Camps feel like a uniquely Maine thing. I know cottages, chalets, cabins and other getaway spots essentially amount to the same thing but in Maine we call them camps. As soon as you say camp, it brings up visions of a ramshackled home built in a slightly haphazard way over several generations. People used whatever materials they had on hand for upgrades and repairs so nothing really matches. It’s a mess but in a beautiful way.

That was what our home in Maine looked like when we first bought it. It was our camp on the lake. The smaller, original cottage had been added to over the years without any real sense of design or cohesiveness. What was once likely an outside porch along the lakeside of the house had been enclosed obscuring views of the lake from the main part of the home. The narrow, awkward stair case in the middle of the house didn’t help. The whole camp was covered in vinyl siding and a series of long forgotten satellite dishes dotted the roof.

The attached deck had a bench seat along the outer edge. While great in theory and convenient at times, it left a large gap underneath that clearly was not up to code. The first thing my father did after we moved into the house was add a wooden barrier along the bottom of the bench so his young granddaughters would not fall to their death.

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