I love sharing pictures of my new house with you and I hope you like seeing how far we’ve come since September. The reason these postings are few and far between is that the rooms have to be clean before I photograph them (got to keep it Pinterest safe!).
Today’s feature is Lorelei’s room. Her room makes me really happy because it is a blend of a few salvaged things from our old life and new things that were given with so much love.
I also love it because she’s seven and it’s about time she had a nice room to call her own. When she was born we still lived in our big Victorian house. There were four generous bedrooms and one small one–so guess who didn’t have a room of her own? Not that she cared–she slept in bed with Mommy and Daddy, we kept her clothes in a dresser in William’s room, and her toys were in a basket in the den. We were excited when we moved to the next house–there was a small room just right for Lorelei. There were problems, though. No closet–except for the utility one with the leaky, noisy AC equipment. Her room was part of what had originally been a mother-in-law apartment, which meant she had to go through Teddy’s room to get to hers–and Teddy did not always want her barging in. Finally, it was a long way to Mommy in the middle of the night! Inevitably, she ended up sleeping with us again. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Her room suffered only water and smoke damage, so we saved a few things, some of them quite precious, as you will see in the pictures.
This picture (one of a pair) hung on the wall of my Uncle Walter’s nursery, just about 100 years ago. My grandmother unearthed them when my little sister was a baby, and they hung in her room throughout her childhood. When we moved to the Victorian house, we put them in William’s room (he was the baby then). I don’t even remember why, but they were not hanging up at the time of them fire, but were in a sheltered spot in the basement where they suffered very little damage. My middle sister had them reframed behind special glass to preserve these treasures and now I have them back–the only family heirloom I have left.
Detail from the picture above
Here’s another picture that made it. Actually all the pictures on Lorelei’s walls were saved, but most have now been relocated to other ares in the house–including a couple now in the room of their original owner, big sister Emily.
One of the very first people to respond with concrete assistance after the fire was Laura, a friend from law school days whose generosity I wrote of in an earlier post. Her little girl is growing up and was ready to part with her four poster bed and matching mirror, and her Disney Princess lamp. And Laura loaded all this up in a U-Haul trailer and drove to and from Nashville (that’s six hours round trip, folks) less than a week after the fire. Did I mention that we had not even seen her in over ten years? I hope it won’t be that long until we see her and her family again.
A bed needs a mattress and sheets and pillows and such, of course, and those were provided by friends from church. They had them ready long before we had a house to set them up in. Aren’t they pretty? And other people provided spares, both old and new.
We used an end table (and where it came from I couldn’t say) but we still needed a dresser. Enter more Good Samaritans! If you live in Knoxville you’ll have heard of The Brown Squirrel furniture store. I’ve been hearing the commercials my whole life! And its owners have kids at KCHS. Mrs. Matthews came by the house with a notebook and a measuring tape, asking what we still needed. Within a couple of days, we had a dresser and a rocking chair.
Note the afghan, another treasure salvaged from Lorelei’s room. It’s the one Mima made for Teddy’s crib.
One last piece of furniture rounds out the room–the fanciful bookshelf below, which was a gift to Emily on her–I think–seventh birthday. I did the best I could, but it’s still a little sooty. Like so much of the furniture we once had, it came from Myrtle’s Mess.
Oh, and did I mention the closet? No one likes to think of a little girl having all her pretty clothes burn up. When it came to donated clothes, Lorelei won the jackpot. I had friends I’ve never even met in real life mailing her boxes of beautiful things. So thank goodness that her new room also has a walk-in closet!
Here is Lorelei on her very first night in a new bed in a new room in a new house:
Just don’t ask me where she sleeps now.
