I may be a House Voyeur

The other night I found this article by Jane Powell, author of bungalow books, and preservationist extraordinare: How to tell whether you are an Old House Junkie. There are eleven questions to ask yourself & some of them most certainly apply to me.

• When you go on vacation you pick up the real estate magazines at the supermarket and check them to see what houses cost in that area. I have totally and completely done this — also to just see what historic homes are available in that area.
• Cabinet hardware excites you. I have spent hours in Rejuvenation in Portland, and also Schoolhouse Electric Company, and antique stores, and you get the picture.
• You joined the National Trust for Historic Preservation just so you could look at the real estate ads in the back of the magazine, and imagine yourself buying a log house from 1790 or an abandoned insane asylum. I haven’t joined this, but they just sent me a little mail in thing last week and I went ooh, save historic buildings and get a magazine, I’m in.
• If you know a house is vacant, you sneak up and peer through the windows. What, me?
• This line in a real estate ad would get your attention: “ First time on market in 80 years.”Yes.

In addition to this, I could probably add, ‘you cry when you see an old house being destroyed’. I’ve cried at least once this week.

Today I soothed the tears that came when I saw big machinery tearing through the ashes of craftsmanship, history, original windows & siding, and old growth forests, by wandering through the current Walla Walla real estate market, ‘home built: 1900 – 1930’. There are a number of gorgeous homes for sale, and a surprising number of them with really beautifully put together historically sensitive kitchens, and this is something that you typically do not find even in the half a million dollar homes.

There are people out there who love older homes and care for them well, and the world is not entirely full of those who worship shiny and new; and it gives me hope.