Sunday 5 July 2015

Tell Me a Story
 
      Clean up is finished.  John and I worked a good chunk of last week Saturday throwing out junk, selling (yard sale) useable stuff, vacuuming, saving what we could, boxing the rest to be delivered to a local thrift store.  A way of life long past became a little clearer.

      In the basement there was a cistern as is common in many old homes. A hand pump in the kitchen would draw up the water - much more convenient than going outside to pump water from a well and carry in buckets.   We're guessing that when the house was converted into a duplex around 1910, indoor plumbing was added.




      Someone chopped through the stone wall of the cistern changing it into a storage room as well as a spot for the water heater. Water now came in through pipes from the city. 

     Spaces previously used as a bedroom and open hall area were taken over by two full baths upstairs - one on each side of the house.  Pipes and wires are outside of walls as they were added years after the house was built.

     


     








                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 



 The south half of the house as a two piece bath on the main floor that would have been added when the rear addition was built, probably in the 1940's. The pipes and wires of the addition are hidden behind the walls. 


        In another corner of the cellar there is a partially boxed in section.  Before the gas furnaces were added this house was heated by a coal burning furnace or a couple of stoves on the main floor and heat was piped up through the chimney's.  The "box" was for coal storage; delivered through a chute opening, now sealed up. (See photo below.)













        The last Butler (see History post) to own the house said he remembered, in the early 1950's, his grandfather going down to the coal storage to smoke his pipe as his wife did not like smoking.
    










Closets were added at some point.  People had fewer clothes 150 years ago. Wardrobes, hooks and dressers were used for storage back then.

   




 The outside access to the basement was converted  from a triangular shaped structure into a porch area off the north side kitchen.  The photos shows the lower part of the "triangle" beside the added shed and the cellar stairs with door.




     These discoveries left me thinking, if these walls could talk, what other stories might they tell?


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