this woman’s work

Eli asked if the owners for this house were the original and no they weren’t. But the house was built in 1959 and they bought it in 1962. I suppose the house might have sat empty for three years though.

The people were meticulous about upkeep. Downstairs by the furnace and things are notepads with careful notes anytime filters were cleaned or replaced, things were tuned up, fixed or installed. In the instruction booklet for the oven/stove, someone carefully circled “stainless steel” in the directions about cleaning the exterior of the appliances. You know, just in case they forgot, I guess.

Amber asked if the bottom door was a warmer but it’s another oven.

There are other things that are fun in this house. I’ll show you our hilarious maze of a bathroom sometime. And the very useful heat detectors, which will buzz if the temperature in the room gets to 139 degrees although it’s likely the smoke would have killed you anyway by then. They’re very handsome and there’s one in every room. I like the look of them.

They did, sadly, replace all of the interior doors though. They raised kids here and maybe they felt the original ones were just way too beat up.

Oh and Amber, my sister dug out some late 50s magazines for me to look at and I still have them. One is about decorating and you’ll have to look at it. A lot of things make sense to me now about this house. Like the ubiquitous picture windows in 50s/60s houses were part of a movement to bring the outside in and were made possible by better insulation and heating. Ours is in the back instead of the front. Attached garages (we don’t have one) and master baths were new so they tended to be smaller since having them at all was so exciting. Entertaining was more common and supposed to be less formal (it was the era of the cocktail party) so separate dining areas became passé, thus the big kitchens with an eating area often separated by a counter or breakfast bar. Some of the coolest (read: modern) mid-century homes had stovetops built right into the tables so you could cook and serve without leaving your guests.

Our house is more mid-century than modern and from the outside it’s making a desperate attempt to pass for a colonial. It has a jutting roof addition over the too-tall front porch and the stone exterior looks not quite right on it. The first time we saw it we thought it was ugly but now it’s endeared itself to us. Now it looks to us like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree. It desperately needs some perennials though.

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