathroom was included in the 1937 plans but it was an additional room at the end of the house. Our water supply is gravity fed, a necessity if you really want running water and don't have the electricity to run a pump.

Let's get started. The concept is done and it's time to push the shovel into the . . . What! LEDGE?? Now I know why the addition was never begun.

Preparing the foundation and basement begins on the next page.

Page Revised 16 February 2012
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