Before the flood...

I mentioned to Tom that Mama had been wanting to see some pictures of the house, so he went out this afternoon and took a couple before it washes away.


This is the front of the house. The large window is in Tom's office. The small window to it's left (as you look at the picture) is in my bathroom. That section of the house is where my living space is. Tom has the office in front and his bedroom, another bathroom and the guest room is at the end where the garage is.



This is a winter shot, taken before the front door was painted. And Kristin, don't panic! We do not have snow on the ground in August. Well, not that much.



This picture is distorted by the angle of the shot. I told Tom it looks like the house is falling down! So if you can ignore that optical illusion... The windows on the right are in my bedroom. The yard looks pretty weedy in this shot, but those taller plants up near the house are wildflowers in beds around the deck. You see the glass doors going onto the deck from the library, then the two large windows into the dining room (it is an open floor plan, but the dining table is by those windows), then the kitchen window and finally one of the windows in Tom's room. The living area (living room + library area + dining room) is the middle third or more of the house. Tom had them put in extra large windows, so the house is quite light and seems bigger than it is. Also, the ceiling in the living area goes up to a peak, adding to the sense of space.

He didn't take any pictures of the inside, but I am going to put some in that were taken while the house was being readied for occupation last spring. It will give you an idea, if you can imagine it duly furnished, painted and so on.



This is pretty much what the kitchen looks like, although now that we live here there is more stuff on the counters, of course.


This shows the living area, more or less, looking from my bedroom door. That bar-looking thing that divides it is a buffet Tom built. When completed, there is a bookcase facing this way. The square of cardboard in the lower left-hand corner is more or less where the sofa is. The patio doors are located out of sight on the far left. Another bookcase, the same height, is behind the sofa and a third matching one lines the wall out of sight on the left. This makes for a small library-reading area, open to the whole space. The wall to the right of this photo is where the entertainment center is.



These shelves hold the television, stereo, DVD and VCR players and the CDs, videotatpes and DVDs now. This, obviously, was when it was being built. Tom built almost all the furniture in the house -- the bookshelves, the buffet, the beds in all three rooms, his desk and mine and so on. The door on the right goes into my bedroom. That shelf at the top holds pieces of pottery that Tom's ex, Helen, made and donated to the decoration of the house. The shelf was designed supposedly for plants, but who wants to climb up and water and tend plants that are eight feet off the floor? Tom and Helen's husband Jay, a museum curator with a sense of how to display things, installed lights that shine up on the pots, and the effect is quite nice. At one point, the house had no furniture, but Helen's pots and a bunch of Tom's paintings on the wall. The overall effect when you came in was that it was a museum rather than a home. The sketch shows more or less what it looks like now with one of Tom's large paintings on the wall and television and all in place. The real painting does not look like that, by the way.



Finally, I put this picture in so you can see how the ceiling goes up a bit. That's Tom's youngest, John, sitting at the table. Over his shoulder you can see one of Tom's paintings leaning up against the wall.

So that gives you an idea of where I live. Kristin, Vince and Dior will see it at Thanksgiving. The rest of you are welcome to come use the guest room! It's at Tom's end of the house, so you will bother him, not me.