Tour of my childhood home

While in Tennessee for less than a week in October (Monday midnight until Saturday afternoon), my cousin J and I opened all the doors & windows and let the fresh air in.  

It was perfect fall weather!  Bright blue skies!  Highs in the low 70s and lows in the upper 30s and low 40s.  Thursday night we both were cold! Friday night we used space heaters. :) 

By the time we arrived, multiple dressers, pie safes, tables, chairs, a settee, a washstand, a bookcase, a corner cupboard and a trunk had already left.  Over the previous few months, various relatives had taken those to their homes in South Carolina, Illinois, and Tennessee. 

Our task was to empty the house of everything that family wanted and all but the antiques that might sell in the private estate sale, to clean it, and to have it ready for the private estate sale.  I joked that we removed everything from this century & most things from the previous century (and it wasn't that difficult!).  A family friend cleaned the floors, baseboards, etc.  

And the house looked great!  We took photos and thought it looked like a staged house. (Of course, by the time of the auction, it was 100% empty except for the window dressings, light fixtures, and appliances. I will avoid posting the photos of empty rooms.  Sigh.)

Enjoy a tour!

The 2nd floor hall has a door that used to go to a 2nd floor porch. After the porch was blown off in the tornado of '33, a sloped porch roof was built.

I'm not sure I ever remember the front door open like this. There's so much great LIGHT in this house! 

The living room looks bare without my mom's devotional books, the antique barrister bookcase, my aunt's homemade blanket on the couch, the Hummel nativity on the top mantle, etc.  And of course at Christmas it was always MUCH more full!

Part of my grandparents' bedroom set

LOVE the floors! (but not the tall, narrow closets)

My childhood bedroom ... the stovepipe hole cover, the mantle clock, and the trunk (and bed and dresser) are unchanged from decades ago.

The southeast windows I grew up with ... which providentially trained me to sleep with lights & noise from the 4-lane highway (helpful when I moved from there to a major city in Japan at 18).

If this looks like a museum, it's because it almost is! (One day I wasted money on the admission price to The Museum of Appalachia - ha! It's full of furniture I grew up with. ) 

One of eight mantles in the house

Need to sew anything?

This is where my cousin J remembers the bell being when she was a child.  The bell is now at the county archives. 

I LOVE the light in the upstairs back porch! 
Older relatives remember sleeping here when they would visit. 

The default guest room.  The quietest room, but a SMALL bed!

I prefer the rooms with two windows.
(You can see the window air conditioner unit still in place here.
Growing up we used box fans in the windows at night.) 

A glimpse of the cedar armoire. 
Two long cedar chests were part of this set, but went to my dad's two sisters (or their children).
This armoire housed my mother's and grandmother's wedding dresses (among other things). 

Tiny, but serviceable.

The portraits had mostly been taken down from the gallery.  I hope the new owners will remove the plywood wall inside the railing, which was built to conserve energy (but meant the upstairs is unheated). The stairs continue on up to the full attic. 

Trunks, trunks, and more trunks!  And the books! My parents had a great curated selection of books!

Arguably the most-used room. :) 

Papa's roll-top desk (and a churn for good measure).

One of at least four pie safes.

We searched in the dining room cabinets to find a centerpiece,
and selected the one that screamed, "Antique." :)
[The dining room has one of three mirrored double mantles.]

The banister that successive generations have slid down. 

The red light in the front hall.

Downstairs bedroom (with modern - circa 1980s - closet).

Armoire from the 1800s

Parlor ~ these are the two pieces of furniture I would have loved to preserve. But I don't have a house they fit in. 

The parlor with the wooden table from the 1800s. 
This room has not been this empty in over 50 years. (It held the archives.)

Don't you love the character of this fireplace? (One of two fireplaces in the house.)

Gorgeous parlor mantle

I couldn't resist this final picture of the sink ... So much life lived here. So many dishes washed here. So much food prepared here. And that chapter is over. And we turn the page to a new chapter in our lives.