Loving Old Houses

When I saw the post on this blog, it brought back a lot of memories.

A long time ago, and far away, before digital cameras, I lived in a little old house out in the country. It was probably a slapped-together old farm house, and probably not exceptional from many little old farm houses built in the Victorian era and added to in every decade since. But it was a new experience to me, who had only lived in modern city houses, and I relished every antique detail of the place.

I remember very fondly the paneled doors-- each one was different from the other, the doorknobs, the old-fashioned key that locked them, the chimney-hole cover with the field of wheat painted on it, the pantry with the floor boards made out of old fruit boxes with the labels still on them, the old screen door with the rusty spring that had such a satisfying slam (not for my parents, I'm sure!). I loved every bit of that old house. I thought it was so neat that the weighted windows had real panes (that were loose and popped out sometimes!), that the floor boards were warped under the 70's carpet (I was sure there was a beautiful wood floor under there), that all the doors had trim inside and out (even in the closets), and that the outlet plates (probably from the '50s?) had embossed wreaths around them. The glassed-in back porch had an old rusty sink for washing garden produce in it, the old white porcelain sink in the kitchen had molded-in drainboards on each side.

There was an old brick well out front, with a board on top of it so no one would fall in. There was a brick walkway with "1900" stamped on the bricks. I unearthed another walkway around the side of the house when I was trying to plant a garden. The old gate to the pond had a post leaning over, and the gate was all gray and crooked, but it was charming.

Ah, me. If I had only had a decent camera in those days! I'm not sure it would have occurred to me to take pictures of the door knobs and bricks and details, though, since back then you had to buy film and pay to have it developed. With only 36 blurry or grainy photo opportunities in a cheap kiddie camera, usually I did not think of taking pictures of hardware. A blog sure changes the subjects of your photos!

In the above link, please pay attention to the inside of the hinges. I toured an old Victorian house a few years ago, and noticed that the inside of the hinges were intricately etched (even more than the ones in the link). Can you imagine a time, when someone would care about what the inside of a hinge looked like? Does that not go along with William Morris' oft-quoted "golden rule?"

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

Why not have both?

[the house below is not my old house, but it sure is similar]

Rural Home with a...

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Beautiful Brahms Intermezzo

Dream Banner

I saw this idea in a shop a few months ago. Instead of just buying the thing of beauty, I said to myself, "I can make that!" I'm sure I'm not the only one that says that to herself while shopping!

Of course, I can make a lot of things, but I can't always make time.

For months, a sticky note with a scribbled sketch of the banner floated around my craft desk. Yes, it was there so long that the sticky note lost its sticky.

But here at last, is the banner! And, I do believe it is my first ever banner. Not as pretty as the one I saw (which was a lot pinker than mine with better letters and more texture!), but I am glad I tried it. To my surprise, as soon as I had put it up, I had some little admirers, who thought that the "Dream" banner was beautiful, and it made them very happy!

****

There is a fellow who works at our local dollar store, and he always asks the customers, "what is your good news today?" He says he likes to make people think about the positive in their lives. Of course, the Gospel is a good answer!
Maybe we all should be in the habit of thinking about what the good of the day has been, instead of dwelling on all the disappointments. I was in that store tonight to pick something up, and I thought I'd better have something ready for when the fellow asks his question. So the good news for today is,

that we are all able to do beautiful things to make people happy. 

The New England Fireside

A Cottage Scene,...
Edward Thompson...
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Excerpt from A New England Girlhood  by Lucy Larcom. 

Primitive ways of doing things had not wholly ceased during my childhood; they were kept up in these old towns longer than elsewhere. We used tallow candles and oil lamps, and sat by open fireplaces. There was always a tinder-box in some safe corner or other, and fire was kindled by striking flint and steel upon the tinder. What magic it seemed to me, when I was first allowed to strike that wonderful spark, and light the kitchen fire!

The fireplace was deep, and there was a " settle" in the chimney corner, where three of us youngest girls could sit together and toast our toes on the andirons (two Continental soldiers in full uniform, marching one after the other), while we looked up the chimney into a square of blue sky, and sometimes caught a snow-flake on our foreheads; or sometimes smirched our clean aprons (high-necked and long-sleeved ones, known as " tiers ") against the swinging crane with its sooty pot-hooks and trammels.

Maine - Interior...

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The coffee-pot was set for breakfast over hot coals, on a three-legged bit of iron called a "trivet." Potatoes were roasted in the ashes, and the Thanksgiving turkey in a "tin-kitchen," the business of turning the spit being usually delegated to some of us small folk, who were only too willing to burn our faces in honor of the annual festival.

There were brick ovens in the chimney corner, where the great bakings were done; but there was also an iron article called a " Dutch oven," in which delicious bread could be baked over the coals at short notice. And there never was anything that tasted better than my mother's "firecake,"— a short-cake spread on a smooth piece of board, and set up with a flat-iron before the blaze, browned on one side, and then turned over to be browned on the other. (It required some sleight of hand to do that.) If I could only be allowed to blow the bellows — the very old people called them "belluses " — when the fire began to get low, I was a happy girl.

The Three...
Frederick Daniel...
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Cooking-stoves were coming into fashion, but they were clumsy affairs, and our elders thought that no cooking could be quite so nice as that which was done by an open fire. We younger ones reveled in the warm, beautiful glow, that we look back to as to a remembered sunset. There is no such home-splendor now.

When supper was finished, and the tea-kettle was pushed back on the crane, and the backlog had been reduced to a heap of fiery embers, then was the time for listening to sailor yarns and ghost and witch legends. The wonder seems somehow to have faded out of those tales of old since the gleam of red-hot coals died away from the hearthstone. The shutting up of the great fireplaces and the introduction of stoves marks an era; the abdication of shaggy Romance and the enthronement of elegant Commonplace — sometimes, alas! the opposite of elegant — at the New England fireside.

Afternoon...
Evert Pieters
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Have we indeed a fireside any longer in the old sense? It hardly seems as if the young people of to-day can really understand the poetry of English domestic life, reading it, as they must, by a reflected illumination from the past. What would the "Cotter's Saturday Night" have been, if Burns had written it by the opaque heat of a stove instead of at his

"Wee bit ingle blinkiu' bonnilie?'

By the Hearth,...

Philip Eustace...

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