All About Us and 15 Gloria Road
Twenty-seven years ago when we bought this house, we bought a location we loved and a house with potential. Over these years Fred – a carpenter – has transformed the house, room by room, to what is today our warm, comfortable, functional and beautiful home. The location, overlooking our back woods and Pentucket Pond, remains what we love most.
I’m the gardener – ten years ago Fred built me my potting shed, complete with running water off the irrigation system – and gardening over the years in this yard has brought me a sense of peace and tranquility. Fred has often said that when we buy a shrub we should put it in a barrel on wheels…how many times I’ve said to him “Honey, that shrub would look much better over here, don’t you think?” Fred’s a good shrub mover, too. Over the years, the gardens – always in bloom except under a foot of snow – have come to enjoy spring flowering bulbs and shrubs, rhodies (at last count about 19) clematis (at last count about 8), daylilies (can’t count that high), peonies, hostas, astilbes, chrysanthemums, black-eyed susans, etc. Even a pyrocanthus espaliered against the front of the shop. Our prize tree is a mimosa, or silk, tree: its beautiful pink blossoms come each year from July to October and bring us the hummingbirds.
We raised three kids in this modest home: they enjoyed having their own “apartment” downstairs. Originally an in-law apartment, we transformed it into two large bedrooms, a full bath, a little sitting room, and a utility room housing the washer and dryer…which the kids were taught to use at an early age. (When we sent our young son off to camp one summer, he told us that he had had to teach all of the other kids how to do their wash!)
Here are some of the special things that we’ve done to this home over the years:
• A 12 X 24 sunroom was added onto the back of the house, affording us the view of our private back yard, the woods and the pond - right from the kitchen sink.
• At that time we transformed the living room, kitchen (and sun room) with solid oak cabinets and paneling and a new floor-to-ceiling fireplace…and chimney.
• The three small bedrooms upstairs eventually became one extra large master bedroom with a nice big closet for each of us.
• Fred built his carpenter’s shop (16X24) about twenty-five years ago out on what was then the edge of the woods. (My mom, when she was suffering from dementia, used to sit in the sun room and say “what a cute little house – who lives there, Linda?”)
• The shed (about 14 X 24) which includes my potting shed, was built in 1996 – a place for all the yard equipment and snow blower.
• In the past few years we have replaced all the windows in the house (except for the Anderson windows in the sunroom) with Harvey replacement ones.
• About ten years ago we had the in-ground irrigation system put in – with its own well. It has six zones covering all the gardens and lawn area.
• There is an “invisible fence” around the entire perimeter of the ~2 acres where our Golden Retriever has had wonderful contained freedom – a great place for a dog or two.
• About six years ago we put down new ceramic tile, recessed lighting, and oak trim in the upstairs living area. At that time the bedroom and sunroom had new wall-to-wall carpeting, and the bathroom was updated with new cabinets, new fixtures, including a corian sink, recessed lighting, and oak trim.
It’s been a wonderful house, but the things that we will miss the most are all about living in this location and close to nature: the birds – too numerous to mention – that nest in our trees and live around the pond and feed at our feeders; watching the snowfall at night over the pond with the backyard floodlights on; the family baseball and croquet games in the big yard and the football games on Thanksgiving Day; “turtle day” every year when the turtles come up from the pond to lay their eggs; snowmobiling and skating on the pond in the winter months; having that first cup of coffee on the deck in the warm March sun with the first crocus in bloom; enjoying the silence and privacy of that deck on warm summer evenings; and we’ll miss our good neighbors and this unpretentious neighborhood. If our wonderful “camp” in the Allagash Wilderness of Maine were not an 8-hour drive away, we would choose to stay right here.
Click for 24 additional pictures on this property
History of Georgetown MA,
Information of Georgetown Schools
Link to Live OneLink to aerial view of 15 Gloria Road, click on satellite view for views of pond.
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