Vermont’s real estate roller coaster is slowing down
In Shelburne, ReMaker Furniture refreshes old finds
Mad love for a modular home in Morrisville
Big-time business at Vergennes’ Clock Shop
It’s the season of tricks and treats, but Vermont’s housing market has delivered only the former for years — we’re talking low inventory, sky-high prices and bidding wars. To find a home, folks have had to think both in and outside the box. In this issue of Nest — Seven Days’ quarterly guide to homes, design and real estate — we tour one couple’s MODULAR HOME IN MORRISVILLE, literally built from three boxes. It turned out to be more affordable than the alternatives — and surprisingly comfy. For other house hunters, there are finally some positive REAL ESTATE TRENDS, giving buyers more options and room to negotiate. Prices will still give you sticker shock, so take a moment to recover in a midcentury lounge chair from REMAKER FURNITURE, Gillian Klein’s Shelburne studio that freshens up old furniture finds. Klein would no doubt hit it off with Dave Welch of the CLOCK SHOP in Vergennes, who repairs timepieces of a similar vintage. Hope reading their stories is a treat.
A Break for Buyers ....................... 6
With more inventory on the housing market, Vermont’s real estate roller coaster is slowing down — but sellers still have the upper hand BY
ANNE GALLOWAY
Repair, Restore, Reimagine 10
Gillian Klein of Shelburne’s ReMaker Furniture brings new life to old pieces BY MARY
ANN LICKTEIG
Little Boxes on the Hillside 14
A modular home in Morrisville has a small footprint with big payoffs BY AMY
LILLY
On the Clock 21
Time waits for no man, but Dave Welch makes it run at the Clock Shop in Vergennes
BY STEVE GOLDSTEIN
Peter Dodge and Sally Stetson’s modular home in Morrisville
BY ANNE GALLOWAY
A Break for Buyers
3 On average, that’s
41,184
92 at’s the percentage increase in the sales prices of homes in Vermont in the past decade. at’s the number of new housing units needed by 2030 to alleviate the housing crisis in Vermont.
SOURCE: Vermont Housing Finance Agency
Timothy Daniska is no stranger to the real estate market. He is, after all, the chief lending o cer at Vermont Federal Credit Union.
But despite Daniska’s expertise, he and his wife struggled to buy a home in 2021, at the height of the pandemic real estate market spike in Vermont, when people from out of state were pouring in and snatching up homes sight unseen.
Every day, Daniska scanned listings. When a home in Colchester came on the market, they made an o er first thing in the morning and then negotiated to outbid a potential buyer. By 5 p.m., they had a signed contract.
It was a harrowing experience, even for someone like Daniska whose bread and butter is the real estate business. Thankfully, Daniska said with a sigh of relief, “We’re done with those days.”
Just this year, with the pandemic market craze over and the easing of an inventory crunch that followed in 2023 and 2024, buyers are starting to catch a break.
The days of waived house inspections, online purchases, bidding wars and escalation clauses — a secret bidding process managed by brokers — are done, Daniska said. “We’re getting away from some stupid stu ” that especially hurt first-time homebuyers, he added.
While sellers still have the upper hand and, in many cases, are listing homes at premium prices, those properties are no longer selling in hours. According to Vermont Housing Finance Agency data from the end of June, houses now remain on the market for an average of about three months.
“A balanced market has six months of supply,” said Brian Boardman, a Realtor with the Brian Boardman Group, which is part of Coldwell Banker Hickok & Boardman, based in Burlington. “It’s
Vermont Federal Credit Union chief lending officer Timothy Daniska at the company’s office in South Burlington
still a tight market, but buyers have more choice.”
Mortgage rates are another factor. This year the 30-year rate rose to 7.04 percent, roughly the historic average, from a historic low of 2.66 percent in 2020, as reported by the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, commonly known as Freddie Mac. In midSeptember, rates dropped to between 5.41 and 6.26 percent, Daniska said, potentially accelerating real estate sales.
“It was four years of hell for buyers,” said David Rowell, principal broker at the Peter Watson Agency in Craftsbury. He recalled how one house with seven offers sold for $200,000 more than the asking price during the pandemic.
Now Rowell said he’s seeing more “price improvements,” or discounted properties that were initially listed at a premium. On real estate websites such as Zillow and Redfin, it’s increasingly common to see prices dropping by $15,000 to $30,000 for properties that have been on the market for more than a few months. Armed with information available online, buyers are more discriminating, he said.
REAL ESTATE
sell,” he said. “There is a dearth of contractors, and because of the tariffs on materials they won’t give quotes. Maybe they’ll fit you in the schedule in 2027. Buyers say they can’t make a decision and pull the plug.”
Even so, if you haven’t looked at the market in a while, be prepared for sticker shock. On average, sales prices of homes have gone up 92 percent over the past decade, according to Maura Collins, executive director of VHFA. That means a home that was sold for $300,000 in 2015 is now worth $576,000.
The dramatic increase has been a boon for homeowners, Daniska said. As a result of the pandemic gold rush, Vermont has the most equity-rich homeowners in the nation, according to a report from ATTOM, a real estate data company cited by realtor.com.
KATHY SWEETEN
At a recent open house in Barre, no buyers arrived. That didn’t bode well for the seller, who was asking $295,000 for a house on a quiet side street in the central Vermont city. According to the listing details, the modest threebedroom, 1,538-square-foot home was last purchased in 2024 for $265,000.
The agent for the property, Michelle Hebert of KW Vermont, a statewide real estate agency, quoted an old adage: “Nothing sells for more than what someone is willing to pay.”
In general, if a property isn’t attracting potential buyers, the price needs to be adjusted, Hebert said. And “if you’re getting a ton of showings, the listing is too low,” she added.
Kathy Sweeten, CEO of the Vermont Association of Realtors, agreed.
“We’re seeing sellers who need to be aware houses are staying on the market longer,” she said. “They have to be more realistic and need to adjust their expectations. People are still expecting they can get a premium. Buyers can wait, explore and negotiate. It’s a more fluid market.”
Boardman said houses that aren’t selling quickly are older, midrange properties that need work — new flooring, bathrooms, kitchens, air conditioning systems or structural repairs. “They are really difficult to
More than 86 percent of homeowners in Vermont have a loan-to-value ratio of 50 percent. That means they owe less than half of what their properties are worth. In Chittenden County, the percentage of homeowners who are equity-rich tops 91 percent. Nationally, the number of homeowners with high equity levels is 47 percent.
From January to August, the median sales price for a single-family home in Vermont was $450,000, and the median price for a Chittenden County house was $605,000, according to the Vermont Association of Realtors. Those figures do not include private sales or property transfers between family members, Sweeten said. Redfin pegs the median statewide average listing at $495,000.
State property tax transfer data, which include all sales, tell a different story. The median home in Vermont sold for $370,000 in the first six months of the year, while the median Chittenden County cost was $500,000, according to data compiled by VHFA.
Inflated housing costs are bad news for first-time homebuyers, Collins said. It used to be that only disabled and low-income Vermonters were disproportionately affected by housing costs. “Now everyone is impacted,” she said. The down payment assistance program offered through VHFA has been in such high demand that more state support will be needed, she said.
New construction of affordable condos and townhomes is an important
part of the solution, Collins said. A housing needs assessment conducted by VHFA last year shows that the state needs to build about 41,184 new housing units by 2030 to alleviate the housing crisis. The state is on pace to construct 12,203 units. According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Vermont has the fourth-highest rate of homelessness in the nation.
In mid-September Gov. Phil Scott signed an executive order that he said will eliminate red tape and environmental rules that hamper housing
construction. Effective immediately, it makes energy-efficiency standards voluntary, for example, and reverts building insulation requirements to 2020 standards. Protections for unmapped wetlands have been eliminated, and construction permits must be issued in a certain time frame. The order is designed to take uncertainty out of the construction process and lower costs.
But even with these changes, the state’s aspirations to build its way out of the shortage won’t be cheap. Construction costs have also skyrocketed. The median cost of a new home is $624,000, according to VHFA. In 2020, the median was $388,000.
And pressure from out-of-state buyers with deep pockets remains strong. About half of Rowell’s buyers at any given time
are from states to the south. Boardman said he is seeing more interest in moving to Vermont from climate refugees and progressives who are concerned about national politics.
For first-time homebuyers who come through the Vermont Federal Credit Union, the situation continues to be frustrating, Daniska said. He worries about his own employees who can’t afford homeownership.
Sweeten, of the Vermont Association of Realtors, said buyers who are just starting out may need to opt for a condo or townhome instead of a traditional three-bedroom ranch. “We have to adapt to the new reality,” she said. ➆
Repair, Restore, Reimagine
Gillian Klein of Shelburne’s ReMaker Furniture brings new life to old pieces
An Italian-made wooden lounge chair, stripped of its cushions, stood on the worktable in Gillian Klein’s Shelburne studio getting a sponge bath. She dipped a thin green scouring pad into a tub of soap and water and gently scrubbed away dirt and flecks of old varnish on a slender, graceful arm. The midcentury chair — walnut, she thought — would need its wood conditioned and its cushions replaced, but its springs were tight and intact. Overall, the piece was in great shape.
BY MARY ANN LICKTEIG maryann@sevendaysvt
maryann@sevendaysvt.com
Klein set it on the floor, put the old black-and-tanstriped cushions back on and reclined for a moment. The seat was wide and low. It felt like something out of “Mad Men,” she said: “You wanna sit back. You wanna cross your legs, and you wanna hold something.” She extended her hand as if she were dangling a cigarette or cradling a martini.
“Furniture’s fun,” she declared.
Klein, 51, owns and operates ReMaker Furniture in Shelburne, where she repairs, restores, refinishes and reupholsters in her studio half a mile south of the village green. A longtime artist, she started the business five years ago, thinking it would be fun to find old furniture, work on it and sell it.
“I pick up furniture like some people pick up stray animals,” she said.
Among her current collection are an amoeba-shaped co ee table with circular inlaid tile mosaics, a 1985 Danish Møbler trestle table with leaves stored inside and an 11-foot-long bench from a Masonic lodge in central Vermont.
Klein pointed out a big French armoire that she found in Québec. It’s made of bookended flame mahogany that has a high-gloss French finish. “It’s really like mirrored wood,” she said. It may be a reproduction, but that doesn’t matter to Klein because it’s well but
Above: Gillian Klein in her Shelburne studio
Below: Klein restoring a dresser
Right: e dresser after restoration
made. The door hinges still need repair, but she has filled gouges, cleaned the piece and replaced missing metal décor with replicas she cast in plastic.
On a 19th-century American-made chestnut dresser that Klein acquired, all the metal details and one of the wooden drop drawer pulls were missing. She found a virtually identical pull at Architectural Salvage Warehouse in Essex Junction but decided not to replace the ornamental metal plates behind the pulls and around the drawer keyholes. Their imprints remain visible. They were probably brass, Klein surmised, and may have been removed for a metal drive during wartime.
She likes their “ghosts,” she said. “It’s part of the story of what this thing has been through.”
Klein is always on the hunt. Anywhere she stops for gas, she pulls up Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace on her phone to see what might be gathering dust in a house or a barn within a five-mile radius. Once word of her skills got out, people started bringing their furniture to her for repairs or makeovers. Much of her work now is on commission.
She declined to give her hourly
rate but said she aims to work within clients’ budgets. She once lent tools and provided directions to a couple so they could start their project and save themselves 30 percent. The prices of found pieces range widely, starting at $100. In addition to her studio, she sells online on Chairish, Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace.
People should love their furniture, Klein believes. Some antique restorers refuse to change the finish of a piece. Klein operates with a more relaxed set of principles: “Make it beautiful. It doesn’t have to be original. And if you love it, then it’s good.” In other words, your grandmother wasn’t trying to burden you when she gave her table to you.
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Shelburne interior designer Candy Weston-Kavanagh considers Klein a member of her design team. She consults the furniture restorer when she’s looking for specific pieces or needs something refinished.
“I love how she thinks out of the
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box and that creative mindset she has, along with honoring the piece she’s working on,” Weston-Kavanagh said.
Sometimes Klein texts her a photo and says, “I thought this looked like you.”
nail on the head,”
designer thought she
“And oftentimes, she just hits the nail on the head,” Weston-Kavanagh said. In July, when the designer thought she had everything she needed for a camp in the Adirondacks, Klein sent a photo of a chest that had a secret drawer at the bottom.
Adirondacks, Klein sent bought it before she saw it in person
“It couldn’t be more perfect,” Weston-Kavanagh said. She bought it before she saw it in person “because I trust her so much at this point.”
degree, taking art classes in Florence, Italy, and at Pratt Institute, Bowdoin College and the University of Vermont before finishing at Burlington College. She has taught art, been an assistant to a glassblower and, for about 15 years, worked as an oil painter, creating what she described as largescale “ethereal cityscapes” and selling them at juried art shows around the country.
creating what she cityscapes” and around the country.
woodworker and a great mentor,” she said.
Klein came to woodworking after a career in the fine arts that followed a circuitous journey through college. She bounced from school to school as she worked toward her undergraduate
starting ReMaker with Healthy the general presentation of the
Just before starting ReMaker Furniture, Klein spent five years with Healthy Living, designing the displays and general presentation of the
When she wanted to strike out on her own, she realized she had the basic skills needed for furniture restoration: design knowledge, an eye for style and quality, and the ability to work with her hands. “And I have a dear friend who’s an incredible
been restoring furniture for 35 years. for finishes, sheens or color. She’s a
Todd Rheault, owner of Quartersawn Furniture in Stowe, has been restoring furniture for 35 years. Klein calls him when she needs help identifying wood varieties or recipes for finishes, sheens or color. She’s a quick study, he said: “She figures out the solution more often than not.”
He admires her ability to find unique is
He admires her ability to find unique pieces. “What I’ve always loved is when she takes something that is an outdated style or something that is not hip in the current market and puts some kind of a flair on it,” he said. One chest of drawers stands out in his mind. It was “very plain,” Rheault said, but when Klein painted it with a black diamond pattern, “it made it instantly desirable.”
The update was simple, he said, “but it just changed it dramatically. And that’s the remaker in her.”
style or something that is not hip it dramatically. And that’s the
Rheault, who recently closed his longtime Burlington studio, no longer accepts new clients. He refers them to Klein. ➆
Above: A restored chest and chairs by Gillian Klein Left: A restored cabinet
COURTESY PHOTOS
Little Boxes on the Hillside
A modular home in Morrisville has a small footprint with big payoffs
When Sally Stetson first saw mock-ups of the kind of modular home she now lives in, she thought, “Mm, no.” The graphic designer and Vermont Crafts Council board member has a taste for cheerful colors and beautiful handmade objects.
She wasn’t impressed by the renderings of unremarkable rectangular boxes with shed roofs, standard siding and a jumble of differently sized windows that were on the website of VerMod, the Wilder company that would eventually produce the dwelling that Stetson, 65, and her partner, Peter Dodge, 70, now call home. The style looked “like a single-wide trailer,” Stetson recalled during a recent tour of the house, which sits in the Morrisville hills above Stowe.
But the couple had already considered every option — buying a house in good shape, restoring a crumbling one, building new — and modular homes were, by comparison, far cheaper. Additionally, Stetson and Dodge were interested in the extreme efficiency of VerMod’s product, and they didn’t need a lot of room. The couple met hiking eight years ago and lived apart in fairly limited spaces until they moved into their modular home in January 2023.
“I was tired of seeing these 8,000-square-foot homes with no efficiency,” Stetson said of their search. Their house is the exact opposite: 1,480 square feet, tightly insulated and powered solely by electricity from a small solar array on the property. Their August electricity bill — which covers heat and air conditioning from a heat pump, an advanced air-exchange system called energy recovery ventilation, hot water, lights, all appliances, and a charger for their Chevrolet Bolt — was $2.32.
Since construction, they’ve generated two-thirds of their power; the rest comes from the grid. In summer, the solar panels often produce more electricity than needed. The couple sell some back to the grid and store the rest in a Tesla battery bank in the house’s utility room — useful during the area’s frequent power outages.
Like all modular homes, this one is made of boxes whose width and length fit the legal limits for flatbed trucking. They were constructed in a climatecontrolled environment in about four months and arrived on-site on a
STORY AMY LILLY | PHOTOS JEB WALLACE-BRODEUR
Above: Peter Dodge and Sally Stetson’s modular home in Morrsiville
Left: Stetson and Dodge on their front porch
scheduled date, already outfitted with all windows, floors, tiling, cabinetry and appliances.
The house’s three modules — two side by side lengthwise and one positioned like an end cap — were lowered by crane onto a cement foundation. Porch modules were added on the front and back, and Dodge built an extended viewing deck. In three days, VerMod sealed the joints between the modules, trimmed out the inside openings between them and anchor-bolted everything to the foundation. All that was needed after delivery was to hire an electrician and a plumber for hookups, including to the existing well and septic.
Getting to that point wasn’t quite so simple. The couple began by purchasing their seven-acre plot with Stetson’s 30-year-old horse, Dancer, and pony, Cowboy, in mind. They cleared some trees and decided to site the house on a crest of ledge rock.
Then Dodge worked with VerMod for about a year to create a custom house. A former ski racer and longtime head coach of the Dartmouth College men’s
I WAS TIRED OF SEEING THESE 8,000-SQUARE-FOOT HOMES WITH NO EFFICIENCY.
SALLY STETSON
Alpine team, he has built several houses over the years as a general contractor and had already designed a custom modular home in West Lebanon, N.H., with the Claremont, N.H., company Preferred Building Systems.
He steered Stetson toward VerMod this time in part because of its products’ modern look: shed roofs, clean lines and little fuss. Up End This in Johnson makes a similar product in micro form. Other modular-house companies, such as Huntington Homes in East Montpelier, create traditional gabled structures such as New England Capes and colonials.
While some VerMod home owners have experienced structural issues with their homes, as Seven Days reported in 2019, Dodge was well versed in construction methods and able to visit the production site frequently as well as consult directly with VerMod’s founding owner, Steve Davis. (Davis has since retired.)
Using VerMod’s basic units, Dodge designed the house’s plan, including upgrading the windows to Europeanstyle tilt-and-turns and creating a custom
pantry so that the kitchen could have open art shelves and be contiguous with the main room.
The resulting feel is far from manufactured. The exterior is clad in standing-seam metal topped by shiplap pine with a Vermont Natural Coatings gray stain. The colors blend seamlessly with the zero-maintenance landscaping of gravel, Dutch white clover and bunched ornamental grasses. A stretch of exposed ledge in front of the entry functions like a fun welcome mat.
Entering the house through a small covered porch, a visitor is presented at once with a beautiful southerly view opposite. It’s visible through a large 8-by-10-foot sliding glass door and a roofed deck that overlooks a long field lined with woods. The sense of interior spaciousness is deceiving — you are only looking at the width of two flatbed trucks — and it’s heightened by the shed roof, which angles up toward the view to a height of nine and a half feet.
The entrance foyer contains a bathroom and mudroom for the couple’s outdoor apparel, including for Stetson’s
road biking and Dodge’s skiing. Beyond, the main living area opens up, extending to either side in one long, open stretch.
With a swivel of the head, visitors can take in the kitchen, long central dining table and sitting room.
Stetson, who works on everything from brand logos to art direction to interior consulting through Sally Stetson Design, used a spectrum of blues and oranges throughout to create an inviting atmosphere with pop. Most walls
are white, but Stetson painted two a rich greenish blue that reminds her of underwater river rocks. The hue picks up related shades in an abstract artwork belonging to Dodge and a trio of abstract oils painted by Stetson, who works at an easel in her office. An orange accent wall in the kitchen echoes a rust-and-black handmade raku bowl on the opposite side of the room.
The most prominent visual element is Stetson’s arrangement of overlapping aluminum circles and discs, which takes up the entire wall above the couch. She gave the designs and metal sheets to MSI, a water-jet cutter in Morrisville, to fabricate. Each element is suspended by two fishing wires from a thin curtain track hidden behind a panel, which makes them appear to float. She can alter the arrangement merely by sliding the track grommets back and forth.
The house has a main bedroom, two full baths and two offices, one of which doubles as a guest room. In the bedroom, a horizontal three-panel window looks
Little Boxes on the Hillside « P.15
View of the living room, dining room and kitchen
View of the house and front yard
Little Boxes on the Hillside
out on the upper sections of trees, giving the room a “tree house” feel, Stetson said. The effect is heightened by the raised bed, which sits atop a smaller storage base.
Storage is at a premium. A separate garage the couple built helps, but much of its space is apportioned to a small, two-story apartment that they rent on Airbnb. In the main house, his-and-her bedroom closets each measure 6 feet 8 inches by 3 feet 2 inches.
“We really edited out [our possessions],” Stetson said. “There’s a place for everything and everything in its place, as they say.” Recently, she received a new raincoat in the mail; by the end of the day, she had cleaned, folded and donated her old one.
Stetson and Dodge plan to age in place in their modular home, which is why they chose a single-story structure (most modular units can be stacked) and a walk-in shower off the main bedroom. All told, the home is a savvy investment: At the time they were looking, new builds cost $400 to $600 per square foot; their modular costs were $350, with “twice the efficiency,” Dodge said.
It’s also — despite its size — a comfortable, airy and delightfully decorated forever home.
“Even though I’m a visual person, I was always worried it was going to feel dark and low-ceilinged,” Stetson said. “It is way better and more fantastic than I ever imagined.”
Dodge added, “It was what I had planned, and it worked.” ➆
N4t-Sam
On the Clock
Time waits for no man, but Dave Welch makes it run at the Clock Shop in Vergennes
STORY
Dave Welch makes a living out of time, yet he doesn’t wear a watch. “Don’t need one,” he said, swiveling his chair to better survey the vast array of clocks in his Vergennes domain — big ones, small ones, tall ones, broad ones, clocks seated or standing, on boxes or shelves, on the floor or a desk. Some look grandfatherly, and others are going cuckoo.
How many are there? “Don’t know,” Welch said with a shrug. How does one count cacophony, anyway?
Welcome to the Clock Shop, as the late writer and television personality Rod Serling might have intoned in his introduction to “The Twilight Zone.”
The 36-year-old Addison County clock retail and repair shop is a repository of things past and present. A place seemingly out of time yet su used with time’s passage, timeless yet time-dependent.
Customers must circumnavigate Vergennes’ landmark Kennedy Brothers building on Main Street to reach the modest backside entry to the shop. An ancient green safe sits inside the front door, signifying nothing. Stairs to the left and a ramp to the right lead to a large
room with a thousand faces, marking time. An inventory of clocks such as this is rare in today’s world; rarer still is the man who can fix them.
Welch, 67, likes all clocks but particularly mechanical clocks that are weight driven, because they keep time more precisely. Also Seth Thomasmade clocks and so-called banjo clocks produced by Simon Willard in the 1800s. He has a grandfather clock with an octagonal top and a cuckoo that chimes with a parade of figurines.
Donna Bushey of New Haven, who has known Welch for 30 years and many clocks, said she once o ered to organize this vast collection of timepieces.
“No, no, no!” Welch exclaimed. “I’d never be able to find anything.”
Welch holds court seated at a workbench littered with the detritus of clockmaking — mainspring keys, tiny precision screwdrivers, a magnification loupe, and myriad springs, cogs and weights. If Father Time were flesh and blood, he might look like Welch: a flu y white thatch of hair,
bushy eyebrows, a knowing smile that reaches his eyes and a barrel of a torso, attesting to a sedentary job. Due to neuropathy, his left foot bears an orthopedic boot the size of an umbrella stand.
STEVE GOLDSTEIN | PHOTOS LUKE AWTRY
From top: Clocks on the wall at the Clock Shop in Vergennes; Dave Welch in his workshop
Despite the boot, Welch’s greatest satisfaction lies in repairing the town clocks of St. Albans, Shelburne and Bristol. Accessing the towers in which these large clocks reside is no small thing: It requires climbing a ladder or a spiral staircase to reach a platform, then squeezing into the clock room through a narrow passage that only a spelunker might appreciate.
And, unlike most physicians, this clock doctor makes house calls for those stately but tricky grandfathers.
Back in the day, Welch’s little shop of horology would not have been anything to write about. Finding artisans now who can diagnose and repair timepieces, however, is akin to searching for rocking-horse poop.
Now the business is “mainly trading with my friends and fellow hobbyists,” Welch explained. Plus lots and lots of repairs, a narrow income stream that pays the bills. Fellow enthusiast Dale Kreisler of Rutland, also adept at fixing timepieces, said he consults with Welch
told Boyden, but he knew how mechanical things worked. He was a quick study on desk and wall clocks, but he found his life’s passion in 1982 when he assisted Boyden in the repair of the 115-year-old town tower clock in Bristol. In 1989, Welch struck out on his own and opened the Clock Shop.
“I would guess there are about five or six of us in Vermont,” said John Appelt of Brandon, adding that beyond telling time, the guts of clocks and watches are different. Appelt rules the wrist, and Welch specializes in everything else that ticks.
“I love clocks,” Welch said. “I really like all things mechanical.”
The shopkeeper said he spends an average of two and a half hours on a repair. He earned about $6,000 for his work on the Shelburne town clock but has been known to accept a hug as payment. His many loyal customers are aware that his shop phone won’t be answered until noon, even though Welch has already been there for hours.
Most of the clocks in the shop are of his own collection, amassed from donations by customers, friends, and even strangers who haunt estate sales and flea markets. Even when clocks were widely desired, he didn’t sell many.
on cases he finds intractable, and “most of the time he can give me a solution over the phone” without even seeing the clock.
A few weeks ago, Suzanne Ellis drove from her South Hero home to have the mechanism in a shelf clock replaced. She doesn’t mind the long drive. “Dave is so passionate about his craft and so good at it, and he’s such a character to boot,” she said. “It’s just an absolutely refreshing human experience.”
As a 5-year-old, Welch could tell time. When he was 10, his grandfather gave him several old alarm clocks, which Welch promptly dissected to see what made them tick. After college, when he failed to parlay his University of Vermont mechanical engineering degree into a job at IBM or General Electric, Pat Boyden of the Green Mountain Clock Shop in Williston took him on.
Welch knew nothing about clocks, he
Every so often, Welch takes time on the road. As president of the Green Mountain Timekeepers Society, a chapter of the National Association of Watch & Clock Collectors, Welch convenes with other members for occasional meet and greets around the state to talk about clocks and advise owners on whether a repair is worthwhile.
“It’s ‘Antiques Roadshow,’” Kreisler explained, “without the value appraisals.” A recent session in South Hero drew a large crowd.
Welch is also a history buff (that’s history writ large, not just clockmaking) and will readily opine about current events (Is the current presidential administration existing on borrowed time or just plain cuckoo?). He doesn’t care for deadlines and has been known to clock out on projects due to be completed. In June 2024, Bushey brought in a clock for Welch to see if it was worth fixing. Labor Day came and went, with no word. When Bushey finally called, Welch admitted that her clock was still unexamined and he’d check it immediately. She was amused, not ticked off.
Asked about the incident, Welch grinned. “Time,” he said, “is not important to me.” ➆
