The video above is courtesy Garcia Properties, credit Ben Scherliss. All photos below are mine.
I broke the news in the three-part series on our garden: We’ve left our beloved city farmhouse behind.
It’s been a very emotional parting.
My husband and I had lived in this place longer than any other, for him since childhood, and for me since… all time.
Yeah, in my half-century plus on Earth, this old Victorian lady housed me longer than any dwelling ever has—and she did so very well…
…The signature creak of her old floorboards—original to the house. The sunlight streaming in through a back window with its view of the “secret” garden, a hanging prism shooting rainbows around the room. The heaviness of the pocket door between the living and dining rooms, and the smooth, oiled slide of her turn-of-the-last-century hardware.
Architecture, just like art and literature, is important. The carved shield on the fireplace mantle, the transom windows above the doors, a copper doorknob… How I wanted to take that one with me, just that, a doorknob that no one would miss, a token. But I left it because it’s part of this grand ol’ gal, and I didn’t want to piece her out. I know what it’s like when people take pieces of you, and I wanted to leave her whole.
I know what it’s like when people take pieces of you, and I wanted to leave her whole.
Architecture connects us with a past in which craftsmanship and attention to detail were still guiding construction principles. See this outline following the base of the stairs; slide your hand down the bannister and admire the newel post. Imagine antique varnish, faded by the hands of all the women who’ve polished it before you.
When we bought the house in 2017, the mantle, the staircase, and all of the beautiful old door and window frames on the first floor had been hastily painted a bland brown, streaked right over the old, crackling varnish. We spent years freshening her up with coats of white.
The dining room is a special place, and from the start, I imagined extended family gatherings there around an oversized table. We bought one within months and made good on that, my family across the two states bisected by the Mississippi River driving in from either side to our half-way point for holidays and other occasions. I chose to drench the room in this breathtaking deep blue to bring out its features even more as a background for all days but especially the holidays.
Sadly, the pandemic interrupted all of that, and what one trauma will do is envelop any past traumas left unattended and unearth them, like a coffin in a flood zone.
I wish I could say that big farmhouse table brought my extended family together for all and for good, and it did for a time. But deep trauma needs more attention than my birth family gave ours, and it was always more than the table and that dining room could handle. It won’t be papered over easily, as I understandably tried to do (hope springs eternal) with my series on returning home again.
But that’s a tragic story for another day, not now. Today, for you, my reader, this is a tribute, a triumphant one, to a gorgeous abode that sheltered its owners well for eight wonderful years.
She was built in 1904, the year of the St. Louis World’s Fair, during the city’s glory days. Nothing echoes that era better for me than the front-porch ball finials, preserved though the rest of the porch had been replaced. To highlight the finials, I painted them in the Victorian gumdrop style.
I carried this over to the front and back doors as well.
The colors might not be your cup of tea, and that’s fine. They fit the art I brought with me and my persona as a writer in the game industry running her business out of the house.
The finials also fit in perfectly with the neighborhood, called Mapleweird, a play on the name Maplewood. In fact it’s not just a neighborhood like those in other cities but its own incorporated town, though geographically it’s contiguous with the city of St. Louis. Here the city and the county run under entirely separate governments. For my friends in Seattle or those familiar, this would be like if Ballard had never been annexed (many there still wish for independence, ha ha), and Seattle was not part of King County.
On that note, I’ve always thought St. Louis vastly underrated for its cultural offerings—world-class museums, a zoo, and science center, all free—especially when seen in light of its affordability. Anthony and I could never have bought a place in that beloved old Ballard neighborhood in Seattle, but there we were with a lovely old farmhouse and quarter-acre plot in Mapleweird, more working class and walkable than Ballard and just as quirky and fun, with its Route 66 vibe and early 1900s storefronts still intact.
Over these eight years, I got to dig into this place, and not just its soil. For the first time, I lived in one home long enough for my houseplants to need bigger pots, for the furniture to need several rearrangings as our lives changed—making space for two home offices, emptynesting and then having our son move back in before joining the Navy, and then emptynesting again. We even cleaned out the basement twice after the pandemic shortages and our permaculture ways bent us slightly toward hoarding.
We invested in this building as well, with a full-basement sump pump, large-capacity gutters with leaf guards, a new back porch, new dishwasher (Bosch, baby), fancy farmesque kitchen faucet, snazzy rain barrels, and a fully fenced yard in long-wearing cedar planks, among other expenditures. Besides the hard work and patience in the garden, we put hard-earned funds into this place to keep her fit for the future. In our multi-year search for a new place, we’ve found that too few people do the same these days.
She’s a hard friend to say goodbye to, this home. I’m not ashamed to say I hugged that stairwell newel post and blew her kisses as I closed the back door for the last time.
Though she’s 121 now, she told me she felt prettier than she ever has, and thanked me for all the attention and care.
Though I’m in my fifties now, I told her I’d never felt more at home as when my husband, son, and I all lived together under her peaked roof.
You can pick up several of my books at 25% off right now in the Smashwords summer/winter sale.
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