family life

The longest house

JOY journal

Our house is 100 years old now. It’s still a beauty, full of the good bones that fill the streets of any city that’s old enough to remember craftsmen.

Today, snow is blowing in cold gusts and anyone sitting near one of our multitude of windows — electric light was a newish thing in 1924 — needs a sweater. A thick one. Wavy glass and wood are like that.

People have climbed these long-creaky stairs and cooked meals in this kitchen through the entirety of the Great Depression, multiple wars and hemline trends that have run the entire length of a female leg. Babies have crawled down the halls. Prom photos have been taken on the porch — deep and broad in the way Arts and Crafts bungalows are.

Our predecessor wallpapered most of the house — rather well, I think. There are botanicals, gingham, blue chintz that reminds me of tea cups. One bathroom’s walls look like old-school mattress ticking.

I love it all. Boomer and Millennial friends sometimes gasp quietly at the wild play of colors and patterns. There’s no beige, no gray.

Ironically, my daughter’s Gen Z friends are enthralled. Granny core. Cottage core. They call it these things when bits of our centurion show up in the background of Instagram posts.

Instagram posts. Who, in 1924, would have ever thought?

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After a long career writing for local newspapers — and, on rare occasions, for publications such as The Washington Post — Nora is enjoying a second wind as an innkeeper. She still blogs and does writing projects of special interest. She lives in Appalachia with her husband and a dog named Finn, who is beside himself with joy when the family's daughters have college breaks.

27 thoughts on “The longest house”

  4. I love colours and perhaps wall papers are making a comeback. My younger son and daughter-in-law have their own business interiors and exteriors; they are booked to decorate my daughter’s living room in their Victorian terrace, I’m just knitting the co ordinated blanket. The wallpaper she has chosen for the feature wall is very bold! They certainly don’t build houses like they used to, yours sounds lovely.

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  5. Nora, your 100 year old home sounds so warm and charming. If walls could talk, it would surely tell some magnificent stories. You’ve captured them well.

    I was noticing your window display. I enlarged my screen to see the small blue holland print glasses/vases. I remember seeing them when I was young. I can’t recall if I saw them on grandma’s shelf or your mom’s. They are so pretty. I’m glad you’re displaying them. It warms my heart.

    Love you. If we lived close to each other, I’m sure we’d be best friends. 😘

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    1. Yes, we would! I think the cups are chocolate cups. They are late 1800s I think and are from Holland. They were my mom’s and I love to look at that blue every day!!

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  6. Love this❣️When house hunting before I moved I looked at so many houses. But the one that had character and spoke to me was a home built in 1956. It just seemed to have a solidness and uniqueness that made it stand out from everything I had been seeing.

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  7. Love your home!! Warm, comfy, homey, eclectic, fabulous! Everything tastes so delicious at that kitchen table. So glad there’s no beige or gray ❤️

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  8. I simply love that you embraced your home’s character gained with time and have allowed it to maintain its originality. One of the fun parts of Gen Z is seeing their appreciation for styles of bygone years. Just yesterday my youngest was headed to a middle school dance. The dress she selected needed some pinning to fit her petite frame. I dug through my jewelry and found some of my mother’s pins that date back to her high school days in the 50’s. My young teen was delighted by them and they embellished her outfit perfectly while giving the dress the needed tucks. My mom, who refers to herself as an antique, was so tickled that her granddaughter thought her jewelry from those bygone years were trendy.

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    1. I’ll bet she looked beautiful! My daughters like vintage, too. The last prom dress in the mix is a 1940s bridesmaids dress a friend gave to us. It’s green and cream and has a flower sewn to the bodice. It looks terrible on the hanger but beautiful when it’s on a person!

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  9. I grew up in a 1920 house. One-acre lot, formal rose garden , chicken house, fish pond, 12’ ceilings, big, boxy rooms. Two full baths upstairs between the 4 bedrooms, a sewing room, full attic & basement, radiant heating and no a/c. Attic fan.
    I loved that house. It’s still there, too. Charlotte NC. I’m not though.

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  10. I enjoyed what you wrote. Your house is beautiful. Yes, if those walls could talk. We lost our wall paper from the fire. In our entry way. Danielle would like to see wall paper on it again. I like some wall paper. Maybe it is coming back.

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  11. Yay!!! At our senior independent living cooperative in Minnesota our last manager thought we should restrict any choice of new floor linoleum to gray to black imitation wood — “the in thing”!! Fortunately we “forgot” to add that to our policy manual. Lots of us still like golden oak (the real thing) and “old fashion” square patterns for linoleum. And now it is back “in” again! 🙂 (Anyway, I don’t think I’m that old!!) Kriste

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    1. 😀I think it’s so fun that even real linoleum has made a comeback. They even sell it and patterned vinyl as “rugs” that could cover a gray floor!

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