Our House, a quasi "Chronicles" entry

Shortly before lunch, Dakboy and I were talking about his WIP (work in progress), aka as Casa Dak. The subjects changed a few times from my job and his to the "villiage" he lives in and the suburbia where I currently reside. Finally we started chatting about our parents home and that made me think of some interesting"fun facts" about my neighborhood. Some of these may have been mentioned in my "Chronicles", but in case they are not or you don't care to read them, I will mention them here.

The neighborhood I grew up in was well established. Some of the houses were over 100 years, but there were some that were much newer...those were built in the 50's 60's, and 70's. The old homes were hard to spot. They had been renovated so many times they scarcely resembled the original design, which in many cases was a basic 4-5 room home used to house coal miners...a popular, albeit dangerous profession practiced at the turn of the 20th century in my home town.

Being that my home town was the base camp for coal miners, it never really became affluent. The neighborhood was set far on a hill and the elderly or poor of health had trouble navigating it at times. While there were several older people that lived on the hill, most were born there or moved there when they were quite young. Native West Virginian's tend not to move for the sake of moving. My parents lived in the same home for over 30 years before they decided to get off the hill and move to a home on flatter ground.

The houses in my neighborhood were rather close together. This was not the grand plan of some money hungry developer...it was that way to make the most use of the hilly space that was available to build upon. Our lots were rather large as far as neighborhoods go, but they were long and not very wide. My guess is that most lots were three or four times as long as they were wide. This tended to make houses with large back yards, small from yards and not much space on either side. The space on each side of most homes was about the same as what I see today in the North Texas area.

As previously stated, most of the older homes were pretty basic four and five room dwellings. As families grew, so did the house. It was very common to go out and play on a Saturday morning and see you neighbor adding room on to the back of the house, which was about the only place to add one with the lots laid out the way they were. Moving into a bigger home was an expense most in my neihgborhood were not willing to incur. Our house, in the 30+ years my parents lived there had 2 rooms added on A utility room and my sister's bedroom) as well as a back deck. This of course does not count the constant remodeling my father did to every room in the house. One of the more unique features our house had (a HUGE closet that sat in between the master bedroom and my room) was divided up into three smaller closets. One for my mom, one for my dad, and one for my sister, who inherited the room after me and my brother left home.

Interiors were replaced in each room while I lived there, each time going from plaster walls (the original covering from the mining days) to wood paneling, my father's wall covering of choice. Paneling was so popular where I grew up it was not until I was 24 that I recall seeing a home without it.

The biggest change for the house came after I moved to NC. My father decided to finally put a hallway in to allow access to the laundry room in a normal manner. You see up until the hallway was was put in, you had to go through my room (later to be my sister's) to get to the laundry room. To remedy that, my father move the kitchen sink to another wall and the open area where the sink was became the hallway (after the wall was opened up and the old doorway was closed up). It was a big project for my dad and mom. He was in his early 50's and not in great health. I was impressed with the workmanship of the final product. The diagram to the left is an idea of what was done. I know it is not very good, but it will do until I can get a better one up.

There were other houses in the neighborhood that went through interesting transformations. The most ingenious one that I can recall was performed by my neighbors on the street above us. They had a small house that was in very bad shape that they inherited from a deceased family member. They did not know how bad off it was until the decided to renovate. Once they started tearing out walls, plaster and flooring, they noticed that the whole house was in very bad shape...as a matter of fact, too bad of shape to fix. This posed a problem since they had already sold their old home and were planning on using the money to fix up the current one. Then the father got an idea. He moved the family into one half of the house as he tore down the other and rebuilt it. While the living arrangements were cramped, it allowed them to remain in the house while completely rebuilding it. One of the other benefits of him doing it that way was he only needed a building permit to do this. Tearing down the old house, hauling away the debris, and building a new house required many more permits and a lot more red tape.

One of the most spectacular transformations was the house right next to the ingenious one mentioned above. The home of the "cute as a button" Denise Palmer was pretty much like many of the others in the neighborhood until her father, a local contractor, got started removing the raised front porch, pouring a concrete front patio, installing columns, lowering the door and making the steps going up inside the house instead of out. It was truly one of the most interesting things I have ever seen. The man had talent. He and his brother (who lived a few doors down were both pro's but Howard, Denise's father was clearly the better of the two, if you compared homes. Donnie's house looked like little more than a mobile home. As a matter of fact, he rented it from the elderly couple who lived in the house below them.

My buddy Knightmare Duck (of "30 Days of Linux" and "Pictures From West Virginia" fame) lived in a house that used to be two separate apartments. Back in the 20's through the 50's, it was common to see a larger house divided up into two or more apartments. Many times this was done when children moved on and the houses were too big for the older couple to take care of. KD's parents bought the fixer-upper when I was a tweenager and gave the upstairs to their two kids. It would have made a small apartment, but cozy if not for the room that used to be the kitchen. It had fallen into a state of disrepair and if memory serves, had a bad leak in the roof. The room was closed off and that left 3 bedrooms, a TV/game room and a non-working bathroom. Many of the families were poor and could not afford to make some repairs and since KD's dad was not much of a handyman (though he had many other useful skills) they were never completed. Once KD's family moved out KD moved in with his girlfriend and some repairs were completed, although not all of them.

Thanx to Dakboy, I have really enjoyed this trip down memory lane. Maybe this will prompt others to think back a few years to their childhood homes.