In his book, Your Engineered House, Rex Roberts described one type of home that he called the “lost” house. It is a place to get away from it all that is not too far away, and it should be much more than a little shack in the woods.
The house at 37 Fern Hill Road is just such a place. Just under 2 hours from Boston, the house makes a perfect weekend getaway. But it is also fully equipped for full-time year-round living. In the fact, the current owner lived there for over 20 years.
Here are some excerpts from Roberts’ book, explaining what he meant -
"Getting away from it all" ranges, architecturally, all the way from providing for an occasional week-end to taking care of full time living. Because of the variety of demands included in the concept of getting away from it all, the boards, stones, and machines must be competent for all occasions, but adaptable to your mood.
Most people have something of a problem in deciding what they really want the lost house to do. They start out by saying, well, let's toss up a little shack in the woods where we can get away from it all for a couple of weeks in the summer. Having begun this way, they're hooked. They want to get away from it all for a spring week-end, then for a couple of winter week-ends, and then of course there's that trip to look at the fall foliage. Soon their sturdy friends discover the place and want to borrow it for a winter week of skiing. All of a sudden the little shack in the woods is neither large enough nor warm enough.
In the not-very-extreme case, the owners of the little shack in the woods find that with changes in family, occupation, and finance, they want to live there all the time. They regret that the money they've been putting into the place still hasn't made it suitable for full-time survival.
