Shake It Up Corinth family’s wild shingling, color scheme create unique home

When Sue Ann Gaitings gives directions to her house in Corinth, she’ll tell you to go over a couple of bridges and take a left. From there, she says, you can’t miss it.

She’s not kidding. You really can’t miss it. Nor would you want to.

From the road, the house is a kaleidoscope of color – shingles of red, yellow, orange, three shades of green and a vibrant sky-blue fit together in a giant mosaic on the whimsical, turreted structure. But as you get a little closer, you realize these aren’t regular shingles. They’re each hand cut in shapes of hearts, circles, diamonds, turtles and fish, and then they’re individually stained.

It’s a far cry from the simple, white clapboard houses that are so common in Maine, and that’s exactly how Gaitings and her husband, Bruce Harrod, wanted it.

“It evolved over years of watching houses become more homogenized and impersonal,” said Harrod, who has lived on the streamside property for the last 30 years.

Harrod was passing through Corinth three decades ago when his truck broke down. He didn’t intend to stay, but he needed money to cover the mechanic’s bill. The Oklahoma native started working at a gas station, and one thing led to another.

“I got stranded here and never left,” Harrod said. “Everyone was so friendly, so I just stayed.”

He moved to a small camp on the Kenduskeag Stream and began working as a carpenter. In the meantime, Gaitings, a Massachusetts native, had moved to San Francisco and then returned to the East Coast. One of her friends from California had retired to Orono, and she thought Gaitings and Harrod would make quite a pair. The friend was right. The two hit it off immediately. He said he would write to her every time it snowed, which was often. They married shortly after.

“You never know where you’re going to land,” Gaitings said, staring out one of the bay windows in the addition. “I never thought I’d live in Corinth, Maine. When you know it’s right, it happens fast.”

After they got married, they moved the camp away from the water so they could build a two-story addition with room for her art studio and his library. Their children, Johanna and Quanah, now 5 and 6, soon followed, making another addition a necessity. Harrod went on to become a nurse, but he still loved carpentry.

“It’s nice,” he said. “It’s actually a compilation of everything I’ve already done. … This is what I do now instead of going to Vegas on my vacation or buying lottery tickets.”

When they added on, the couple could’ve done something predictable, but that wasn’t their style. They preferred whimsical turrets, roofs with different patterns, and traffic-stopping color – not that there’s much traffic in their neck of the woods.

“The kindergarten kids come by and they love the colors,” said Gaitings, who is an artist and stay-at-home mom. “The neighbors do, too.”

Last Halloween, Gaitings bundled up Quanah and Johanna and took them trick-or-treating. When they told the neighbors where they lived, their response was, “Oh, you live in that house.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it. Never,” said Jeff Dow of Dow Shingles and Shakes, which is located at the end of their road in Corinth. “It’s definitely one of a kind.”

Dow has supplied custom cedar shakes for some of the grandest homes on the East Coast, including Martha Stewart’s horse ranch in Bedford, N.Y. Though many customers do “fancy cuts” – often diamonds or scallops – with Dow’s standard shingles, few have gone to quite the same lengths as Gaitings and Harrod.

They spent the better part of last fall and winter cutting each shingle on their home with a 20-year-old jigsaw. Some became hearts. Others were diamonds or scallops. Harrod also designed mosaic fish, made up of many different shingles, as well as swimming and standing turtles. When Harrod hiked the Appalachian Trail, his “handle” (or trail name) was Turtle.

“This is outside-of-the-box thinking,” Gaitings said. “Everything we do turned out different. I like things askew. I don’t like everything matching.”

Each section of the roof has asphalt shingles in different patterns and colors. The trim over each door and each of the house’s 63 windows is unique. In some sections of the house, Harrod would ask the children which color shingle should come next and he would follow their orders. It may not match, but it works.

“I love the whole idea,” said David Bessler, an old friend of Harrod’s who helped with the shingling. “I like to do different things. I do just about everything in the building trades, and this helps keep things interesting in a building project.”

Bessler appreciated the freedom and creativity that the project allowed, and he loved the house’s sense of play.

“We called it The Magic Castle,” he said. “I love it. I like color. It’s hard to find words really to describe it.”

For Gaitings, it only takes one word to describe her feelings about her family’s home.

“It was joyful – that’s how it felt for me – it was joyful.”

Kristen Andresen can be reached at 990-8287 or kandresen@bangordailynews.net.