A town with a lake in every corner
More than a tenth of Wakefield is water. That shapes the houses, and it shapes the stone work.
- Lovell Lake, with Sanbornville at its west end
- Great East Lake in the southeast, shared with Maine
- Province Lake in the far north, on the Effingham line
- Balch Pond and Belleau Lake on the east side, draining toward Maine
- Pine River Pond and Horn Pond
The side you see from the water
A Wakefield lake house gets seen from the water as much as from the road. On that side you get the tall part of the foundation, the deck posts and the steps down to the shore.
Natural stone veneer covers the gray concrete and turns the posts into what look like stone piers. Rounded fieldstone suits older camps. Squarer cut granite suits newer houses with cleaner lines. Kevin can talk through both before anything gets ordered.
Year round homes off the water
Not every Wakefield house is on a lake. Plenty of year round homes sit along Route 16, Route 109 and the roads between the villages. On those, the stone work is usually closer to the road: an entry, the front of the foundation, porch columns, or steps from the driveway.
Facing only the front of the foundation with stone, and turning it a short way around each corner, is a common way to get the look without covering the whole house.
Wakefield Corner and the older villages
Wakefield Corner, the original town center, is a hilltop village of old buildings, including the Wakefield Inn, built in 1804. Union is home to Heritage Park and its railroad museum, and Sanbornville sits on Lovell Lake.
On an old house in one of these villages, the stone job is often a porch. When an old porch gets rebuilt on new piers, natural stone on those piers keeps it in step with the house. A new foundation under an old ell is the other common one.
Two watersheds, same rules for stone
The north half of Wakefield drains to the Saco and the south half to the Piscataqua. Either way, a lot of water moves through this town, and some of it runs down the side of a house.
For stone veneer the rules do not change. Keep the bottom course up out of the ground. Flash above it wherever a roof, deck or window can dump water. Leave water a way to drain out from behind the stone.
From the dock to the trim
Down at the shore the work turns to stone steps and flagstone walkways to the water. Up by the house it might be a patio or a fieldstone wall. And if the trim and siding need it, Jones Legacy paints too. Routes 16, 109 and 153 all run through town, so every corner of Wakefield is an easy drive from Ossipee.
