This is the house I talked about in this post, saying

“There is an alley near the hall where I take dance classes that I often drive down in order to get myself pointed the right direction for driving home. It runs beside a lovely white clapboard house with elaborately paned wood windows. In the back window there’s a collection (a huge collection) of tiny coloured antique glass bottles. Actually, I should have said half a collection because in the side window is an equal quantity of antique bottles, just in different hues. There is another window yet with pretty knick-knacks and a hanging basket. The paint is peeling off the siding of the house and the shingles are in bad shape, but the house itself is grand and full of beautiful details. Whoever lives in it may not have the cash flow to do all the maintenance she needs, but I bet anything that house is loved.”

This fall she got new shingles. So I had to snap some pictures during my morning walks with the kids. Cedar shingles even. Ian and I noticed when the first few went up and then watched with great interest over the next few weeks because cedar shingles are the kind of thing we’d romanticize and want so badly, but when it came to installing them we’d be scared that we’d regret it because of cost or longevity.

Obviously I will be watching with great interest over the next few years to see how these shingles hold up.

I don’t know if they’re done or it they’re still planning on doing the porch roof.

As you can see, there’s nothing spectacularly grand about this house. She’s just a nicely proportioned old house with pretty details that I creep on regularly. I was the same in the neighbourhood I grew up in. When Ian and I drive through my old neighbourhood, he’ll point out a pretty house and I’ll say, “Oh yeah, I used to deliberately walk down this particular block of this street whenever I was walking downtown so I could pass this house.”

And then once I said, “Yeah, if we won some kind of weird house lottery where we could have any house so long as it was in this neighbourhood, I’d have a shortlist of ten houses ready for you within twenty minutes.” I suspect I’ll be the same about this neighbourhood after a few years.