Tag Archives: architecture

This is the house of my godparents, the house of my childhood summers, the house that holds a special place in my heart.

The house I wrote this short story about (CLICK HERE) and this post where I’d been inside the house in the 1980′s after 40+ years and what I found there… (CLICK HERE).

This is the house that I drive past each and every time I’m on the Vineyard.  This is the house that looked sad and showed its age… the house that needed people to see its potential and give it the TLC it deserved for so long.

Then one day I got an email….  it was titled something like ‘we bought your house’!!  They had had their eye on the house for awhile and when it went on the market they bought it.  The house couldn’t have been luckier.  This couple and their family obviously love this house and have already made it more beautiful than its ever been… and they’re not even done yet.  I firmly believe that certain houses have a ‘soul’… maybe it’s my deep connection to this house but when I saw it recently it looked happy and even better there was a feeling of warmth and contentment when you walked inside.

Look at the house now …take a close look at the detail work and how they’ve made it stand out.

I recently met the new owners and had the pleasure of going into the house and stepping back into time…    this is some of what I saw…

When I walked into the living room the first thing I recognized  was the mirror over the fireplace…  it had previously been in the dining room over the sideboard.  The sideboard, dining room table and china cabinet are all original to the house and they are still beautiful.

This house was built around 1907 – 1911…  we think my godparent’s were the original owners but one thing’s for sure… a lot of the furniture is original…like for instance…

… the iron beds and some of the side tables.

But the one that I really got emotional about was in this room pictured below…  the only twin bed in the house… MY BED… the bed where I spent every summer of my childhood.

To get to my room in those days I had to climb the steep stairs which led to a long, long hall … at least it seemed like a long hall then …

however, on the nights I listened to ‘The Shadow’ on the radio with my godfather the hall seemed like this.

Me and the house, 1950 and 2013… not much difference in my height

Thank you my new friends for letting me revisit the past, to share with you what little I know about the history of the house, and thank you to you and your family for giving back to this house the heart it had been missing for so long.