Richard is a dichotomy. Pippi is both procrastinator, and perfectionist. When I first met him, we’d planned, because of our mutual love of renovating, decorating and wood-working, to do a series of fixer-uppers and flip them. We did ONE. And I had to take a year-long break in Scotland to force the final stages out of him at that! We DO, as you can see on Rural Revivals’ Renos. web-site ( http://rusticrevivals.wixsite.com/ruralrevivals) still harbour hopes of designing and re-doing small country spaces as a part-time hobby, but for the most part we are just concentrating on Blue Belldon Farm. This is because Richard takes 3 times the amount of time needed to do any job/project. Mind you, when they are done, they are done very, very well…
The same can be said for the Dutch Door. Since looking to rent a property in Burnsall Bridge when I first taught in England in 1997, I have harboured dreams of having a Dutch Door in my kitchen the top of which can be thrown open to the rolling meadows and daisy-butterfly summer morns. Perhaps it even goes back further, to when I was 13 and my grandfather McKenzie and I built a small, red, two-stall stable for my pony. He had Dutch doors on it, but with the “X”s facing IN, to which I always objected, as that wasn’t what it looked like in any photos I saw of horses looking over their stable doors! They were made out of quite flimsy plywood, too, and as I progressed from pony to horse, they used to get kicked off in the long cold winters when my poor beasties were bored to death.
When I had my own riding stable in the Ottawa Valley, from 1988-1996, I made sure we had the “X”s facing OUT and that they were a lot stronger to hold the horses in, and the bad weather OUT! They were lovely:
Goldcreek Farm’s Overture with me, age 26. Behind, the “Dutch” stable doors.
Then, I moved to England to teach high school. It was in inner city Leeds, and I knew I’d need to live in the beautiful Yorkshire Dales to compensate for that, so I looked at 3 places to rent about an hour’s bus-ride out. One was in the gorgeous Burnsall Bridge, to which I’ve since returned many, many times . The cottage had a little blue stable door in its kitchen and that was in 1997, and I’ve dreamed of having one ever since!
So now, at Blue Belldon, the Dutch Door Dream begins. I imagined, even by Richard’s m.o. and standards, it would take about 10 days. I mean, it’s only a DOOR, for Gosh sakes! ………It’s been just over 6 weeks.
If you’re interested in the whole process (ie: you or someone you know will make you one), click on each photo to read caption. Otherwise, continue scrolling down!





