Maine Visitor centers can boost business - Bangor Daily News

Visitor centers can boost business - Bangor Daily News

Travel, tourism businesses have new resource in BDN - Bangor Daily News

Maine Travel, tourism businesses have new resource in BDN - Bangor Daily News

Cherry Dip Cottage Blog Has a new Home

Hi, please go to our new web site CherryDipMaine to view our updated Blog.
Thanks,
Matt, Nicole & Charlie Zito

More Rocks

We have many rock projects going on at the house, including a granite retaining wall, clutured stone, and stone stacking walls.

Ice Skating Pond

New Railings

Our railings for the steps and the sides were installed last week. Jack a local artist made them by hand. The railings are brushed iron in a rust look with metal wiring running vertically similar to the wire on sailboats. The metal wire gives the railings a nautical feel.

We still have to do all our staining and painting in the house but we decided to leave this project for the spring.

Chainsaw Nicole & Matt the Logger

Nicole Chainsawing her wood.

Baths, Chainsaws and a new Office

We are adjusting nicely to our new home. Nicoles whirlpool bathtube is bubbling and the 2nd floor bathroom has 1 sink left to be connected. The basement office area is finished other than than cultured stone I need to place on the chimnney and the radiant heat flooring that needs some plumbing work.

Nicole bought her self a nice little lightweight Echo chainsaw under the sage guidance of Maine woodsmen Marvin Moore (our awesome neighbor). She just loves her wood. Our woodstove cranks 24-7. She aka "hot rods" the stove.

Oh yeah...Marvin has been dropping off "trees" at the house which he has cut down on land clearing jobs the last 2-weeks. We should have enough wood for next two years. All we need now is one of those little Kubota or John Deere tractors and we will fit right in up here.

Shower, Sink, Dishwasher and more

Ahhhhhhhh.... all the comforts of a real home are starting to be installed.

We are working on the office downstairs, framing out the walls and ceiling. We hope to get our office area set up by next week as Matt is slowly going crazy with his make shift office in the bedroom. You'll notice we still have alot of sawdust and "stuff" everywhere. We hope that all our contractors will be out of the house by mid-February. We can then organize "SIT DOWN" and reflect on our amazing project.

In the House + Cultured Stone

We moved into the house today. We are officially out of the condo in Winter Harbor. It has been 4 months to the date today, since we struck the first nail. We are very proud of our project and we look forward to lounging in our new house before we head to Florida in March. The cultured rock project continues on. Our "artistic" hand rail and 1st floor railing system will be installed soon. A local welder/artist "Jack" is working on completing a brushed metal railing masterpiece. This we hope along with the stone chimmney will be a focal point of the house. More pics to come....

The move & Matt's Rocks

Hi, everyone! We managed to start moving into the house yesterday. We still don't have plumbing or hot water but we are very close. We are still using the condo in Winter Harbor to shower and other things. We hooked up our WiFi and now surf in the house at speeds around 900K, not bad for satellite Internet.

The siding was completed. We are now focusing on hooking up the automatic generator, finishing the plumbing and heating and completion of the wiring.

We started the masonry on the facia of our chimmney using cultured rock. The cultured rock stacks like bricks and you use a mortar/cement mix to adhere the rocks to the chimmney. The chimmney runs up through all three floors so this is a big project. I've added some pics here so you can see. This is one my projects so I am sure it will be slow going. It is very time consuming. Mark Richmond our mason is assisting me on the third floor so we can finish this area first as the chimmney goes through our master bedroom.

Siding, Satellites, Appliances

The siding is almost finished. There is one siding section left facing the water which should be completed by this week. Nicoles appliances came in and our propane tank was delivered. Check out the research center in the backyard. We've got 3 satellites. Our new plumber started work on Friday. We hope to move into the house soon.

First Maine Christmas

We spent our first night in the house on Christmas Eve. We cranked the wood stove up to 60 degrees. We were surprised, considering the wood stove is the only heat source currently in the house. We opened presents on Christmas Day and of course Charlie enjoyed the most.

Siding continues, poly-urathane of the floors continues and our plumber is scheduled to start the plumbing late next week. Our new goal is to be in the house by January 15th. As soon as we finish the floors we can bring in our appliances. The propane tank (our fuel source) comes on Wednesday.

We got HughesNet satellite Internet hooked up yesterday. We went with the commercial line and we are receiving speeds of 935k-1.5MB download which is equivalent to the DSL we had here in our condo. There is no cable or DSL high speed Internet at or near Robbins Point Road.

Nicole's Dishnet satellite TV is installed next week as well. Our back yard will soon look like a government research center.

The house is really coming around and we are very pleased. We can't wait to move in.
Happy New Year!

The Siding

A 30-sec clip of our siding. Check it out. More video to come in 2007.

Siding Started, Plumbing & Heating on Deck

We just started the siding of the house. Actually we have Danny & Mark working on this job as Nicole and I decided it would be best to allow the carpenters to work on this project. We hoped to be in the house by Christmas but this will not happen as we have to hire another plumber/heating crew. We had some, lets say "creative differences" with the first crew so we are now on back order with hiring another crew.

My "rocks" came in today and I'll pick them up next week. I am looking forward to working on the chimnney. Wait to you see my "cultured stoned chimnney.

We are finishing up the floors. We sanded all floors last week and coated with a poly-oil base to protect the sanded finish. The spruce looks great now.

Oh yeah....if you didn't already know we built the house for 3 months without electricity. Well we had a gas generator that ran the saws but thats all. The guys out front are hooking up our electric.

Danny our finish carpenter built an awesome tub base for Nicoles whirlpool bath/combo on the 2nd floor. The tub base he made is beautiful. He did a great job. Danny is doing all the inside trim in the house as well.

First Snow in Maine

We took some pics of the first big snow storm in ME. The house siding will start going up later this week, so look for more pics of the outside actually being completed. Yeapeee!

Lost Camera Found

Well we finally found our camera that was missing for 2+ weeks. Here are some pictures we took in the last 2-days. Much is getting done. Electricity going in and interior work including finish carpentry being completed.

Our friends from Ouray Colorado (Craig, Maureen, Marley & Gertey) came to visit us for a few days. Maureen even swung the hammer. Look out!