July 16- Favorite room in your house
In the 1930s when the first part of this house was built, it looked like a shoe box stood up on its end. One large room downstairs and two bedrooms upstairs. Legend has it that to reach the upstairs, you had to go outside because that's where the staircase was. There is still an outside door on the second floor.
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| The upstairs door to nowhere |
The owners eventually added a downstairs master bedroom with bath, enclosed a porch, and added a great room. I'm not sure of the order they were done in. The man was a cabinet maker by trade, and all the woodwork done in this house is superb. There are built in bookcases, and the dining room has a built in china cabinet with a glass front.
All the rooms had been painted white, and every room in the house had carpet. Yes, the kitchen and bathrooms had carpet. That is not a great mix for a family with two small children. You add one 5-year-old-boy + one gallon of milk + a carpeted kitchen, and you get a smelly mess that is way too hard to clean up. So that was the first carpet to go.
Now, we have beautiful Italian tile throughout the downstairs, and the great room walls are painted two shades of blue.
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| In 2004, the walls of the great room were still all white, and we had this hideous pale green carpet |
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| Same space in 2006 |
It is hard for me to decide which room is my favorite. Most days it's my cozy desk in the room-with-no-name. It is this rectangular space, right off the kitchen, so it may have once been a small dining area. Really small. What happened is, when they moved the staircase from the outside to the inside, they used up quite a bit of space. This room-with-no-name is about 2/3 its original size, just enough room for an L-shaped computer desk. If you're not careful walking by, you can bump your leg into the corner of the desk. Oddly, coming from the living room, you have to step down a small step. And going out through the enclosed porch we call our den, you have to step up. It's my sunken room, and I'm always having to tell people to watch their step.
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| The room-with-no-name |
This photo was taken in the winter of 2006, I think. You can see the staircase behind us. The picture was taken from the kitchen. It's where I'm sitting right now. We have a wireless printer now, so I have more room on the desk. I've lost 40 pounds and the daughter has grown up. Huh, I just realized I have a different computer and monitor too. Same desk, same dog, same water cooler on the left, same chalkboard on the right. Some things change and some things stay the same. But it is home.
