One Photograph, One Story
There's My Pool Cue!
One doorway, two old clocks, a rescued sled... and twenty-nine years of stories gathered around the entrance to House 173.
The last photograph happened almost by accident.
We had taken the sheers down from the hallway windows and door to wash them, and for the first time I noticed how pretty the view was looking from the hallway out onto the front porch.
So I did the obvious thing.
This is the same doorway from the other side, standing on the porch and looking back into the house.
And while the first photograph was about discovering a view I'd somehow missed for twenty-nine years, this one turned out to be about something else.
All the stuff we've accumulated along the way.
Two Clocks and a Doorway
Start with the clocks.
The one on the left came from an old friend whose name, I'm embarrassed to say, I've forgotten. There's probably a song or poem in that somewhere—remembering the gift but forgetting the giver.
He bought it at auction and gave it to me around 2000 or 2001. It's not just a clock, either. It's an old pre-transistor AM/FM radio, and it still puts out wonderful sound.
Across the doorway is another clock with another story.
A friend was going to throw away the old Ingraham schoolhouse-style regulator. Naturally, I took it.
After some cleaning, tightening and amber shellac, somebody else's throwaway became one of the handsomest things on the porch.
Apparently House 173 has become something of a retirement home for unwanted clocks.
There are worse things to be.
The Sled... and a Beagle
Then there's the old wooden sled.
Our neighbor Joe was throwing it away in 2017. I rescued it, started working on it, lost interest and nearly threw it away myself.
Eventually I dismantled it, replaced the worn wood, cleaned and painted the steel and finished the new wood with amber shellac.
Later, Joe saw it and told me about riding that very sled with his brothers on the golf course when they were kids.
Beside it sits the little welcome beagle, a gift from a friend a couple of decades ago because she knew how much we loved beagles. We may have had Bruegger by then.
After all these years and all these beagles, having one permanently stationed at the front door seems less like decorating and more like truth in advertising.
HOUSE 173 ASIDE
THE HOUSE 173 SCHOOL OF INTERIOR DESIGN
In case anyone is tempted to think there was a grand decorating plan here, let me clear that up.
One clock came from a friend who bought it at an auction. Another was headed for the trash. The sled actually was in the trash. The beagle was a gift. The walking sticks started out as sticks in the woods, and there's an Army-era pool cue standing in an urn because, apparently, that's where old pool cues go.
Somehow, it all works.
I've decided this is the House 173 School of Interior Design: keep the things you like long enough, and eventually they match.
An Urn Full of Odds and Ends
On the other side is the big urn.
Some of the walking sticks in it began as ordinary sticks I picked up while hiking. I brought them home, stained them, added some shellac and gave them another life.
Because apparently even sticks aren't safe from becoming projects around here.
Mixed in with them is something much older... my pool cue from my Army days in Germany in the late 1980s and into 1991.
Somehow it traveled from Germany, survived everything that came afterward, and ended up standing in an urn on the front porch of House 173.
Not exactly the retirement I'd envisioned for it.
But it's still here.
Looking Back In
The flowers above the doorway date to our second porch refresh in 2011. The little handmade German welcome sign nearby came home with us from Germany years ago. And at the threshold is another little fleur-de-lis.
But what I like most about the photograph is what's in the middle.
The open door.
The hallway.
The staircase.
And the light way down at the other end of the house.
Yesterday I stood inside and looked out.
This time I stood outside and looked back in.
One clock came from an auction. Another was headed for the trash. The sled came from the curb. The beagle was a gift. The sticks came out of the woods. The pool cue came home from Germany.
None of it was collected because somebody decided these things would look good together.
They just accumulated.
That's what twenty-nine years in one house will do.
Eventually you stop decorating a home.
You accumulate one.
And every once in a while, it's worth turning around and looking at it.
Keep Wandering
There’s more to see around House 173. Choose one below and wander in.
Antique Ingraham Schoolhouse Clock at House 173
The old regulator hanging beside the doorway was headed for the trash before finding a home at House 173. Here's the fuller story of the clock, its history, and the simple cleanup that brought it back.
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The Snow Sled Rebuild Megapost
That old sled leaning beside the doorway has a history of its own, including a very close encounter with the trash. Here's how a neighbor's childhood sled was rescued and rebuilt for another life at House 173. �
Hey, thanks for stopping by - see ya' next time!
