Custom cushions for Vermont farmhouses, ski houses and mudrooms

Snow, then mud, then a gray November

Only one state searches harder for bench cushions than Vermont, and the weather is half the reason.

Burlington averages 87.5 in (222 cm) of snow a year, 21.1 in (54 cm) of it in January, and 152 days at or below 32°F (0°C). Rain or snow falls on 155 days. NOAA counts 58 clear days a year there against 206 cloudy ones, and November and December see just 31% of their possible sunshine.

Then the frost comes out of the ground. Vermont has more miles of dirt road than paved, by the state transportation agency's count, and when the thaw pushes water up through those roads you get mud season. All of it comes in the back door on somebody's boots.

The sun is the gentle part. Burlington's July noon UV Index averages about 7.6, and December's about 0.9. Damp is the quicker enemy: winter glass sweats onto the sill, and the EPA says wet materials should be dried within 24 to 48 hours, before mold gets started.

Big house, little house, back house, barn

The old New England farm was built so the chores could be done out of the weather: big house, little house, back house and barn, joined in one long line. Connected farms like that were most common in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts. The back vestibule where boots came off is where the mudroom comes from, though the word itself only turned up in the mid-1950s.

In the villages, Greek Revival was the fashion from about the 1830s through the 1860s, with gable fronts, cornice returns and deep-set windows that ask for a seat. Add converted barns with long built-in benches, and ski houses and condos where the bench by the door takes wet boots all winter.

Old benches were built for the room, not for a catalog, and they rarely agree with themselves from one end to the other. Measure both ends and both diagonals, as in how to measure a bench for a cushion, then sketch it in the bench cushion builder. For the mudroom and entryway bench and the window seat, the hubs have the rest.

What does your bench measure at the left end, and at the right?

A straight welt on an old bench

A straight welt is a kind of honesty. On an antique bench it is also a ruler: the eye runs along it and notices every place the cushion wanders. So cut the cushion to the bench and let the piping tell the truth.

I once piped a Greek Revival window seat in crisp white against a sill that hadn't seen fresh paint since Coolidge was in office. It looked like a bandage, dear. Now I take the welt from the wood or the oldest paint in the room: tan linen against pine, navy against a gray-blue sill, self piping on a busy ticking stripe. Piping costs nothing extra and can come from any chart. Matching, contrast or none walks through the choice.

Vermont colors are already outside the window: barn red, sugar-maple orange, spruce green, February gray. Pick one of them, not all four.