The Green Door
When we purchased our first home in Massachusetts we were young and a bit naive.  We had read an article in the Boston Globe entitled "Make Your Mansion" and it profiled turn of the century homes that were once-beautiful, now-dilapidated and could be yours for only a few thousand dollars.  It mainly focused on Brockton, MA, which was once a large leather accessories (mostly shoes) manufacturer up until the mid-19th century, but had since seen hard times.  The house pictured accompanying the article was just lovely and had recently sold for $49,900.  We were definitely interested.

The first house the realtor showed us had a saltbox shape and a gambrel roof.  The carriage house in back had been converted into a garage; the doors were loose and the windows broken, but we weren't concerned.  We saw the overgrown shrubs, the peeling wall paper, the non-working toilets, the bags of trash left over from the last owner (it was a foreclosure from a couple years prior) but once we stepped into a dining room with the hardwood floors, oak paneled walls with plate rails, pocketed doors, built in buffet (with a seat on each end), and the terra cotta tiled fireplace, well that was it.  I was all misty-eyed.  The rest of the house could have been blown apart and I wouldn't have cared in the least.  We were buying that house.

It is needless to say, though well loved, that house needed work.  The chimneys needed repointing, the yard needing tending, the windows needed repair, the door needed a lock (as opposed to the 2x4 being used when we purchased), the floor refinishing, etc, etc, etc.  We spent long hours into the night  peeling painted wall paper, repairing horse hair plaster, and learning to do other odd jobs.  Once we had our son, however, the resources of time and money (and the travel to Maine) were wearing thin so we sold after five years and moved to a house that needed far less of us.

But, in that short time, we learned what it meant to truly love an inanimate object; we named our house (because all fancy houses have names) "Chateau D'Embrace", which, to us, meant the "House of Open Arms".  Friends and family were always welcome to come and stay in one of the six bedrooms, though Brockton wasn't exactly a tourism hot spot.  We were lucky to have friends stay over for New Year's a few times and it was rather fun to plan a whole weekend rather than one evening, knowing you had room for everyone willing to make the trek.

Fast forward to our current home and I'm the first to admit, it has not the charm nor character of our first house.  We purchased more because the house was clean and neat with plenty of closets.  We liked the lay out and the proximity to the neighborhood schools but not the shag carpeting nor faux wood paneling that so permeated the 1970s when the house was built.  We've done a decent job adjusting the house to our taste, and even used our first house as inspiration.  We added a plate rail to the dining room, bookshelves and a mantel to the fireplace, and nailed unfinished wooden molding pieces in rectangular shapes to add a bit of detail in the living room before we painted.

The yard, however, is the main character in this urban plot.  I've batted many names around, but any referring to the house seem inappropriate. I thought first about calling it "le Petite Chateau" as an homage to the first "chateau", but dismissed it as not quite fitting. I then thought about calling it "the Jungle" but can't get the images of Upton Sinclair's depressing novel (required high school reading) out of my mind.  So, I think I have finally settled on "The Green Door".