You are designing your own house. Describe it.
All around are gently sloped hills, with sprawling lilacs and weeping willows hugging around the house to protect it from the wind. The ocean is less than a mile away - you can hear the surf crashing all the time. Sometimes we pick up crabs off the rocks. It is an old farmhouse, similar in style to the Eisenhower family home on Rhode Island. There is a very spacious wrap-around veranda with more than one swinging chair. There is a mudporch around the back, by the kitchen door, and there is a brick addition where we store food, like homemade preserves. On the opposite side of the house, there is a covered porch with screens and some plants, tomatoes and herbs. We sit there when it is stormy out, or too cold for the veranda. There are several steps, about five, leading up the porch to the entry. The front door is a double-door, with glass panes - frosted, so you can't really see through them, but the light glows through. Inside, there is a wood floor. It's a warm honey-brown color, you feel cozy just looking at it. The rooms are spacious, and some are elegant, some are homey. The elegant living room has bookshelves with scholarly tomes, a fireplace with a stone mantel and I think there is a painting of the Idaho mountains above it. There is a huge painting of a lighthouse in Oregon, with the surf roaring up around it, on the wall on my right. I can see through the windows, through the lilac bushes outside and the roses, where the real ocean is. How beautiful. Sunlight streams in, and dust motes float in the air. Back in to the main entryway, you can explore upstairs - a curved staircase, with a banister sturdy enough to slide down. There are so many bedrooms, bathrooms, a library, a study with computers, you could almost get lost up there. Doors open into walk-in closets ,some have secret passageways leading upstairs. The attic is warm in the summer, cold in the winter. Half of it has been built into a sweet little bedroom. Guests stay here sometimes. The other half is dusty, with some mysterious chests, some old boxes that ways 1911, or Oranges, or Soap Chips - we've never looked in those. They contain treasures ... there are papers, letters, photographs. Mysteries. Back downstairs to the main level, we explore the comfortable family living room. Less like the parlor, more casual, with big leather couches, and some sort of sloppy pillows where you can just pile up and be relaxed. There is a gas fireplace in here. We go down the hall and find a home theater, with thick doors to help muffle the sounds of the movies we watch in there. Then we go behind the staircase and find a dining room, complete with a china cabinet, a sideboard, a crystal decanter and a silver tray. The kitchen is just off the dining room. You could sleep behind the stove, there is such a space there. The stove is huge, with eight burners. There are three ovens, brick walls, brick floor. A huge wooden table in the middle of the room where we chop vegetables and eat sometimes; the refrigerator, and through the door in to the storage room we find a deep freeze and shelves and shelves of home canned goods. There is a trapdoor through the storage room, and downstairs there are frozen meats, cold dairy, apples, even some Christmas presents. back in the kitchen, we can find elegant wineglasses and comfortable tin mugs. It's all here ... home!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment