Waterville Valley

In 2021 after selling our new build near Sunapee, NH, I searched throughout NH and VT for something to work as a ski house and rental. I settled on a 3-bedroom townhome attached to 7 other units with a great location right on the shuttle bus to the mountain. The 1980s build needed updating, but we weren’t sure how much work to put into it. Joe Molloy from Scituate, who had worked on 2 other homes for us, luckily loves going to NH and did a fantastic job. We painted all the kitchen and bathroom cabinets and even did a special painting technique on the old counters to epoxy them and make it look like marble. 

Another big impact came from hiring Becky O’Toole of The Pink Frame to paint a very large canvas. Becky was open to coordinating her paintings colors with the other blue tones I chose for the kitchen and walls in the great room. Then, in the bedrooms I chose Hale Navy by Benjamin Moore and painted myself large canvases of art – they came out ok but were not nearly as good as Becky’s.

This was our first experience not buying a single-family home and owning with an HOA. It turned out to not be the best match for our family.  They did not want us to rent the property, even to friends. But the main lesson is that, while we did a building inspection on our unit and hired a lawyer to read the 70-page HOA documents and financial statements, we were still surprised to learn we had to pay $3,000 in our first year to replace windows in other units. Then, it seemed likely that we would have a huge $25,000 bill from the HOA for siding.  

While we were encountering many issues with the build, sale and timeline of moving into our new family home we knew we couldn’t sell the townhome. But once we moved in, we decided we would try to switch to a better location in NH without the hassles of that HOA. I had already done the research and knew a bigger, better place with a stable, well-managed HOA was available at a better ski mountain. The offer was accepted and our Waterville home sold in a weekend. 

Photo Credits: Danielle Robertson Photography