this old house, part 1

You might remember that last spring I got a call from The Boy and LL (our daughter-in-law) in Portland. They were ready to move back to Texas and could they stay in the house temporarily while they decided on their next course of action. They arrived at the end of April and have settled in, temporary being only temporary for now.

Since we still used it on occasion (and hopefully more than occasionally in the future) we decided to carve ourselves out a little apartment in the back corner. We took the two smallest rooms, what had been the laundry room when we lived there and the small office adjacent to it and one of the two bathrooms and this is where we stay when we are in the city.

The old laundry room and the kitchen both opened into the back hall which, when I bought the house, was the back porch so the house had two back doors. I had the back porch enclosed so that I didn't have to walk through the entire house to go from the kitchen to the laundry room.

To separate the two living abodes, the kids installed a door from the kitchen to the back hall which gives us a private entrance to our little apartment through the back door. They can still use the back door but mostly refrain when we are 'in residence'. The other doors into our part have been closed and blocked by furniture.

The old laundry room became our kitchenette with our single burner, coffee maker, and mini fridge. We have a small table and two chairs in there too so I finally have the 'eat in kitchen' I have always wanted but somehow this isn't exactly how I envisioned it.

This (along with the little bathroom) is the oldest room in the house. By that I mean it hasn't been updated since ever. It still has the big porcelain covered cast iron sink with two separate faucets, one for cold, one for hot. The drainboard which you can't really see is exactly that, a board which slants slightly into the sink and has a groove running around the perimeter for water to drain into the sink.

What had been the office (originally it was the nursery and then the play room when the kids shared a room and then our son's room) became our bedroom/living room combo. You can just see the end of the bed which takes up the other half of this room. The last time we painted this room, we intended to strip all the woodwork. This bank of windows and one door frame was as far as we got and we never did go back and repaint the rest of the woodwork.

The little bathroom opens off that. The door into the bathroom is adjacent to the doorway into the kitchenette.

After the kids moved out and the antique toilet broke, we turned the second, ancient, bathroom into a storage room for all our canoeing gear so it took some doing to get it back in working order. We installed a toilet and had to repair leaking plumbing under the house from the tub. You can see it still has the old, two faucet sink and claw foot tub. Also the hole we had to cut in the sheetrock many years ago to repair leaking plumbing in the wall (we left the hole accessible in case we ever had to get in there again, at least that was the rationale, more likely we were just too lazy to fix it right).

I've stayed in hotel rooms bigger than this. In fact every hotel room I ever stayed in was bigger than this but it serves it's purpose, giving us a small place while we are in town to work.