I can remember every little detail…
Like I said in my last post here, that this house was really old. There were things in this house that I had never even seen before in my life and it creeped me out at first which is usually our first reaction when we come face to face with the unknown. Eventually they were all things I came to love. Starting with the screen door.
(Note: all images are pulled off the internet, I do not own any of them.)
I know one might think it silly to love a screen door but I did. See this house had no central air conditioning so we would have the door to the kitchen open and the windows would be propped open with screens like the ones below. Sometimes we would have an old box fan blowing to get a breeze going through the house. Any time I would go in and out of the house I would slam that screen door behind with the sound of someone yelling at me, “stop slamming that screen door!” I always did it anyway because I loved the sound of it. To this day when I heard an old wood screen door slam it reminds me of the beach.
Next we go into the kitchen with all of it’s antique appliances. There wen’t really cabinets in this kitchen but here was a large pantry with an old bead board door painting white kind of like the one in this picture below.
Along the wall was a long white kitchen counter with sink which seemed to be all one piece like the one below, to the left ours had a stove.
Attached to the side of the pantry was a fire extinguisher just like the one below. It was original to the house. This was completely foreign to me and what I love is that we didn’t change any of these things. Of course we had a real fire extinguisher but my grandmother left things like this in the house.
I’ll never forget when I opened that old white bead board door and found these vintage metal cups. Specifically the pink one. Yes, we had these exact cups in there and that pink cup became my cup and I was not happy to see anyone else using it. That was my cup to drink Lipton powdered ice tea in, lol!
Then we go to the bathroom. There was only bathroom in the house that we all had to share. My memory of the bathroom was the old porcelain claw foot tub. The image I found below is almost exactly how ours looked, shower curtain all.
All throughout the house was wood floor, I mean real wood floor. Upstairs it was painted very much like the floor in this image below.
All the doors in the house had locks like the ones below. I remember thinking these looked so foreign and thinking what kind of house had my grandmother bought, she must be crazy!
In the dining room was a HUGE dining table that practically took up the whole room. Up against one of the walls was an old Victorian cabinet much like the one below. It had a glass door on the front with a skeleton key that I would store all my beach finds in. I would take the key and hide it so no one would steal my treasures.
In 1984 the summer olympics came to Los Angeles, California. My grandmother took my sister and they came home with TONS of souvenirs, among them were posters. My grandmother brought them to the beach house and hung them all over the house.
Sam the Olympic Eagle, the official mascot of the 1984 Olympics.
We had this exact poster above and the one below that hung in the house, unfortunately they were destroyed. One year my grandmother decided to rent out the beach house through a realty company and one group of renters got really rowdy and tore the posters down and left beer bottles all over the place. I don’t think she rented it out again after that.
Well, we’ve come to the end of another trip down memory lane. Join me next week as I share some of my traditions during my time at 128 Bay Avenue. See you then!
