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- Story Listed as: True Life For Adults
- Theme: Family & Friends
- Subject: Childhood / Youth
- Published: 08/06/2017
PLAYHOUSES
By: Linda
My playhouse or apartment where I live today was built in 1903. It is a quirky conglomeration of rooms. There are round covers on the walls that cover pipes that the gas lights had once been connected to. Old wood floors that creak and moan when walked on. Clanking radiators that let me know winter is here. Designed for city dwellers of 100 years ago, the kitchen is little larger than a closet, next to a little larger breakfast room. Not meant to be used for cooking really. Designed for city folks who ate out. The foyer is quite large with a long hallway and doors that open to the kitchen and an archway into the living room. At the other end of the long hallway are the two bedrooms and bathroom. There is one French door opening to the sun room from the living room and double French doors opening to the sun room from one of the bedrooms. The sun room has a clay tiled floor and a covered drain for when the ladies watered their ferns in the old days. The living room and bedrooms are large compared to the kitchen and eating area.
It perplexes me no end.
I know if I extended the kitchen wall and made the foyer smaller I could make plenty of room for an eat in kitchen and still have a good sized foyer. The double French doors in the bedroom could be repositioned on the opposite wall (that is now a long hall wall and directly across from the entrance door)and become a beautiful large living room opened up to the sun room. The present living room could become a formal dinning room. A large arch between the new dining room and the new living room would really open things up nicely. Alas, I can only dream, the building manager said no.
Some days when we didn't have anything to do and mama was tired of hearing us whine about being bored she would tell us to go out in the woods and "make us a playhouse". Gloria and I and any cousins or friends visiting would take the broom and rakes and head on out to the woods behind the tobacco barn. We looked around until we found an open space where we could lay off some rooms. We walked off the perimeter of the playhouse and then carefully planned where the bedrooms and kitchen and living room would go. We marked openings for the doors and windows and then we raked and swept out the leaves. We made the brothers come with us to help find fallen logs and branches and help carry them and place them where we told them too to outline the walls, making adjustments according to the length of the logs.. We made them find us rocks that we used to mark the doors and fireplaces. We laid out the kitchen and living rooms and as many bedrooms as we could with the logs we had..arranging and rearranging the logs to fit our plans. We picked the rooms that we wanted for ourselves and had fusses about who got which room or if one room was bigger than the others. When the rooms were laid out and swept clean we had to get them furnished. We made the boys bring us cut tree trunks from the wood shed for seats and pick tree branches to lay on the ground for beds. Mama would give us some jars and broken bits and pieces but our best furnishings came from "the gully" across the road. The gully across the road had been used as the trash dump for generations and was a treasure trove of broken pottery and glass bottles and tin cans and broken furniture. Sometimes when we were out wandering around the farm we came across other "gullies" with treasure and we went to them when "The gully" was poorly stocked. One of these gullies was on Aunt Gladys farm. This was, for me, the best part of making our playhouse. Finding and cleaning and deciding what to use our found gully treasures for. We found bits of blue Willow china and fancy flowered china and broken cups for our kitchen and Aunt Jimama cans and coffee cans for our pantry. We made flower vases out of the old bottles and picked flowers to put in our living room. We worked all day on our playhouse and after we had done all that we could to furnish it and make it how we wanted it to look, we lost interest. The boys got mad at us sometimes and tore it apart or we would just desert it and when time came to "make a new playhouse" we used some of the old logs and rocks. We always had to go get new decorations from "The Gully", though..
Sometimes in the fall, after the tobacco had all been taken out of the pack house we made a playhouse in the pack house loft. We swept up the tobacco dust and hauled our Gully finds up the ladder that was on the side of the wall and through the trap door in the floor. I loved making that playhouse in the fall when the rain was beating down on the tin roof. I remember running back and forth to the house in the rain barefoot getting stuff from mama for our playhouse.
I have not come far from those playhouses. When Dick and I were traipsing around Europe a while back we stayed in Hostels in France and Switzerland that were more than 500 years old. The owner of a Bed and Breakfast that we stayed at in Salisbury England told us her house was older than our country. When we were in Edinburgh I felt that I had come home. Every house there is ancient..
I love old buildings with rooms that I think about changing even if it is only in my mind. (Many times I have redecorated our old log house, the rock fireplace with the rock hearth would not have been replaced with brick). I love, love going to junk stores and finding blue willow china and bits and pieces of old cookware and old table linens and pictures and well, anything old. Anything once loved and discarded that I can bring home and give a new life.
Sometimes I can spend a whole day rearranging my rooms and putting out my new, old finds, that came from the gully, uh, I mean the junk store.
Is there any other, more fun way to make a playhouse?
Not for me there isn't.. Now where am I going to put that ancient Oriental rug I found last week. If I move the one from the bedroom and put it in the other room I can use it in there. Or it might look good......... What fun.
Playhouses(Linda El Hady)
PLAYHOUSES
By: Linda
My playhouse or apartment where I live today was built in 1903. It is a quirky conglomeration of rooms. There are round covers on the walls that cover pipes that the gas lights had once been connected to. Old wood floors that creak and moan when walked on. Clanking radiators that let me know winter is here. Designed for city dwellers of 100 years ago, the kitchen is little larger than a closet, next to a little larger breakfast room. Not meant to be used for cooking really. Designed for city folks who ate out. The foyer is quite large with a long hallway and doors that open to the kitchen and an archway into the living room. At the other end of the long hallway are the two bedrooms and bathroom. There is one French door opening to the sun room from the living room and double French doors opening to the sun room from one of the bedrooms. The sun room has a clay tiled floor and a covered drain for when the ladies watered their ferns in the old days. The living room and bedrooms are large compared to the kitchen and eating area.
It perplexes me no end.
I know if I extended the kitchen wall and made the foyer smaller I could make plenty of room for an eat in kitchen and still have a good sized foyer. The double French doors in the bedroom could be repositioned on the opposite wall (that is now a long hall wall and directly across from the entrance door)and become a beautiful large living room opened up to the sun room. The present living room could become a formal dinning room. A large arch between the new dining room and the new living room would really open things up nicely. Alas, I can only dream, the building manager said no.
Some days when we didn't have anything to do and mama was tired of hearing us whine about being bored she would tell us to go out in the woods and "make us a playhouse". Gloria and I and any cousins or friends visiting would take the broom and rakes and head on out to the woods behind the tobacco barn. We looked around until we found an open space where we could lay off some rooms. We walked off the perimeter of the playhouse and then carefully planned where the bedrooms and kitchen and living room would go. We marked openings for the doors and windows and then we raked and swept out the leaves. We made the brothers come with us to help find fallen logs and branches and help carry them and place them where we told them too to outline the walls, making adjustments according to the length of the logs.. We made them find us rocks that we used to mark the doors and fireplaces. We laid out the kitchen and living rooms and as many bedrooms as we could with the logs we had..arranging and rearranging the logs to fit our plans. We picked the rooms that we wanted for ourselves and had fusses about who got which room or if one room was bigger than the others. When the rooms were laid out and swept clean we had to get them furnished. We made the boys bring us cut tree trunks from the wood shed for seats and pick tree branches to lay on the ground for beds. Mama would give us some jars and broken bits and pieces but our best furnishings came from "the gully" across the road. The gully across the road had been used as the trash dump for generations and was a treasure trove of broken pottery and glass bottles and tin cans and broken furniture. Sometimes when we were out wandering around the farm we came across other "gullies" with treasure and we went to them when "The gully" was poorly stocked. One of these gullies was on Aunt Gladys farm. This was, for me, the best part of making our playhouse. Finding and cleaning and deciding what to use our found gully treasures for. We found bits of blue Willow china and fancy flowered china and broken cups for our kitchen and Aunt Jimama cans and coffee cans for our pantry. We made flower vases out of the old bottles and picked flowers to put in our living room. We worked all day on our playhouse and after we had done all that we could to furnish it and make it how we wanted it to look, we lost interest. The boys got mad at us sometimes and tore it apart or we would just desert it and when time came to "make a new playhouse" we used some of the old logs and rocks. We always had to go get new decorations from "The Gully", though..
Sometimes in the fall, after the tobacco had all been taken out of the pack house we made a playhouse in the pack house loft. We swept up the tobacco dust and hauled our Gully finds up the ladder that was on the side of the wall and through the trap door in the floor. I loved making that playhouse in the fall when the rain was beating down on the tin roof. I remember running back and forth to the house in the rain barefoot getting stuff from mama for our playhouse.
I have not come far from those playhouses. When Dick and I were traipsing around Europe a while back we stayed in Hostels in France and Switzerland that were more than 500 years old. The owner of a Bed and Breakfast that we stayed at in Salisbury England told us her house was older than our country. When we were in Edinburgh I felt that I had come home. Every house there is ancient..
I love old buildings with rooms that I think about changing even if it is only in my mind. (Many times I have redecorated our old log house, the rock fireplace with the rock hearth would not have been replaced with brick). I love, love going to junk stores and finding blue willow china and bits and pieces of old cookware and old table linens and pictures and well, anything old. Anything once loved and discarded that I can bring home and give a new life.
Sometimes I can spend a whole day rearranging my rooms and putting out my new, old finds, that came from the gully, uh, I mean the junk store.
Is there any other, more fun way to make a playhouse?
Not for me there isn't.. Now where am I going to put that ancient Oriental rug I found last week. If I move the one from the bedroom and put it in the other room I can use it in there. Or it might look good......... What fun.
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