tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8249013.post115239894447063208..comments2023-10-25T03:45:31.753-04:00Comments on The Cool House: That's One Way to Get a New Washermodernemamahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00837091713842104507noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8249013.post-1152832760614490272006-07-13T19:19:00.000-04:002006-07-13T19:19:00.000-04:00Looks like a fascinating house. Having reached clo...Looks like a fascinating house. Having reached close to the end of 26 years living in, loving, and renovating a Victorian house in central London ( England).. I have a real feeling for just where you are emotionally. We have 8 bedrooms, three receptions, a study, a dark room, three bathrooms and an ensuite to the master, a very large kitchen/breakfastroom, a three room basement, two walk in lofts, and two ladder accessed lofts, a thirty foot summer house/playroom and 300 foot of garden, which is huge by London standards.<BR/><BR/>We bought the house in 1980 from an Indian family who had lived here 35 years.. and in that time had done virtually nothing.. so the house was tatty.. but all the original features were intact. In fact we are only the third family to live here, as the guy who built it lived here and his three daughters kept the house until 1945 when the Indian family bought it. From an old photo we found in the loft with the date on the back there is a clump of day lillies in our front garden that was there in 1927! They are amazingly still fabulous. <BR/>I could tell you so many stories; like the time my mother in law and I took out a casement window on the third floor, took it down to the garden and over the space of about 5 days, took it apart, stripped it back to bare wood, reconstructed and replaced odd bits, refinished it and replaced in it's orignal place on the third floor. The guy across the road who had aparently been watching this brought us a box of chocolates to express his amazement that two women could attempt and succeed at such a task. When I look back we were a bit mad as getting it in and out involved one of us inside and one of us outside teeeeetering on the roof edge!<BR/><BR/>It is a lovely house and filled with happy memories as we fostered many children and raised two of our own here over the years. But now my arthritis makes the stairs a problem so I am having a last blitz to get it into good order ready to put on the Market in March 2008 when my younger son will finish school and be ready to move with us to the country and a one storey dwelling on the edge of Dartmoor and just 15 mins from the sea too.<BR/><BR/>Good luck with your project, I shall watch your blog with interest.<BR/><BR/>Regards<BR/><BR/>JoanneAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com