Wise Old House

A few weeks ago, I decided to find out how Nantucket’s Historic Commission had created their twelve commandments of exterior paint colors. My mission first...

Three years ago I wrote a book about furnishing my Nantucket house on eBay. That’s right. I’d bought an antique house on Pine Street and decided that the best...

Marine Home Center’s island location is what General Manager Ron Foster euphemistically called “operationally challenging.“ On a good day loading up the store’...

It’s Saturday of Memorial Day weekend and the Marine Home Center will be closed for the next two days. Everyone who came up to open their houses for the summer...

David Barham at the Unitarian Meeting House
This Saturday, May 24, at 4pm, David Barham, architect, will engage lucky listeners with an illustrated account of the five-year journey of discovery that was...

If my house were anywhere else than Nantucket, it probably wouldn’t have struck me that my shed door needed a porthole. For any practical purpose, it didn’t....

New home starts down/ renovations and additions up: Assessing the damage
Two weeks ago I had a conversation with one of Nantucket’s general contractors that went the way those conversations go. We were discussing the front exterior...

In my Wise Old House column, I have spent the summer blissfully ignoring the crisis of historical preservation on Nantucket. I’ve rationalized this...

As Director of the Nantucket Historical Association, Bill Tramposch spends most of his working hours with people, which is why, when day is done, he needs a...

by Sherry Lefevre
In vacation houses bedrooms are for sleeping or reading in bed (or whatever else you do in bed) but that’s about it. No one’s going to hang out in a bedroom...

by Sherry Lefevre
Before the motor vehicle inspection station occupied its new digs on the Polpis Road it was hidden mid-island, up, over and behind the third building on the...

Part I
In Shimmo, where my parents had a house for thirty years, only one of our neighbors was smart enough to grab and drag a waterfront house before the wreckers...