I Love That House

What is it about certain houses that wrap us in a feeling of home?

In the middle of a city, or in the middle of a small town, or in the middle of a silent woods, we see her. We stop, and take a step closer. If we are lucky, we enter her doors, and we find ourselves whispering, I love this house. We call this a house with soul. But what brings about this magic?

Is it found in beauty?

Caroline Ingalls cut bits of red flannel to drop into her lamp to bring beauty to her home. Today, Pinterest and Instagram overflow with ideas for beautiful living spaces, and we hungrily drink it all in. We buy, paint, and build. The global home decor market was estimated at 697 billion in 2019 and is expected to reach 737 billion in 2020.

In the book The Good Home, author and architect Dennis Wedlick is passionate about designing houses that stir our emotions – that bring our hearts alive – that are beautiful and picturesque. But he says this does not mean pretty.

The picturesque house is
not one that is pretty,
but one in which the tastes
and needs of the dwellers
are handled with a lot of thought
and a little flair.
Picturesque is the unexpected nook,
the beautifully finished porch,
the carefully proportioned window
that delights.

-Dennis Wedlick

There’s a story of an old German kitchen in Nika Standen Hazelton’s book, The Cooking of Germany.

She took me into a curious fairybook kitchen, all decorated tiles and stencil-decorated closets, with embroidered mottos on the walls, embroidered display towels over the dish towels, and embroidered doilies wherever a hand-embroidered doily could be made to rest. Even the brooms had their embroidered covers. To say the least, the kitchen impressed me greatly.

“But we don’t cook here. It would not be practical,” said the widow – and led me into an adjoining room where a rural maidservant officiated at a stove, in the semidark.

In the beautiful, fairybook kitchen, there was something vital missing. Life. Warmth. Yet in the kitchen set aside for use, there was no beauty. We need both together. Robert Henri, an American painter and teacher, views beauty not as something we can hold in our hands, but as an action that does – something that fills a space.

Beauty is an intangible thing; it can not be fixed on the surface, and the wear and tear of old age on the body cannot defeat it. Nor will a “pretty” face make it, for “pretty” faces are often dull and empty. Beauty is never dull and it fills all spaces.

-Robert Henri, The Art Spirit

A home with soul is not a still life painting

Architect and design theorist, Christopher Alexander, says homes need “aliveness, wholeness, spirit, and grace.” In his book, Pattern Language, he studies the ways we humans have built civilizations throughout history, and he applies those timeless principles to home design.

“Once you understand this way,” he writes, “you will be able to make your room alive; you will be able to design a house together with your family, a garden for your children, places where you can work, beautiful terraces where you can sit and dream.”

He says this is found in the details.

The picturesque is mainly
an architecture of subtleties
rather than thunderous effects.
It takes only a few intriguing moves
to create a wonderful atmosphere.

-Christopher Alexander

An architecture of subtleties

It’s those odd details that draw our attention. It’s a once-plain or empty space that has been transformed into a warm invitation. It may be a room or a corner, a porch or a window. It may be a desk centered under a plant-filled window that sparkles with sun-catchers; a children’s reading nook filled with soft pillows; a dining room with bookshelves and a fireplace.

Or perhaps a reading nook/bookshelves combination, like this inspirational idea from Ikea Hackers. Built-in Bookshelves with Window Seat

Or this beautiful window garden from Kevin Lee Jacobs. A Garden for the House

It’s where our needs, and the needs of those we love, have been met with a thoughtful space. It’s an outstretched hand and a whisper of Come; stay. This is for you.

Like the Velveteen Rabbit of houses

In the book The Velveteen Rabbit, the little rabbit asks the Skin Horse about this magical thing called “Real”. The Skin Horse’s reply is splendid.

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you…

You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

Just like a house.

A house with soul doesn’t have to be carefully kept, and is not easily broken. It has a solidness and timeless simplicity. It holds up to the flying feet of children, and gracefully shrugs off spills and mistakes, and welcomes you to be yourself. It’s a house unconcerned with what others think. It is warm and welcoming and eclectic and beautiful. Like a well-loved woman, serene and confident and radiant. To kidnap the words of an old Doug Stone song, it’s a house with hair falling down and love in its eyes.

The House by the Side of the Road

There is a house in David Grayson’s book, The Friendly Road. In this story, David Grayson left his farm and traveled the countryside with only a bag on his shoulder to see what he could learn of the world. He came to the home of a couple known as Mr. and Mrs. Vedder.

He had been on the way to a large house set high on a hill, with a wide veranda overlooking a valley. However, at a bend in the road leading up to this house, he came to a small cottage. Its gardens were a work of art. Trees, shrubs, vines, and roses mingled with a carefree and inviting warmth. He writes:

It was indeed a charming little cottage. Crimson ramblers, giving promise of the bloom that was yet to come, climbed over one end of the porch, and there were fine lilac bushes near the doorway: Oh a pleasant, friendly, quiet place! I opened the front gate and walked straight in, as though I had at last reached my destination.

Romantic commentary aside, it’s the last line that gets me. I opened the front gate and walked straight in, as though I had at last reached my destination. What gives certain houses that feeling of welcome that makes us feel comfortable as soon as we step in the door? In this story of the Vedder’s cottage I find several hints.

He noticed the garden first

Their garden was a wordless introduction and welcome. Their garden was what gave a stranger the courage to open the gate and approach their house. It was what opened the conversation between them, and led to a friendship. I picture a garden that hugged the edges of their property. A garden that shielded the house, yet offered glimpses as he approached. Gardens with pathways leading to places for sitting. A garden breathes, and moves, and welcomes; it does not matter if it is a grand affair, or a small porch garden.

A well-laid garden
makes the face of the country
of no account;
let that be low or high,
grand or mean,
you have made a beautiful abode
worthy of man.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

It eventually comes to light that the Vedders were in fact the owners of the grand estate on the hill. Why had they moved to the little cottage?

“We first came out here,” said Mrs. Vedder, “nearly twenty years ago, and built the big house on the hill. But the more we came to know of country life the more we wanted to get down into it. We found it impossible up there – so many unnecessary things to see to and care for – and we couldn’t – we didn’t see – “
“The fact is,” Mr. Vedder put in, “we were losing touch with each other.”
“There is nothing like a big house,” said Mrs. Vedder, “to separate a man and his wife.”
“So we came down here,” said Mr. Vedder, “built this little cottage, and developed this garden mostly with our own hands. We would have sold the big house long ago if it hadn’t been for our friends. They like it.”

They found more space for living well in what architect Sarah Susanka calls a “not so big house.”

A not so big house

Sarah Susanka is a residential architect and the author of the Not So Big House. She writes: I had an epiphany one day while driving though the suburbs of Des Moines, Iowa. I had started noticing that new houses were getting extremely large, and decidedly unattractive. For miles and miles, all I could see were these starter castles marching across the prairies, looking self-important and soulless.

Sarah Susanka – The Not So Big House and The Not So Big Life

Her passion is designing houses where every space is well-thought-out. Instead of the square footage our American Dream tells us we aught to have, she believes in making our homes fit us “to a tee.”

As the Vedders found, a small house makes it possible to “get down into life” without the entanglements of keeping up with a big house. A small house allows time for the pursuits that bring us alive. On Jill Winger’s website, The Prairie Homestead, her thoughts on living small are worth reading. 8 Reasons I Love Life in a Small House – The Prairie Homestead

Living small is not only defined by square footage, but by also living slower. Not forcing everything we can from life, as is our American tendency, but leaving space for the turning of the seasons. This gifts us with time for the pursuits that bring us alive. To come home and find a space that welcomes – a patio on which to spend time with a friend or a room set aside for work that we love – it is here that the soul comes alive and contentment blooms.

The setting sun is reflected
from the windows of the almshouse
as brightly as from the rich man’s abode;
the snow melts before its door
as early in the spring.
I do not see but a quiet mind
may live as contentedly there,
and have as cheering thoughts,
as in a palace.

– Henry David Thoreau, Walden

We need not wait for another day and another place. Build now.

Muriel Barbery says, “It’s now that matters: to build something now at any price using all our strength. Always remember that there’s a retirement home waiting somewhere and so we have to surpass ourselves every day, make every day undying. Climb our own personal Everest and do it in such a way that every step is a little bit of eternity.”

That’s what the future is for:
to build the present
with real plans
made by living people.

-Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

We all have someday dreams.

In my someday dreams, I live in a cottage in Maine. The sea glistens in the distance. I can see it from the window, and smell the earthy whispering woods. The rocky bluffs meet the water under that beautiful blue sky, and the windows stay open all summer. What is it about certain places that unexplainably tug at our heartstrings? This is Maine for me. Perhaps it’s simply that independent, aloof New England feeling I love. Perhaps it’s the people – their dry humor and gentle pessimism unstained by idealism and drama. Perhaps it’s all the trees. Perhaps it’s just that I love cool weather with all of my heart, and find my own humid summers aggravating.

Well, I don’t live in Maine. But I build my world here. Right now. Because as Thoreau says, “The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise.”

“All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do. Adam called his house heaven and earth; Caesar called his house Rome; you perhaps call yours a cobler’s trade, a hundred acres of ploughed land, or a scholar’s garret. Yet line for line and point for point, your dominion is as great as theirs, though without fine names. Build, therefore, your own world.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Dreams baptize the imagination

C.S. Lewis said that reading George MacDonald’s writings “baptized his imagination”. So it is with dreams. The big dreams that may never happen brush our little dreams with their colors. My big dream brushed colors onto my life unawares.

Without a dream, my home would simply be a house on a small plot of plain grass with a chain link fence separating us from the business next door. Instead, it is my retreat, a solace from the world. A place I love to come home to. A place with whispering evergreens, and beauty.

It’s years of hard work, and little by little. But I am slowly finding in it that same feeling I get when I visit Maine. Is it my house that has changed? Or is it me?

Whatever it is, it is here that I have found the freedom to not be forced into conformity with a world I cannot understand. My house feels gloriously pessimistic, and dry humored, and unpretentious, and it does not allow me to deceive myself with perfection. But it winks and nudges me to go for walks in the rain, and to come home and put up my feet, and leave water rings on the worn end table.

Perhaps that is what gives a house soul. The warmth and wisdom of hearts that have broken, and healed. An awareness of the needs of those who enter. In the story of the Vedders, their home lived and breathed what they loved. Their house told their story, and this is what held out a hand of welcome when David Grayson opened the gate and walked in.

The making of a home is an artwork

“It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”

Henry David Thoreau

And like all artwork, it is influenced by all who came before. I owe much to those who lived here before me. They never saw the endings of their beginnings, but they planted trees and carved out gardens that became the foundation for my inspiration.

A home is artwork that tells our story

Christopher Alexander says, “Do not be tricked into believing that modern decor must be slick or psychedelic or “natural” or “modern art” or “plants” or anything else that current taste-makers claim. It is most beautiful when it comes straight from your life – the things you care for, the things that tell your story.”

It’s the two apple trees we planted the year our first son was born. It’s the old cabinet I bought at an auction that was first a dresser for my babies, and is now my kitchen island. Painted turquoise, it reminds me of the waters of Maine, deep and cool, grounding and mystical.

It’s the boys’ art table under the dining room window, where light falls on their work, and where they can look out into the backyard that we have worked so hard to make beautiful – a space where they can play and dream, and where they spend hours doing just that.

It’s the photo wall that tells stories of the places we have been. It’s the books that line the walls and fill the corners – books that have changed the direction of my life – books that I love. It’s the tiny front porch where I’ve sat with my son on chilly mornings, feet tucked in boots, sipping coffee, and watching neighbors drive to work. Neighbors who bring berry pies and offer to babysit.

It’s the tiny hydrangea I planted when we first moved in that has now grown to cover the bottom of my living room window. This window is where I sit, in the old rocker I sanded down and repainted to make my own. This spot is mine.

And it’s a garden that is always changing. It’s where vegetables and flowers mingle together in one whimsical mess. It will always needs work, this garden of mine, like me. But it’s a place that welcomes dreaming.

Is it worth it?

The hard work, and the hours, and the little by little? The energy we give to making things beautiful? Perhaps we are simply lost humans trying to recreate Eden. But why this ache and longing for surroundings of beauty? The bits of red flannel in our lamps. Perhaps it whispers of the other-worldliness of the human soul that fills these skins of ours. A soul waiting for home.

“Beauty cannot feed the hungry, prevent disease, cure injustice. Cynics rightly observe it does not stop the carnage of war. Yet as modernist critiques become more threadbare, we better understand beauty’s necessity. Destroy the beautiful and our humanity erodes too. Compassion, generosity, praise all atrophy, and by slow degrees a capacity for the suffering of others increases. Our eyes, actions, and ideals affirm one truth. Before we made beauty, beauty made us.”

-Timothy Cahill


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  1. rosenewile

    You bring such a refreshing twist to things!! Thank you for sharing this. ❤️