Acorn Bed and Breakfast
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Country Comforts Await Visitors to Town "B&B"
Tuesday, July 11, 2000 - Clinton Recorder by Shannon OCork
KILLINGWORTH - Behind a long stone wall fringed with lilies and a sweeping expanse of lawn, the shaded porch of a New England Cape Cod-style farmhouse welcomes the wayfarer to the town's "one and only" bed and breakfast, The Acorn Bed and Breakfast.
The inviting inn is located at 628 Route 148, and has been owned and operated by Carole and Richard Pleines since 1995. There are two queen-sized bedroom-with-private-baths to let at $125 per night from May to October and $110 from November to April. Most of their visi-tors are New Yorkers who find Killingworth as rural a stopping-off place as they can handle, Richard said. "And they like it's within two hours of New York City," he added.
The busiest time of year is fall when the foliage turns, Richard said; but now that www.acornbedandbreakfast.com is online, they are as busy as they want to be all year round.
"After all, we like to travel too," Carole said.
The grounds are two acres of a carefully main-tained and graceful lawn. There is an antique garden bench beside a fishpond to meditate, if one likes, and a full-sized swimming pool.
There is a hot tub and two porches and a working fireplace and homemade wine. Hearty homemade breakfasts, prepared by Carole, include Shirred eggs, pumpkin muffins, bread pudding, bacon pies and more.
The living room is filled with usable antiques from a music box, which plays by pierced-hole cylinders -"Great at Christmas," Carole said - to gaming chairs from the bar of the Waldorf - Astoria Hotel in New York City.
The dining room has art on the walls, old sterling silver flatware and Franciscan apple pattern plates and serving pieces. The three cats, art unto them-selves, are never allowed upstairs, but if a visitor is kind, Sam, Molly and Buddy may allow them - -selves to be admired in the kitchen.
The dining room displays oil paintings by Carole, as well as other painters. Carole hopes to have her first art showing at the Clinton Art Society's Summer Exhibition at the Andrews Memorial Town Hall in Clinton from July 24 to August 13. In the dining room, her oils are mostly still life of fruit and flowers, but in her outdoor work-shop, she is painting livestock.
"I'm painting pigs," she said. "Gorgeous, happy pigs."
Carole, a former clinical social worker, and, Richard, a former high school science teacher, were not ready to retire when retirement called. Travelers themselves, they liked the comfort and coziness of the bed and breakfast experience, she said.
"We were going to do it in Vermont," Carole said. "But the more we looked at this house, we looked at each other and said, "It's perfect. It took us a year to put in the baths for the bedrooms. We worked on the yard and the pool. We opened for business and we've never had a bad guest."
Both were professional people, but handy around the house. Carole can decorate, sew, cook, clean, and she still does all the domestic work herself.
"When I grew up, that's what you did," she said. "If you couldn't afford to buy it, you made it yourself or did without."
Richard, science-educated, has a handsome workshop downstairs with all tools known to man, neat and in place, and an antique-restoration workshop as well as an antique shop outside. He taught himself how to create and run web sites and is computer and Internet proficient.
Working together, the Pleines built the stone walls, redesigned the house they originally designed and built 25 years ago, set in the "help yourself to a head of lettuce" garden, the fishpond and the swimming pool. Richard sells the antiques they find, and sells custom Old Hickory furniture and Pendleton blankets on the Internet at www.oldhickory-ct.com.
There are birdhouses aplenty on the grounds and Carole encourages the birds to stay on, rent free, seed provided. "We don't use pesticides on the grounds," she said. "The birds take care of the bugs." She also feeds a little chipmunk that lives in a chink in one of the rock walls. "Her name is Chippy and sometimes she eats out of my hand," Carole said:
Carole also volunteers her time as a child advocate for abused children in Middletown. Richard is president of the Killingworth Chamber of Commerce and a member of the town Land Use Committee. They have three children, all grown, and several grandchildren.