House Inspector Calling!

Ever see a house where you wish you could walk up to the door and say, "House Inspector calling; just have to look around and see if your house is pretty."

That would be the job for me. The city wouldn't even have to pay this minor bureaucrat. 

This English Country House of Native Stone and Stucco designed by A. Raymond Ellis, 1882-1950 of Hartford, CT, for the January 1925 issue of Woman's Home Companion would lure me up the sidewalk.

Imagine my surprise when I walked out on our kitchen porch one cold morning in late November and looked beyond the hedgerow that borders a long part of the street of our property and a house magically appeared that had been hidden by leafy tree limbs.

So this was where all the construction noise had come from! Let me zoom in on it...

Doesn't it remind you a little bit of the 1925 magazine's house?

We aren't likely to meet these new neighbors as their road entrance is not on our street but down on the state highway that our own street runs off of. 

Theirs is a gated community and frankly, the first houses built there, probably in early 2000s, are really ugly McMansions. But this new house built high on the hill at the rear of the development looks like it has grace and charm.

Here's how it looked the other night when I went outside with BreeBree and James Mason after supper.

They must have been having a party and every single light in the house and on the property seemed to be on. 

Our mail lady must have lost our invitation but I stood there and snapped pictures, enjoying the pretty sight of the lighted house on the hill.

Wouldn't that have been a perfect time to walk up to the front door and say, House Inspector calling?

Every morning now, when I let the dachshunds out to go potty, I look up towards our new neighbor's house. I'm very careful now to put my robe over my pajamas and brush my hair. Because you never know, do you?

Just last week I saw something new near my neighbor's house.

My neighbors will someday have a new neighbor!

I hope this house is finished before the trees put on their Spring leaves. Then it will be months before I can snoop on my neighbors again. 

Unless I get that House Inspector job.

Story of a 1930s Woman and Her French Normandy-style Home

Today is our tenth wedding anniversary. You may think it odd that I've chosen to celebrate this milestone at home. I turned down John's offer to take me out for dinner and dancing in the city, and my best friend's insistence on a party in our honor at her house.

Tonight I want only to be with the three most important people in my life, John and our two children. At nine years old, Johnny is growing up so quickly and little Joyce won't be a baby much longer either. The years ahead will pass all too quickly.

As I set the table for dinner I can't help thinking about the years when the children were so young and John was always home from work to see them before they went to bed.

Now he works such long hours to see his company through a tough year.

Maybe we shouldn't have built the big house last year, but we both fell in love with the houses of Normandy when we honeymooned there, staying with a friend John met during the War. John says that when this Depression ends, the house will only rise in value.

But will it be too large for us once the children are grown and gone from home? We've not been able to have a third child yet. I've always wanted a house full of children and even grandchildren someday.

And John by my side, us growing old together.

I think back to our first anniversary when John and I celebrated at our favorite Italian restaurant.

We were so much in love and so happy talking about what we would do the next day. Our Sundays alone together were so important to us because we worked in the city six days a week.

As we ate our dinner, John told me his plan for our returning to France in five years. We were like children let out for recess in our happiness, discussing all that we would do and the places we would visit. 

Our plans changed once the children came along, only postponed, John insisted. 

I hear Joyce coming down the stairs and turn to see her pulling her dolly behind her and rubbing her eyes sleepily from her nap. I put the last plate down and hurry to her, forgetting about Paris.

Paris could wait. It always has.

***************************************


You all know my love of the 1940s and 1950s. I have an armoire full of women's magazines from the late 1800s through the 1960s but have tended to ignore the many 1930s magazines produced during the Depression years.

But recently I began wondering about the homes and families of that time period because our house was built in 1935. I've been spending hours immersed in those 1930s magazines and have become fascinated by the women of those years. 

I kept coming back to one woman in an ad for laundry soap, wondering why it drew my eye.

 I love her green dress, her hairstyle, her pearls and her poise. And then I found the perfect home for her, in the same magazine, a French Normandy house. 

Aren't the clustered chimneys fabulous? And the slate roof and the green shutters? Look at the casement windows. I've always loved casement windows but can you see that the little awning window over the casement is open on the second story? I wonder if all of them open? Darling!

And the porch is quaint, don't you think? Hopefully, it will never be ripped off by an HGTV host, being that it is in a historical district.

This house is from a real neighborhood, the very desirable Forest Hill in Cleveland, Ohio. The entire neighborhood was planned to include only house designs of European Provincial architecture. 

It is on land from the John D. Rockefeller Estates. Four hundred French Normandy-style houses were planned but only 81 built. These houses still stand as they were built of masonry walls, concrete slabs and steel joists.

Here is a link to the historical society there.

The pictures of the Normandy-style houses are gorgeous! You are in for a treat if you watch the slide show of the houses. I even spotted the exact windows I talked about on many of the houses.

Have any of you ever heard of this neighborhood? 

One of my favorite books of old is Came A Cavalier by Frances Parkinson Keyes, set in Normandy. Have any of you who have had the good fortune to visit France ever been to the Normandy region?

Thank you for reading my story and for indulging my new passion for the 1930s!

[All of the above pictures were from the March 1932 issue of Ladies' Home Journal.]

 

On Becoming Serene, and Blogging

Ever wish you had taken computer courses before becoming a blogger? Perhaps you did just that.

But I, I whose ignorance assured her that she who had to be dragged into the computer age from her trusty typewriter could throw herself headlong into the hypnotizing world of blogging, went ahead, understanding absolutely nothing about computers.

I believe in doing things too soon. In striking before the iron is hot, in leaping before one has looked, in loving before one has been introduced.

      Beverley Nichols in Down the Garden Path

Are you like that about a passion? And do you have your blogging degree in passion only or in a tech education?

And if you answer "in passion" do you ever suffer a crise de nerfs when technology comes crashing down around you as it did on me recently?

What do you do about it, pray tell?

Here's how I handled my own crise de nerfs , my faithful, patient friends. That is, after I had taken hours and hours of help out of my son's life, by phone and by text, to fix the major problems.

Every day after trying to fix the rest of my computer problems I would run out of the office that I grandly call My Writing Room and grab one of these books to take to my bedroom reading chair.

I believe that these books I ordered one at a time during January and thus far in February have been sent to me by the Wise Physician who knew so well what I would need during the attack on my nerves by the evil god of technology (and yes, I could name him here but won't), along with his minions Pop-Up-Ads and My-Computer-Keys-Are-Stuck-in-Molasses.

"How slow can I go?

Very Very S.....L....O....W."

  

And there was their pal HaHaHa who signed me out of everything I had signed into for years and then threw away forgotten passwords set eons ago.

And lest I forget another wannabe kingpin, Mr. Scrolling? That function became a test, no, a con-test to see how much time could pass before either the icon stopped spinning or my head did.

"I can't do this, it's driving me crazy," I screeched to BreeBree and James Mason as I stormed away from my desk and out of the room of torture that it sits in. 

And then I sought an antidote. Either I could climb the walls or eat Rocky Road ice cream or grab one of these old four books, House & Garden's Guide to Interior Decoration.

Page by page I disappeared into the world of homes of the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.

Each time I was transported so fully to homes of those years that no LSD trip of the 1960s, if I had ever been someone who did such a thing, could possibly have offered as much mind-blowing happy feelings, such heart's and mind's ease as these four books offered.

 

I studied pages on furniture styles and table setting and terraces and it became as real to me as if I were personally expecting the garden club women to luncheon before showing them around my own Eden. 

And at last I would emerge from that world into my own, a far gentler woman.

And instead of being the woman whose chin is dragging the ground like this poor soul who can so easily become my alter ego...

 [story herehttps://awindow-lookacrosstheway.blogspot.com/2013/02/february-faces-white-swan.html]

Instead of her, I would become more like my other more desired alter ego....

 [story here https://awindow-lookacrosstheway.blogspot.com/2019/02/i-

dreamed-i-wore-pink-raincoat.html]

Thankfully, all at last seems well here in my blogging world, after the mysterious, complicated technical procedure called "Restart Computer" took place.

Who knew?

Now, dear reader, what turns you from a sad frantic maniac into a serene goddess of the hearth? Would you share a secret cure with us?

And what is it that brings on your own crise de nerfs? 

[No, I don't speak French. I'm betting that phrase has stayed in my mind from an old Edith Wharton novel.]

  

Who Lives Here?

You're wandering along the street in an historic neighborhood in Nashville at sunset time.

Wouldn't this house make you wonder if a storybook family lived here, not real people at all?

The answer to that question is Yes!
Yes to both possible answers!

But they are real enough.
I should know because the owners of this storybook house are the son and daughter-in-law of my sister. 

They are cat and dog lovers, 

go to work at responsible jobs--Sean at a non-profit that helps veterans find jobs, Christy at one of those mobile app places that gives me brain fever just trying to understand it. They come home and design their special gardens and interiors, entertain at the drop of a hat...

I could go on and on, but you get the picture. 
This couple is as real as can be.

But they also are two of the most fun people you'd ever hope to know.

I should know. I follow them on Facebook!

Wouldn't you love to see more of this cottage?

Maybe Sean and Christy will invite us back  at Christmas?

The Dignity of Labor

 

Doesn't this handsome male look dignified doing his job as sentinel?

He guards this old house that's been in the same family ever since it was built. 

So does his sweet mate.

They never go off duty. 

Ever so often, R.H. and our sons are called on to work on this lovely house,

for two of the nicest clients anyone could ever have.

As you can see in the above picture, lower shutters have been removed,

pots on the veranda not filled with flowers this season.

Work has been taking place.

We have worked at this much-loved family house for many years.

This time the original copper roof that was causing too much
condensation and leaks had to be replaced.

We installed Arrowline lifetime warranty steel shingles.
And it was time to replace much of the wood siding with Western cedar.

Notice where we installed snow guards over the bay window above?
This should prevent chunks of ice from falling off and breaking
the skylight again.

After the roofing and siding was completed, we replaced a unique
old skylight that had been cracked by falling ice.

Don't you love this cute skylight we installed?
We are the only company around that will warranty these old skylights.

If you look at the picture below, the room where you see the chimney is a 20 x 30 
kitchen ell that opens up to a terrace where they have breakfast.
We did the roof on the kitchen about 10 years ago of copper
that has aged to a beautiful patina.

And we just installed these new Azek Pavers decking material so that the owners now
will be able to put a table and chairs out to enjoy the view that looks 
out on their 26 acres.

Below is a beautiful garden room.

The skylights you see in the lower part of this picture we
installed years ago.

Almost forgot, it was time for a new roof on the pool house too.

It is always such a pleasure working for these nice people and helping them

with new projects. And old homes are our favorite to work on.

There are other buildings on the estate that we've worked on in the past such as 

an upper story breezeway to the garage for an office, and the barn,

but my photographer missed some shots.

He did take pictures of a few interesting areas around the property 

that I thought you might enjoy seeing. 

These steps lead to a terrace

that in turn leads to another terrace.

There are many, many terraces tucked around the house and property.

 

Isn't this a lovely path to walk?

There is a peony garden in the back

and one of the many rose gardens on the land.

Here's another garden far away from the house by the barn.

Don't you love this noble eagle?

He's made of bronze and welded with lead 

and the squirrels have nibbled on him over the years.

Ever watched Blast from the Past?

Here's the fallout shelter!

 

Now, don't ask me who these guys are.

In fact, if you know who they are, please tell me.

"In the month of September we have in New York and so many other states a holiday which everyone of us should remember. It is called Labor Day and should bring to our minds first of all the dignity of labor. It is a dignified thing to work, to pay one's way in the world through the work of one's hands or the work of one's head, and it is something in which every worker should take pride."

Eleanor Roosevelt

1934

Happy Labor Day to all of you!