furnishing the home?

[Drygoods]

After reading about Mrs. Lawson and her new rope bed, and learning about other member's houses, I wondered if some folks here were like myself. When you started out in this hobby you had rather little, and then over time you collected quite a bit and it started taking over part of your house. Where you once had a room/home with modern furniture, it then became boxes of 'period stuff' or perhaps whole rooms of period furniture. Over a period of years your whole house takes on another look, perhaps you even buy a period home simply so that you can live in the past on a daily bases? Even perhaps over that period of time you begin to make friends with other folks who live in period homes and this is how you spend the rest of your life going from place to place discussing how you'd do this or that to your house, or how you might use this or that piece of furniture at an event. I think this phenomenon is more of a civilian thing than that of military.

However, I thought it might be interesting to know just how many here have had the hobby take over their life, and that they now live in period homes?

Yes, I'm a dingbat, but very happy being one.:D I just thought this subject might be an amusing summer thread.

[Hank Trent]

Re: furnishing the home?

However, I thought it might be interesting to know just how many here have had the hobby take over their life, and that they now live in period homes?

Well, I'm pretty much the opposite. I was always the "form follows function" type, so there's no attraction for me in old fashioned things with modern functions, like a shell of a house from the period, with electricity and a modern bathroom and a computer, no matter how carefully they might be hidden to blend with the ambiance. A period house, to me, implies a period functioning house, first and foremost. So our modern home is totally modern, with reenacting stuff stored in plastic bins waiting for use.

Guess that fits my reenacting style as well. I know a lot of reenactors who are never quite not reenacting, but at reenactments, they're never quite reenacting either. It's all a pleasing blend of period and modern. Me, I'd rather be reenacting totally to the best of my ability, or not reenacting at all and just being myself in the modern world.

We do have a "period home" we don't use as much anymore, but I don't think it's anything like what you're talking about. :)

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[redleggeddevil]

Re: furnishing the home?

I had always wanted, for as long as I could remember, a period home, and the older the better. This feeling persisted until I started working in period buildings for a living. What a wake-up call! It was a non-stop barrage of leaking pipes, rotten siding, lead paint abatement, missing and decayed sills and fascinating insect infestations.

I went into the museum world for the history, but I found that it gave me a very helpful grounding in carpentry, plumbing and general handyman work.

I still want a period-style house, but one where stuff works.

[rbruno]

Re: furnishing the home?

Judith,
When I started plans for my house several years ago, I became very involved with old construction techniques and material. I made effort to incorporate items and design in my house. Part of my house is timberframed. The living room has 250 year old hand hewn posts and beams. The bedroom is also a timberframe made of extinct chestnut. Unfortunatly, because of the expense I was not able to do my entire house this way. Since then, I have taken down and recylced several old barns and outbuildings to use in different structures or resawn for furniture. There is nothing like use 100 year old wood for piece of furniture. As many people on this forum have CW items crowding rooms, I have two barns and a basement filled with antique/reclaimed lumber waiting for projects. Most of the furniture in my house is made of this wood and has a period look to it. So much of the CW hobby is finding correct, good, material and using period techniques to make things. The same thing applies to furniture and homes in MHO. While I couldn't live in a home Mr. Trent describes as period, I do try to have some period items and feeling in my new construction home.

Rob Bruno

[LindaTrent]

Re: furnishing the home?

Well, first I wonder if this doesn't belong more in the sinks. :D But other than that, yep, when I started out in the hobby we had a little house in town. We moved to the country where we now have a period log home fully furnished and functional to the period, as well as all the appropriate outbuildings. See my Perfectville post if you haven't already for how we furnished the log cabin and outbuildings. Those things don't ever leave the Bradford Place since that was our agreement when we started the place. So we don't store any of our reenacting gear out there, well, eating utensils and skillet, but beyond that.

BUT we don't live there. If we did we'd have to run a water line, electric, phone, etc. out to it and that would lower the overall accuracy of the place.

We actually live in a mobile home, it is entirely modern with two computers, two phones, a microwave, electric washer and dryer, etc. etc. Any antiques that we have are more late 19th century that are family heirlooms, and not the 1860s or earlier. Despite what some people may think, we really do live in the 21st century when not reenacting. :D

From the street or when walking into our mobile home the only indication that I can see that we're reenactors are two US Sanitary Commission boxes from our early days of reenacting some 15 years ago. The wooden fence across the street is typical to the period, but is also typical horse fencing today, so that's not a giveaway.

Admittedly we don't have a guest room anymore though, it is full of rubbermaid boxes with all our clothes. To really discover that we do anything Civil Warish people would have to open those boxes, or well, if they're in the bedroom they'd see the glass covered bookcases with books ranging from the late 18th through the mid 19th century including tons of agricultural, medical, literary, Methodist Episcopal church, dictionaries, etc. But in the main portion of our house unless they really looked at our books I don't think anyone would figure we're reenactors.

Anyway, yep, the 19th century is a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there for much more than a week or two -- at least not without first going through some sort of detox for my computer addiction, and my addiction to Bob Evans restaurant meals. :D

Linda.

[mightyreb]

Re: furnishing the home?

My wife (who also re-enacts) and I live in a modern home but it is filled with victorian furniture, both reproduction & original pieces. we also have a collection of over 160 civil war items from muskets to hat brass & everything in between. We've been told by friends that walking into our home is like walking into a museum and are very happy with that, but i don't think it was the hobby that took over our house as much as simply a love of history. And when the time comes we will retire to a proper victorian house, with modern plumbing, a/c & all the comforts that go with it

steve hutton

[ElizabethClark]

Re: furnishing the home?

I did relocate it to the Sinks, as we're not discussing how to furnish a home for 1865 or before. :)

I wouldn't mind a modern home (plumbing, electric) in a period plan, style, construction methods, etc, and furnished with a careful blend of repro items and unobtrusive modern things. But I wouldn't be reenacting in it... I'd be living there. I just prefer the mid-century architecture styles, as they're very symmetrical, and aren't Garage Mahals.

One aspect of our lives strikes me as decidedly mid-century. My family has historically moved. A lot. In 33 years, I've moved 25 times, and that involves 21 distinct dwellings. It's a pretty normal amount for my family, all the way back to the 1820s. In the process of moving, we end up carrying very little with us to new places. I'm comfortable with the idea of selling off the majority of what a family owns, to lighten the load and generate cash to get established in a new place--just as my mid-century family did, over and over again. The modern consequence is that we don't have a lot of family heirlooms (no furniture beyond two chairs, both turn of the century, and a handful of portable items past those), and we're all very "portable", emotionally. We're the itchy feet that populated the West! "Home" is wherever we currently dwell, and it can be packed and moved on short notice if a new adventure presents itself. One day, we'll settle down in our own little patch of heaven (once DH is done with school!), but until we find it, we'll be on the go... and that seems to be a common facet of Western life in the mid-century.