Pink Robes & House Fires

Just kidding, this isn't our house it wasn't this bad. 

Our old farm house had the kind of heaters that were not forced air but ran along the floors attached to the walls the length of the room. In some rooms they were on all the walls in others only some. I think they had water running through them. Hopefully you get the idea anyway.

I kept my beautiful fluffy pink robe hanging in the bathroom about a foot or so above the vent, it never got hot from hanging there but one day while going to the bathroom I noticed that the bottom of my robe was turning grey. That puzzled me. I got the boys ready for school and off on the bus then went to confront my husband about the robe because I was sure he had something to do with it.

He looked at my robe, got down on his hands and knees and then looked at the vent, then he put his nose right up to the vent and sniffed. He got up and calmly said, "There is smoke coming up out of the vent."

I couldn't see or smell any smoke, I thought he was crazy. He went outside the bathroom and pulled up the carpet on the floor. Under the carpet was the removable door to the basement, just a Michigan basement but for some unknown reason the heater was down there. Then he lifted the door and flames shot up to the ceiling from down below. I shrieked and he threw the door back down, grabbed my hand and we ran outside. Stay here he said and ran off around the other side of the house. He is such a smart man, to smart sometimes. He ran to the back of the house and turned off the gas at the tank. Then he came back to me and told me what he did and that he was going to check to see if that did the trick or if we needed to call the fire department.

He went in and came back to get me. The fire died when he turned off the gas. He then called a friend's dad who worked on heaters and he said that it wasn't properly ventilated down there and we were lucky to be alive. The heater was trashed so we installed a new one up above the basement and made sure that it was properly ventilated.

I said he is to smart because I often think, that old house could have burned down if we would have just went outside and called the fire department and I would have been fine with it. Oh, but we would have missed so many adventures that I've yet to share.

I do think that we have had an angel looking out for our safety though and he was working overtime in that old house.

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think. Have you ever had a house fire? Even a small one?

Thank you for reading and have a blessed day.

The Kitchen

The Kitchen in that old farm house was hand built by the homes first owner and had never been updated. When we first moved in the refrigerator was in the entry room, a weird room off the laundry room.

To describe it best I'll walk through from the driveway with you. The first door you enter from the driveway went into the laundry room a 6ft by 14ft room that did not have a single straight wall. I think it was space between the house and garage that they just decided to make part of the house one day. the laundry room was four walls with four doors one on each wall that led to the driveway, garage, backyard and the entry room.

The entry room was another weird little room some in MI called them mud rooms. A place where you could land your muddy shoes that also had the refrigerator and led to the only small bathroom in the house. My theory was, and when we remodeled there were indications, that the house was built a little at a time over many years.

From the entry room you enter the kitchen. All of the cabinets were on the left side of you as you were walking through with the sink in the middle and the door going to the dining room on the opposite side. A straight shot right from one doorway to the other.

I decided one day while in town that those ugly cupboards could use a coat of paint and picked some up at the hardware store. Then when my little guy fell asleep for his afternoon nap I started taking all the doors off the cupboards and painting the base. When my husband finally got home for supper, there I was sitting on the kitchen floor painting the doors and our little guy was sitting by the gate in the doorway playing with his toys.

I knew that there wasn't much I could do to make that old house my own and look good without his help, but I knew how to paint and could do at least that much. I was so proud of myself when I finally finished and put it all back together the next morning. It was my very first home remodeling project.

We continued to live in that house for the next 18 years and that poor kitchen never did get any more done to it, but we had always dreamed of remodeling it and turning it around creating our dream kitchen. In the end we had lived the dream without needing a "dream kitchen".

Isn't it amazing how when you look back on things, what seemed important then really wasn't. It was all about the time we shared, not the place we shared it in.