By Sara Anne Donnelly
Photos by Mary Lamb
From the Fall 2023 issue of Maine Homes by Down East
“There was nothing hospitable about it, but it spoke to me,” says Mandy Lamb, reflecting on her decision, in 2017, to purchase a former hydroelectric powerhouse in Norridgewock, complete with boarded-up windows, peeling lead paint, and a rotten subfloor. “I could see the potential of the place, fully realized in my head, as soon as I saw it.”
Built in 1904 on the bank of the Sandy River, the powerhouse was decommissioned in 2006 and sat vacant under private ownership until Lamb came along. “I’ve always been drawn to Grange and Odd Fellows halls, utility and community buildings, and waterfront was important to me,” says Lamb, a photographer and commercial fisherwoman. “And you could tell a lot of care was put into the construction of the building.” Perched on a foundation of hulking granite blocks, with soaring 12-over-12 windows arrayed in decorative inset brick panels anchored with stone sills, it is remarkably elegant for a place that began life as a receptacle for heavy machinery.
The earlier removal of a water turbine may have damaged the building’s wood flooring, which Lamb had to clear out, along with a 14-ton generator that was hoisted by crane through a hatch in the roof. Afterward, she and her friends tackled renovations in between her months-long fishing expeditions. They pressure-washed green and orange lead paint from the 19-foot-tall interior walls and ceiling and coated them in gallery white; repaired the subfloor and installed radiant heat beneath a new concrete floor; installed a streamlined kitchen with a refrigerator and freezer tucked beneath marble countertops; and sectioned off a bath with shiplap pony walls. Pros plumbed and wired the place, restored the nine original windows, and hung the pine front doors, salvaged from a 19th-century Biddeford mill.
Furnishings inspired by the Shaker Village in Lamb’s hometown of Harvard, Massachusetts, including a pine kitchen island Biddeford’s Steve Ryder built from century-old timbers that had supported the powerhouse’s generator, a simple, trapezoidal bed Lamb crafted from plywood, and a wall of marigold-painted IKEA cabinetry in the bath, mingle with a smattering of antiques that read like conversation pieces in the spare, open plan. “I like the house on the empty side, but I didn’t want it to feel cold,” Lamb says. “The antiques give it some warmth without the clutter that’s usually associated with that kind of aesthetic.”
Most days, the only sound here is the churn of the river and the birdsong from its overgrown banks. The closest house is barely visible across a broad cornfield. For Lamb, it’s the opposite of her life at sea, on a commercial trawler with three dozen fishers working long, loud, strenuous days. The two almost balance each other, she figures. Except, “I never feel like I have quite enough time at home.”
