Even though my description of this blog mentions renovating an old Victorian house, I don't talk about it much. I always mean to do a post about the subject, but never quite get there, which of course is the story of my life.
We bought our house for the porch. I remember well the first time we saw our house. It was autumn. We had not seen many houses yet. There were not many to see. We learned only later that from the fall until the spring is the deadest time in the local housing market, and the time to look is during the "spring market" when everyone who is selling puts their house up for sale at the same time. There is no such seasonal market in Manhattan, so it didn't occur to us to ask about it. Not sure why our broker did not tell us about the spring market. I suspect that he wanted to get us a house quick, rather than show us dozens, to minimize the work for him, so if we believed that houses of the type we were interested in were rarely for sale, we wouldn't be too picky. He was sort of right.
So, anyway, we'd seen a few houses, but they were smaller than what we had in mind, and just nothing special. So our broker told us that he was going to take us to see a house that was out of our price range, but he wanted to show it to us anyway, just so we'd "get an idea." No dummy, he. He knew that the houses up just a notch in price were much nicer and bigger, and that we could probably manage the price.
I'm sure he was also very calculating in the route he took to get to our house. Our house is in a historic district, full of lovely, large old homes, built from the 1870s through the 1920s and 1930s. He drove us past many of the loveliest of those homes, past the gracious park that borders the district, past the duck pond. After seeing this neighborhood, it was the only one I wanted to live in.
I had been in this neighborhood before, but didn't realize it. I had been to the head of our NJ office's home once, and had loved it, and all the surrounding homes, but I didn't know the name of the district, or even that it was an official historic district. In fact, when he asked me to move to NJ, I at first said "no way; I mean, if I could afford a house like yours, then I would consider it, but I'm sure I could never afford that." He insisted to me that I could afford a house just like his, and told me that, in fact, there was a house right behind his currently on the market that he thought I could afford. It was this house, the one we now live in. But I didn't know it that day.
So we pulled up in front of the house. In our town, in the autumn, the residents blow or rake all their leaves, unbagged, to the sidewalk, and the town picks them up. There are many mature trees, so there are lots and lots and lots and lots of leaves. So we were parked in leaves up to my knees. When Conor jumped out of the car into the leaves, we almost lost him, the pile was so deep. He thought it was very cool. That will always be my first memory of my home.
The house did not wow us from the outside. It is a brick Victorian. Rather plain for a Victorian, and the woodwork is painted white, which is rather dull. The brick could use a cleaning,the windows could use shutters. Then we walked up the front steps, to the front door, and it was all over for me. The porch, the porch, oh, the porch. The house has a wrap-around porch. A deep, deep porch that goes across the entire front of the house, on both sides of the front door, and wraps around the side of the house, about half-way around. It wraps in a circle, not a square, if that makes sense, because there is a turret on the corner of the house, so it curves around, instead of making a sharp angle. At the back end of the porch, there are steps down to a patio, and narrow french doors into the house. The parlor is in the turret, and it has floor-to-ceiling windows, five of them (or is it four?), which of course are on the porch. On the other side of the front door from the parlor is the room that the prior residents called the Music Room, so we do too, although I think it is probably more properly called a drawing room. That has a bay window, which also is on the porch. It was wonderful. And although from a distance the house is not so special looking, it is quite lovely when standing on the porch, all curves and angles and big windows and deep red brick.
We stepped inside, and I had an immediate emotional reaction to the house. I loved it. I could see it needed a lot of work, but it was beautiful. It had several fireplaces, and lots of little interesting rooms, and bay windows, and beautiful old wooden floors, and a beautiful staircase from which you could look down into the large "living hall" as the entry/living room is apparently called.* The stairs seemed to go up and up and up, and around and around there were so many rooms. And the house just seemed full of life. The couple that lived there had raised six daughters in that house, and their pictures, and pictures of their many grandchildren were all around. Lots of red hair, and Celtic crosses. My mother, when she first saw the house, called it the "Irish house."
I really didn't consider buying the house after that first day. I thought we couldn't afford it. I tried to interest a friend who was thinking of moving to the area, but I found myself resenting the thought of him having it instead of me. We now compared every house we saw, or considered seeing, to this house. And it always came back to the porch. We looked at a few more houses, but I wasn't interested in any house that did not have a porch. Even those that had a porch did not measure up to my porch, as I was starting to think of it. So it was all over. We had to have it, and we stretched our budget a little further, and braced ourselves for all the work the house would take, and we bought it. The first thing I did after signing the contract was to buy porch furniture. And then last year, I bought some more. And I'd really like to buy some more, but I'm holding off. It is a really big porch.
I was thinking a lot yesterday of how we fell in love at first sight with our house because of the porch. After coming back from a neighborhood birthday party in the afternoon, I snuck out to the porch with my book, and enjoyed a blissful half hour reading, and dozing a bit. Feeling guilty for not cleaning, or shopping, or working, or spending time with the kids, but still glorious. Then Conor wandered over, and I offered to work on the paint-by-numbers project we had bought him that morning when we had picked up a last-minute (what other kind is there) birthday gift. Even though I really just wanted to read. And I am not a very artsy-craftsy mother. Even if I had no job, and stayed at home, I know I'd only reluctantly spend a lot of time with paints and papers and glue. It is just not my thing. But against my instincts, I got some newspapers, spread them on the porch coffee table, read the instructions, got some extra paintbrushes, and we started painting. It was slow and messy-going, but we very bonding. Then Clare came over and wanted to paint, too. We couldn't let her mess up our paint-by-numbers, so we got her her own paints and brushes, and put a smock on her, and she painted beside us on the coffee table. Then my husband came out, and took over painting from me.
Fiona then wandered out, and I offered to work with her on the new puzzle we'd also bought that morning. Clare joined us, and we moved to the other end of the porch, and the other coffee table, and started working on the new puzzle. I'm not a big puzzle mom, either. But I'd heard from my husband that Fiona was really good at puzzles, so I thought I should see for myself. The three of us worked on it together, taking turns fitting the pieces in place. So, the boys were painting on one end of the porch, the girls were doing puzzles on the other. On a beautiful July day. I thought about the fact that this porch has been standing 113 years, and thought about how many beautiful summer afternoons had been passed in a similar way, and wished I could thank the original owner who had thought to build the best porch in town.
* Our house is actually in a coffee table book about Queen Anne Victorian houses, by Janet Foster. She describes the main area of our first floor as a living hall. Modeled after the entry halls of medieval homes. Cool. I'm pretty sure she chose our house for her book because of the porch.
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