1300 square feet of old

This was going to be a grand tour in photos, but then I felt the urgency to clean, declutter, organize and hang any pictures that were still waiting to be hung before any photos were taken. Thus, I only have three to show here. Maybe at our two year anniversary of darling house living I'll have more rooms adequately cleaned, organized, and decorated. Until then, I'll just describe the house a bit.

First of all, PTB had one comment about the previous post, "You didn't say how old it is". I wasn't sure if that was necessary or really how to fit it in there, but since my boy noticed its absence, I'll go ahead and say our house is older than his hometown. PTB hails from Spokane, which was settled in 1871 and incorporated as a city in 1881. This lovely little dwelling was built in 1838.

It's not huge, but it fits us well enough. Actually, now that we're sleeping in the living room for an undefined span of time, we have an extra bedroom upstairs. Like the title explains, our house includes 1300 square feet of living space. There is also an attic in which we store all sorts of boxes and extras. And then we have the "back room", a large, unfinished space in the back of our house with very uneven floors, which we do not heat in the winter. Someday soon we plan to fix the floors and walls and use the space as more living space, but not today.

Today on the first level we have a bathroom, kitchen, living room, boys' room, nursery, and pantry. Upstairs is the bedroom of PTB and his lady, the office-closet of the Mr., and a small craft room for the lady. The stairwell is narrow and steep with a cold, metal railing to steady the climbers. The dining room table is in the kitchen, which has very few cupboards and an interesting old sink. The pantry mostly makes up for the lack of cupboards, but not for the lack of countertop. The nursery was a laundry room until two days before the birth of Auburn. Now the laundry is in the back of the bathroom which used to be spacious and is now quite a bit less spacious, but still spacious enough to birth a baby in. In order to move the laundry, a lot of plumbing and electrical work had to be done inside the wall between the would-be nursery and the bathroom, requiring that the wall be torn apart and then put back together. Painting and carpeting in the nursery were not finished until Auburn was well into her second week. Until it was finished, she was sleeping in her bassinet wherever was most quiet at the time (sometimes the boys' room, other times the living room).

Hmmm. What else? The living room once had a door to the outside. These days the door is still in the living room, but it opens to the wall. It is rendered unusable by the siding on the outside. Can you identify the door in the living room picture? The entry we now use is in the kitchen. The room Patrick uses as an office is actually simultaneously used as a closet. When I say it's small, I'm not kidding, but it does have a nice window overlooking the chicken grove and it's big enough to house his nature collections and a desk. The craft room is slightly bigger than the office-closet. It is on the stairs landing and has two windows also overlooking the chicken grove. Our bedroom is one of the largest rooms in the house, but it doesn't have a closet (we use the office-closet). One problem with old houses is that they did not have closets in 1838 because closets were taxed as rooms. I think they had a lot less stuff back then too. I like less stuff, so I don't mind old houses. And I love our darling one, but that's all I will say about her here this year. End.