Historic Door

The house we bought was built in 1941.  It predates America's involvement in World War II, the atomic bomb, and Reganomics.  There are plenty of stories in this house that we will never know.  That's kind of the beauty of older houses.  They have stories.  Whether you know the stories or not, you know there have been plenty of things that have happened.  One thing that we do have is the door that leads down to the basement.  Someone, at one time, thought that it would be great to document some stuff on it.

Documentation that people lived here.  Families lived here.  The majority of the stuff written on here is kids' names, age, height.  Stuff like that.  It's like stuff you see in Rockwell paintings.  Hash marks and names.  It's cute.  The oldest date that we can find on here is from 1970.  There's marks from every decade since the 1970s.  It would have been awesome if there were dates older than 1970, but who knows, the door could have been replaced.  It doesn't seem as old as the house.  Most of the dates are in pen and will eventually fade over time.  There are some in pencil that are almost gone.  The smart people wrote in permanent marker.  We talked with the previous owners and they said that this door was one of the best features because of all the documentation.  There's another set of numbers of someone's pregnancy.  Weeks along and the circumference of the woman's stomach.  Sorry to use the word circumference, I don't know how to describe a woman's pregnant stomach without it sounding awkward.  

And here is our mark in the house.  I took this picture the day we got the keys to this house.  It was really the first thing we did here.  We added 'our first house' under the date.  We don't have kids to mark their heights.  I suppose we could mark the height of the cat?  It wouldn't change, but we still could.  That would be absolutely terrific for whomever owns this house after us.

This is the last up close of the door.  The last name is personal for me because it is a family name.  It is my mom's maiden name.  The funny thing is, my family is from Michigan.  And who knows, we could be related to this person in some way, shape, or form.  For those who believe in signs or fates or anything like that, if you saw a family name in a house that you were looking at, how could you not buy it?  We were convinced that we were going to buy this house before we saw the names and dates, but if this wasn't a sign from whatever you believe in, I don't know what would be.