Old Doors and Windows, Cheap

I’M UPSTATE THIS WEEKEND and made it my business to check out the architectural salvage warehouse operated by the Historic Albany Foundation.

My plan is to replace the screens on my porch with glass to create a year-round sun room, much like my friends Fran and Bob did at their house in Columbia County, N.Y., below.

Bob got the windows at the Historic Albany Foundation — actually they’re mostly French doors — and in just one day, with the help of a carpenter, transformed their screened porch to a glassed-in conservatory.

Arriving late on a rainy Friday, with just half an hour to go before closing, I didn’t have time to root through thousands of square feet of panel doors, multi-paned windows, moldings, sinks and tubs, hardware, mantels, lighting fixtures, etc., but I didn’t see enough of any one kind of window to make the matched set of seven I need.

Still, it’s a great place to know about, and everything is amazingly cheap (old panel doors in good condition for $40, for example).

Albany is not an unpleasant city in which to spend some time. It has a good art museum, a few streets lined with 19th century row houses that rival Brooklyn Heights for beauty, and on Lark, several of the kind of cozy, locally-owned coffee shops that East Hampton ought to have but doesn’t.

Photos by Zoë Greenberg

Adventures in Cottage Living

MAJOR IMPROVEMENTS RECENTLY in my humble East Hampton cottage.

I’ve managed to turn a drab 1930s stick rattan sofa, above, with no cushions, into comfortable seating for my screened porch. All it took was three days wielding a paintbrush (this thing has a LOT of surface area and needed priming), while listening to songs I didn’t even know I had on my iPod. That, plus $400 worth of cushions on sale from the Restoration Hardware catalogue have in turn transformed the porch into a second living room. I’m sitting there as I type this, feeling pleased with myself.

But that’s nothing compared with the fact that today, after three months of living without one (inconceivable, I know), I finally had a proper refrigerator delivered. It’s a stainless Frigidaire, and I like it. It’s not the blue Smeg of my dreams, but it’s not bad-looking — exceedingly plain. It’s fairly quiet (I would prefer complete silence, but this is as close as I’m gonna get), and it’s the right size for the space, not a monster.

For almost three months — after buying and quickly returning to Sears a cheapo fridge that drove me crazy with its grunts and groans — I’ve been living with an Igloo cooler and a fridge the size of a hotel mini-bar, with a freezer just big enough for a can of lemonade. I was really tired of all my fresh Long Island farmstand produce falling on the floor each time I opened the door.

I didn’t want to do the Sears/PC Richard route, so two weeks ago, I went to Bob Stevens Appliances, a real appliance store, located in the airport at Westhampton Beach (a safe distance from the runway). I felt I needed to see the things in situ, so I wouldn’t make a second refrigerator mistake, and it appears I have not. Now my vegetables and bottles of Long Island Summer Ale look lost in the depths of 18 cubic feet. I see a trip to the Bridgehampton King Kullen in my future.

I still want the blue, though, so my plan is to paint the lower kitchen cabinets Benjamin Moore’s Sailor Sea Blue, or something like it. This painting thing, once you get in the rhythm, ain’t so bad.

Oh, and the cellar is nearly cleared out of the previous owner’s stuff. Just a few more trips to the dump, and then it will be time to start filling it up with my own stuff.

Deer count, last 24 hours: 4 (a mother and two fawns yesterday, and a really bold one today who came within a few feet of my back door – eyeing the impatiens, I’ll bet).

Bayfront Cottage in Pine Neck for, say, 425K

I LOVE this old-fashioned 3BR cottage in an excellent location in Pine Neck, right on Noyac Bay. Two doors down, smack on the water, there’s a mean little shack, and they’re asking $3mil for it.

This one has a real summer-bungalow feel, though it’s winterized. Ask is 455K but James Keogh, the listing agent (james.keogh@elliman.com), thinks it can be had for 425K or thereabouts — “400 to start the conversation.”

If I could have pulled it off, I would have, but it was a bit beyond my reach. I tried to talk my sister into buying it, so I could at least hang out there, but she didn’t bite.

Here’s what I love about it:

• water views from nearly every window
• the kitchen: roomy, clean, country-ish, and in the right place — at the back of the house, leading to the rear lawn and future porch
• the funky ’40s trim, now painted blue, like the scalloped brackets under the window boxes
• the windows, unique and original, with unusual vertical mullions in the top sash
• it’s very near Foster-Memorial Long Beach Town Park, wonderful for swimming
• the hip, historic town of Sag Harbor is only 2 miles away

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Here’s what would make it more fabulous:

• landscaping
• shutters, to give the windows more presence
• removing the screening from the front entry porch, which faces the road (an exceedingly quiet road, but nonetheless)
• putting a screened porch at the rear of the house, facing the water – duh!
• slamming through the dropped ceilings inside the house and opening them to the roofline to create vaulted ceilings throughout