In the meantime I made a 'RULE' to carry one thing down every time I go to the house. I am hoping this will soften the number of trips on moving day.
We are slowly moving back in. As you can see, we are anticipating toasting the new space with a bottle of Furtsch wine. My goal is for the move is next weekend, but it depends a bit on the tile. 'Supposedly' it arrives in Farmington late Tuesday. If so, then Jay plans to start tile on Wednesday. Time will tell….
In the meantime I made a 'RULE' to carry one thing down every time I go to the house. I am hoping this will soften the number of trips on moving day.
0 Comments
I was driving into town last night and Terry Gross was on NPR interviewing Bruce Eric Kaplin about his book "I Was a Child". He was talking about home and family in the 60s and 70s. Got me thinking about all the houses and memories of my childhood. I don't remember too much about my Boulder Road house. It had a GREAT porch. I think I decided very young that porches were a very important feature on a home. Then a move to Ardmore Road. Andy and Ron built Go-Carts and were brave enough to drive them down our steep driveway, wheels shuddering as they pulled on the primitive break (a stick!) to avoid the trees at the bottom. We had all-neighborhood kick-the-can games on summer nights, ending with each household calling their kids home with their own unique system… be that a whistle, a gong or in our case a fog horn! It was where I got my first experience 'camping', complete with a small campfire in the backyard, just big enough to cook the new fangled Jiffy Pop, a prerequisite when one camped. And of course there was a 2 story tree house. Not sure why no one got hurt, children building a tree house guided by a man who couldn't hang a picture! And then there were 6…we married the Bock family and moved to Holden. What a house. I still can't believe our folks thought newer was better and built a house less than a mile away. To this day, this is my all time favorite house. Think of it all… front screened in porch, music room, butler's pantry complete with a foot bell in the dining room, grand front stairs and closed in back stairs, laundry chute (which one can successfully push one's brother down), 2 tunnels, one secret room, a widow seat (oh how I love window seats),
3 attics, a sunroom off Nan's bedroom (I LOVED her room), a 3rd floor for Lisa and me to share, a tiny powder room under the main stairs ( a perfect place to excuse yourself to should you not like dinner, need to pocket it and ultimately throw it away), a gazebo, a port cochere and an enormous back yard with a gate leading to the elementary school. In that house there was mandatory oatmeal for breakfast. If you dawdled in the morning it became a thick, cold paste. Perhaps the final plan there was to encourage us all to 'be on time' because if you weren't you got the dregs. I think it worked as all 6 of us are on time kind of people. This house is where I was instructed in table manners, the use of cloth napkins, proper table setting and to eat what was placed in front of me. A significant memory about food is being 'allowed' to choose on fish night between tuna and salmon. I hated both… tough choice! But what you picked, you ate. Hurray for our little powder room. And why a secret room? This house was a part of the 'underground railroad'. I love that for a few short years I lived in a house of history. We had another small, but manageable glitch. The final finish coat on the floor bubbled. 1000s of bubbles! Well, perhaps only 100s. Jay used a heavy finish that is less slippery and it just didn't respond the way he thought it would. So he had to re-sand and re-finish. Checked it out this morning and both floors look great. The dining room and kitchen is dark recycled 100+ year old barn wood. Jay had to put new (old) wood by the new counter on the right. GREAT patch job. The entry hall is wormy maple, one of my favorite woods. The zillions of bubbles showed up the most right here. But voila! Sanding brought back the beauty… and of course Jay's hard work.
|
Categories
All
|