It's an interesting house and it's for sale

We have a great many handcrafted items in our house. Rick starts with rough cut lumber and makes it into quality, hand crafted furniture but also made several items that are part of the house. My intention is to go through the house to look at all the many repurposed items. Several items are built in and will stay for the next family.

On the porch is a church pew purchased from a small house of worship on Main Street in Wellsville. It is attached to the porch where it has weathered, more or less kindly, for 30 years. What’s interesting is how it has become a point of exchange.

For many years, I would leave empty egg cartons there and Meredith would drop off cartons full of eggs. It was a wonderful way to get eggs. Once I complained of their being difficult to peel and then I learned that fresh eggs need to be not hard boiled but hard steamed in a double boiler. They are different sizes and shades of brown or greenish, sometimes with 2 yolks but occasionally with no yolks. They are an adventure.

The church pew is where I sit to sort garlic and tie it to dry, to shuck peas and beans and to watch the rain.

 People know that I make art from cookie and candy tins so sometimes we come home and find a bag or box of tins on the porch and never learn where they come from. Once, though, the cans were delivered.

After the doorbell rang, I encountered an extraordinarily tall man with a sack of cans. “Hello,” I said.

“Wife told me to bring you these cans ,” he replied.

“Oh, thanks,” I said while opening the door and poising to ask who his wife was.

He pushed the sack into my hands, huffed, “Crazy woman,” and stomped away giving the idea that he wanted to please his wife but found the task very annoying.

Generally, I enter the house at the back door where there is a sunflower tile decorating a door to the basement. When we bought the house there was a plain door at the basement and it had no hint of welcome but one day we were out walking and someone was throwing away this multi-paneled door. We asked if we could have it and came back with the truck.

Sunflower Tile
entry to the basement.

Rick spent a very long time with that door sprucing it up and painting it and he inserted a wood panel where the glass had been. I created the sunflower tile to fit the space and now we have a welcoming door in the hall. 

The back hall has a couple of steps, an annoyance now and then over the years. At the first floor level is a coat rack made from part of the upright piano that came with the house. The hooks are vintage, found on the internet. Above the rack is a mirror from discarded vanity. We took off the side wings to make it small enough to fit. On the wall opposite is what Rick calls my mess and I call my international bell and brush collection.

I think of them as being upcycled because they were all meant for work, not for décor. There’s a scrub brush that I bought in China. Nobody ever meant to that to be admired. It’s not a work of art but of utility still it’s no Brillo pad and so interested me. Another brush from China is a huge calligraphy brush. It’s likely that was meant to be admired and maybe treasured.

We brought home a wooden sheep bell from Thailand and some hammered metal donkey bells from Peru. They are all handcrafted and marvelous, at least to me.

There’s a  typewriter cleaning brush. Are you old enough to remember typewriters? The keys would get clogged with dust and goo from the ribbons (remember ribbons?) and they needed to be cleaned to make the images sharp again. I wonder if clogged keys made tracing typewriters difficult for police or if that ever mattered.

Rick made all the kitchen cabinetry. He started with
rough cut lumber and penciled drawings.

Our kitchen is large and interesting. The entry door was given to us by Marge Ackerman when we lived on West State Street. Our house once belonged to her parents and her house was built in their backyard by the same people. Our house had French doors that were stored in the basement but were destroyed by the flood of 72 so when she decided to get rid of one of her French doors she gave it to us and when we moved, we took it along and it is now the entry into this house.

Next to that door, is a pair of cupboards that were being put in a dumpster at Andover School. I begged and begged for the cupboards but was told that they had to be destroyed. At the time, our kitchen was dismantled and we had no cupboards. Plates and boxes of cereal were arrayed on the dining room table while waiting for new cupboards to be built.

These cupboards were assembled. They had doors and shelves. What a luxury. I could see all the things piled on our table nicely ordered on those shelves but was given a stern no, I left the area, slumped shouldered and deflated but then someone knocked at the classroom door. I was told that it would be allowed if I could get them out of the dumpster and away within an hour. 

I called Rick barely able to speak. After a breath or two, I managed to string together words woven in sense and he brought the truck. He heave-ho and strained to get the cupboards into the truck. What a find, what a glorious find. He installed the pair, back to back, adding shelves we had purchased from the old Rockwell Department Store when it closed.

The cupboards were built with a deep side and a shallow side. The long door covered the deep side where a coat rod would hold a hanger and teachers would hang their coat or sweater. The floor of the cupboard had a rubber floor mat where teachers were meant to place boots during the day.

The long door had a row of holes drilled top and bottom to allow for air flow to dry coats on rainy or snowy days. What great design.

The shallow side had shelves for books or sundries and had 2 smaller doors, no holes, brass knobs on all.

Half Round window from Wellsville
High School purchased for $1.50.

With one deep and one shallow side, these could be fit together back to back to form a pantry. This was perhaps the most celebrated pantry in Wellsville because all the things previously jumbled on the dining room table were joyfully placed inside.

A bit more about that back hall. It's new. When we bought the house, one entered the side door into a garage and then walked to the back of the garage to find the door into the kitchen. What a chore.

Rick redid the entry way so that we had a back hall with no walking through the garage required. What was once the back stair landing became a kitchen alcove that now holds the stove.

The kitchen was one large room but we put in a t-shaped wall to section it off. In order to keep the sense of light and openness, the wall was fitted with a half round that was once part of the Wellsville High School. It was priced at $1.50 circa 1989.

The Keyless Piano Desk.

Behind the window is our piano desk. It was a working piano that came with the house. We forced the kids to take lessons on it with this deal.

Practice daily without hounding and if you want to quit in 6 months, fine. Practice daily with hounding and you need to take the lessons for a least a year. Emilie was diligent for 6 months and turned in her books. Jay was hounded for a year.

When Rick started breaking it apart to throw it away years later, I said, “Stop. It’s a desk.” He stopped and we made it into my desk. I made tiles to fill in the space under the keys and Rick put plate glass on top of it.

There’s a wood stove insert in the kitchen’s fireplace so we needed a place to hang the poker, bellows (rebuilt with scrap leather from a jacket) and shovel. The shoe last does the job. The pins for hanging the shovel and bellows are cut off nails. The poker hangs in a notch that was filed out.

The spice cabinet door is a glass washboard and the workbench where I make earrings is a rescued bit of bowling alley flooring.

Of course there is art in the kitchen. The first piece of art we bought together was a print of a carrot. Rick made a frame for it from scrap wood over 40 years ago. Above the kitchen window there is a row of animals. Many are birds that I made from upcycled cans. Some were painted by friends. Violet Elnmer paints on cabinet doors or purchased wood while Pauline King paints on the cut offs left over from her husband’s wood turning.

Our son Jay and his wife Lauren drew party chickens for me for one birthday. I framed them with parts of a cookie tin. There’s also a chicken in profile that I found on the side of the highway while walking several years ago.

Our clock was part of a school’s time system. No idea what school. Rick made a battery powered system that takes the place of the office regulator so it can continue to keep time for us. It still makes that clink when the minute hand advances.

The chimney didn't draw well so I made
a terra cotta chimney pot and Rick
installed it.

Our kitchen lamps are all unusual. One was a 1950s produce scale. Rick took it apart and reworked it to make it smaller and added the lamp parts. Emilie played clarinet when she was young and I play flute still. Our woodwind lamps are made of instruments not worth repairing.  I have parts for a meat grinder lamp and a coffee pot lamp but since there is no place to put them, they remain only parts and ideas.

Stair Aprons made by Rick.

Rick made this stained and leaded
glass window inside the
opening between the dining room
and the living room. 

The opening between the front hall and the
living room was just that. An opening. Rick made
this leaded glass window and the side panels
and installed French Doors.