An Artist’s Lovell Cottage Came With Some Unwanted Guests

It had stood empty for three years, and mice had the run of the place.

Kimberly Crichton's studio in a former barn on her 4 1⁄2-acre property in Lovell Maine
By Sarah Stebbins
Photos by Sean Littlefield
From our February 2025 issue

Shortly after moving into her Lovell fixer-upper, in 2017, Kimberly Crichton realized she was not alone. The 1920s cottage had stood empty for three years after the prior owner passed away, and mice had the run of the place. Crichton set about plugging holes, laying traps, and employing cleaning remedies recommended by neighbors until she’d wrested back control. Folks in town tried to help Crichton find a firewood supplier during her first winter in the house. (To no avail, so she learned to use a chainsaw and felled some trees on the 4 ½-acre property.) Later, when she stopped into Ebenezer’s Pub with an 8-by-10-foot wool carpet in her car she had no idea how to haul into her living room, a bartender and a cook offered to come by after their shift to help. An artist, Crichton came to the area from Portland seeking a quiet place to focus on her mixed-media work. The benevolent neighbors were an unexpected bonus. “The community I’ve found here brings me so much joy,” she says.

Studio

The cottage’s previous owner was a painter with a studio in a former barn (pictured at top) that Crichton now uses. Her practice involves printing gauzy designs onto Japanese washi papers with hand-carved blocks, then layering stitched patterns and dried leaves and flowers on top. She gathers plants from the property’s gardens and flattens them on a wooden press made by Portland commercial printer David Wolfe. Overhead: blossom-like metal pendants from Bridgton’s J. Decor.

a collage by Belfast artist Daniel Anselmi brightens up the whitewashed wall in the cottage's low-ceilinged living room

Living Room

Crichton was so smitten with this collage by Belfast artist Daniel Anselmi, composed of house paint applied over flattened flour and sugar bags, when she saw it in Belfast restaurant Chase’s Daily, she befriended the artist. “Seeing his work made me want to visit and talk with him,” she says. To brighten up the low-ceilinged cottage, Crichton whitewashed most of the walls, including in the paneled living room, where a durable Article sectional fairly floats between the art and a nubby rug from J. Decor installed by her restaurant-worker friends.

Pearly capiz-shell chandeliers from Portland’s Home Remedies read like exclamation points against wood- and brickwork painted to match a new navy woodstove

Fireplace

Pearly capiz-shell chandeliers from Portland’s Home Remedies read like exclamation points against wood- and brickwork painted to match a new navy woodstove, glamming up the living space. “I think the key to living in a small cottage that doesn’t have all the bells and whistles is trying to create these little statements,” Crichton says. A bookworm who works in a library, Crichton created another statement with her artfully arranged tomes.

an openwork maple-veneer pendant by Deer Isle’s Julie Morringello and Kimberly Crichton’s collection
of colorful glass goblets in the fixer-upper's dining room

Dining Room

Greene contractor Tom Martin took down a wall between the dining area and kitchen. Now, more light beams through the rooms, illuminating an openwork maple-veneer pendant by Deer Isle’s Julie Morringello and Crichton’s collection of colorful glass goblets. Displayed atop an antique cabinet filled with her grandmother’s china, the stemware picks up the palette in a seascape by Portland’s Caren-Marie Michel. Behind a table from Nicola’s Home, in Yarmouth, is a colored-pencil work by Portland artist and novelist Kate Russo and a pastel cityscape by Kimberly Convery, also of Portland.

 Carrara marble countertops and navy-painted cupboards in the otherwise white kitchen

Kitchen

To transform the kitchen on a modest budget, Crichton painted the existing mint-colored cabinets navy and enlisted Martin to tweak the layout (incorporating a new refrigerator and stove), swap tomato-red laminate countertops for Carrara marble from Stone Surface, in Naples, and squeeze in a dishwasher where a column of drawers had been. Sculptural pendants supplanted buzzing fluorescent strip lighting. “I like that they have silver linings,” Crichton says. “So much of this house has been about making the most of silver linings.”

Down East magazine, February 2025

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