My Life in the Little Brown House, part 14: Upstairs

After the upstairs bedrooms were constructed, the stairway came into daily, even hourly use. It was a narrow staircase, with a turn at the bottom and rather steep as staircases go; like many of the features of the little brown house it was functional but without any pretense of being more than that. At the top of the stairs was a short hall leading on the left (to the east) to the bedroom for the girls and on the right (to the west). The former for the boys’ room faced north — it would have been impossible structurally for it to have faced south as the roof for the sun room extension would have interfered.

















The room was light and airy — there were two original windows facing west and the former had windows more or less all along it. Along these windows was what was termed the window seat, about chair seat height; the top of the seat was hinged so that tows etc. could be stored in the cabinet area provided. My recollection is that most of the time the bed was backed up against the west wall, although on occasion it may have been against the inner wall of the room. In the northwest corner stood my dad’s roll-top desk which had been moved up from its earlier site in the west end of the sun room; there was also the little bookcase holding his National Geographic magazines.

The clothes closet was a walk-in one, just inside the entrance to the room, to the south (left). The dresser, as also the dresser in the girls’ room, had been purchased by my parents at an estate sale. Some elderly couple at the west end of town had both died and their furniture was being disposed of. The dresser in the boys’ room had been modified after purchase. The lower portion was still intact and had 3 or 4 large drawers at the bottom with two little drawers on each end of the dresser above. Originally there had been a relatively large mirror above the drawers but this had been detached. During the period directly after the dresser bottom and the detached mirror part had been moved into the bedroom, I sat in the mirror part in such a way as to crack the mirror. As a consequence a smaller mirror was made from the salvaged mirror, [and] framed with wood from the original mirror frame. This mirror hung on the wall above the dresser where it stood on the east, inside, wall of the boys’ room. In retrospect I’m not sure there would have been room for a high mirror from the original dresser where it stood. My impression of the boys’ dresser was that it was a real antique and the original piece may have been quite tall. It was hardwood (oak I think), well made and basically a better, more attractive piece of furniture than the dresser the girls got.

At the southwest corner of the room were some low doors that led to a storage area formed by the gable above the sun room. The headroom was a little low though ample along the ridge of the roof and under the dormer; on the inside (south) side of the room it was probably not much more than 4 feet so that even at a young age we could not stand erect against the wall. The floors were oak, stained a light color and partly covered by rag rugs. These area rugs were made by some local lady who had some sort of loom for making them. My mother would accumulate rags, cut them into strips and stitch them end to end and these strips were the material for the rugs. I can still see the balls of these strips wound up that my mother took to the lady who made the rugs.

The short hall at the top of the stairs had on the south side some cabinets that my mother used for storage of bed linen, blankets etc. Then on the east side of the upstairs was the girls’ bedroom — I think it was slightly larger than the boys’ room — I recall seeing it with two large beds in it, whereas there was never more than the one bed that I slept in with Vincent as bed companion in the boys’ room. In the girls’ room the beds had the headboards at the north wide of the room with its low headroom. The walk-in closet was a little larger than the one in the boys’ room and was located just inside the doorway to the room, on the north side. To the other side of the entry stood the dresser, along the west wall. The room had the same window and window seat arrangement as in the boys’ room. In addition there was a small catchall cabinet tucked in the southeast corner of the room. I remember sleeping over in the girls’ room, whether this was occasioned by the earlier completion of that room relative to the boys’ room I don’t know.