A peony for your thoughts

I've been pondering the things we keep to remind us of our past.

They're memories mostly.

Images in our minds of a place or a person.

Maybe the scent of something baking in the kitchen.

Perhaps a song that takes you back to another day and time.

Every once in a while, though, it's something tangible.

Something that you can touch.
A real, physical connection to the people and the places that are gone.

Before the city tore down the house that my grandparents and great grandparents had lived in for over 40 years, I took a knob off of one of the kitchen cabinets.
I also have a brick from the front porch.
They're nice to have, but they just sit in a closet. 

But every spring, when I look out my window, I see peonies popping up in my garden.
And when they bloom, there will big beautiful flowers in shades of pink and purple.

They're the peonies my Gram and Great-Grandmother planted so many years ago.
The flowers from these plants were cut and taken to the cemeteries every Memorial Day. 
Their flowers were put in a vase on the kitchen table as the prelude to my Gram's roses every summer.

 

They're more than flowers.

They're a connection to my past.

They're living reminders of the memories I hold in my mind.

And if I ever leave this place where they grow now, they'll go with me.

Everything old is new again

The kitchen. 

The heart of the home.

Everything from pop-tarts to gourmet dinners come out of this room.  We become obsessed about its design.  I've spent hours upon hours thinking about the most cost effective way to bring this space up to date.

I want it to be current.  Modern.  Efficient.  Timeless.
And yet, I still want to leave it semi-original. True to the age and the style of the house.

So what do I do? 

It's a plaid, plaid, plaid world.

The biggest project in any house remodel is usually the kitchen.

Ours was no different.

Here's what we started with:

60+ year-old appliances.

One short wall of cabinets with minimal counter top space.

Disconnected plumbing.

Worn through linoleum.

Peeling plaster walls.

And wallpaper. 

Lots of wallpaper


On the walls

 


And on the ceiling.


I kind of liked it.




I wanted to keep it.


I got out-voted.



But it all worked out in the end.

A little Deja Vu

We had an ice storm in Wichita this week.

The trees sparkled in the sun.  It was a beautiful sight.

So I took this photo looking south on Perry Avenue.
 

Then it occurred to me that I had seen another picture that looked amazingly similar.

Only this one is 55 years older.

It was also taken in April. 
But this one was taken after a snow storm, not ice.
It's in about the same place on Perry - looking south. 
You can see the same houses.

Years may pass, but some things stay the same.
I do love that.

A sandwich and a song

Tucked in the corner of the kitchen is a charming arched doorway that leads into a cozy little breakfast nook.

And above the chair rail in this little room, hangs this wallpaper with snow white dogwood blossoms, emerald green leaves and the most amazing vivid red birds on it.


















When I was young, we would visit my Grandmother and Uncle Leroy and we would sit in this room and have sandwiches.  And butter brickle ice cream from the deep freeze.

And while we would sit, my Uncle Leroy would whistle, like a songbird, and tell me that the birds on the walls were singing for me.

And, of course, I believed him.

That little room felt like a forest full of birds to a little girl.

And I loved it.

 
I still do.

The smallest room in the house - Part 2

Remember what it looked like before we started?

It was a beauty, no?  NO!

We could have slapped on some paint and put in a new potty and called it good, but that's just not how we roll.

We gotta get dirty, man.  And let me tell you, tearing out lathe and plaster is DIRTY work.

YUCK!

We tore out the wall behind the sink.

And the wall behind the toilet.

And the wall behind the tub.   (When we did that we found another access point to the attic, which was nice when we did the electrical and the insulation!)

  

And the floor - which freaked some people out - because you could see through the planks right to the basement!

After the plumbing was done, we put in a cool new window and called the drywall guys and they gave us a blank canvas so we could start over...

And that's when the fun really began.

The smallest room in the house...

One little bathroom.  That's what we have here.

To say that this bathroom is in desperate need of a makeover is an understatement.

It's yellow, which I don't love. 

The "tile" really isn't tile at all.  It's 4x4 plastic-ish squares that look like tile which are stuck to the plaster. Hmmm...

The lathe and plaster walls are blistered and peeling.

It has a tiny little sink that's mounted too low on the wall and a toilet with a cracked tank.

There is one small window.  In the tub.  Which is impractical for a myriad of reasons.

The bathtub itself is awesome, though.  It's a huge cast iron tub that's extra deep and extra long, which will be wonderful to sit and soak in - once we get it cleaned up.

Stay tuned.  You won't believe the transformation...