The street is lined with trees, mostly Norway maples, sunburst locusts, sugar maples, blue spruces. The houses are all 60s vintage, then-suburban, now well within the city. On the south side of the slowly-winding street there is a concrete sidewalk; the street itself is paved with asphalt; there is no painted centre line. The street has an urban cross-section, concrete curb and gutter, catchbasins with rectangular grates.
Not quite halfway along the street, between two bungalows, is a sidesplit. The bottom is very-slightly pinkish brown brick; up above is white siding, and the house has a roof covered in brown shingles. There is an asphalt driveway leading up to the garage. The front yard includes a flowering crabapple which blooms dark red in May. There is a small flower garden with portulacas, a weeping mulberry, and a tall, young, Norway maple. To the left, there is a wooden fence with a gate in it.
The house consists of a garage and front door on the bottom level. The garage door is painted brown and is to the left of the front door. There is a wooden door (with a screen door in front of it) to the right. There is a narrow, tall window beside the door and a little higher, is a large three-panelled window, made to look like it is formed out of many small panes. Under this window is a cedar shrub and a pair of mock oranges that smell glorious when they bloom in the spring. On the upper floor, above the garage, are two windows framed by brown imitation shutters.
As you approach the door, you notice a little patio made of brown, angled bricks arranged in a circle. Moss grows in between the bricks. The patio is surrounded on two sides by a short alpine currant hedge. The other two sides are the driveway and the actual entrance to the house, a door matched by a long window. There is a screen door, and behind that, a wooden door. The wooden door has a big, curving handle below a lock. It also has three square-ish windows, arranged near the top of the door like an imitation fanlight.
You have to pull the whole door towards yourself to unlock it, and it is heavy, at least for a child. When you go in, you find yourself in a long corridor. On your right is a small nook in front of the window, filled with plants. There is also a bench, one with a back and a base that is a storage chest, and past this, a closet with sliding, mirrored doors. Further still is a staircase, and next to that, a door. At the far end of the corridor is another door, which is almost always open, so you can see into the room beyond. On your left is a rubber mat for winter boots and a plastic rack with shoes. The wall has art; botanical prints, a woodcut of dancers in traditional Eastern European dress. If you close the door, there is a macrame (I think) door hanging on the inside, red, yellow, and warm orange. The floor is reddish-brown tile.
If you walk down to the end of the corridor, you find yourself in a small room with two additional doors on your left. In front of you are two childrens' desks and chairs, beside a set of glass sliding doors. These doors lead out into a garden. One wall of the room is covered in bookcases, full of books, in all genres and for all ages. There is also a hundred year old upright piano with a wonky sound board but a round, warm tone. The piano smells of furniture polish and a pleasantly musty, old smell. There is a very old television in the room, the kind with dials marked "UHF" and "VHF", and a knob you can pull to toggle between the display being in colour and being in black-and-white. This tv is positioned between the two doors previously mentioned. One off these leads to a tiny washroom, and the other to a closet with shelves. The shelves contain board games and puzzles and bottles of tempera paints. The floor is hardwood, light coloured, something like pine. On top of it is an oriental rug, green and cream with a central medallion and pink and blue roses and lighter green leaves making accents and a border. In front of he sliding door is a large plant stand, with African violets and small foliage plants. On the walls are botanical prints and a print of a pheasant done in the same style as the botanicals.
If you return to the corridor and continue to the staircase, you can go up seven steps to a landing. The steps and the landing are the same wood as the hardwood floors. When you reach the landing, you are facing a wall that is covered in wallpaper. The paper is a creamy colour with springs of green palm leaves on it. On your right, you can see the living room. On the left, is the kitchen.
The kitchen has a linoleum floor. At this end there is a big wooden table with chairs around it. The table is smooth under your fingers. The chairs are just the right height to kneel on if you want to rest your elbows on the table. They are wooden chair frames with rattan seats and backs. Behind the table and chairs there are windows and a door that leads outside. Hanging in front of the windows are plants in baskets, mostly succulents, and there are a number of pots, each with a single large cactus, or a snake plant, or an indoor palm, on the floor below the hanging plants. Also hanging from the ceiling is a white cage with two budgies, who call to you when you enter the room. One budgie has a blue breast and tail with grey wings and head; the other budgie is yellow with green patches on her front. There are pictures of ducks and children driving ducks past farmhouses in the rain, up on the walls.
If you walk west from the table, you find the counter and cabinets. The stove, fridge, and sink make a work triangle. The cabinets are wooden and painted yellow. They contain plates and bowls, and sugar and rice and spices and flour, and somewhere, a hand-made basket with a perfectly fitting lid, all made from willow twigs, full of cloves of garlic. There is a dishwasher, and lots of room on the countertop, even though it is inhabited by bananas and tomatoes in a rattan bowl.
Inside the fridge is lots of milk, tucked into its neat plastic bags or the blue pitcher for that purpose. There are probably a couple of dozen eggs. There's a pound of butter in the door. The fruit bin has apples and plums and oranges. If the time of year is right, there is a pomegranate or an errant clementine (though most of those are in the cellar). There are leftovers in plastic and pyrex containers. There is mustard, and ketchup, relish, horseradish, soy sauce. There's lettuce and one onion in the crisper (the rest are in the cellar), a green pepper, some carrots, a knob of ginger. There's another bin that is full almost to overflowing with different cheeses - cheddar, provolone, emmenthal, asiago - and a few packages of cold cuts. In the freezer there are two ice cube trays and an ice cube bin that are all full of ice. There are some frozen pierogies, half a package of frozen corn, or peas, or both, and a block of ice cream, vanilla or Neapolitan.
There is a window over the sink. Out of the window, you can see a concrete and stone terrace, and the garden beyond it, a few trees large enough to cast shade even on the terrace.
If you walk between the fridge and the stove, you find yourself in the dining room. This is a small space with a window that looks out over the neighbour's house. There is a sleek, teak table, and a matching wall unit with china and crystal on display. There are a dozen chairs with high backs. Two of them have arms, like a throne. You are back on the hardwood floor, in here.
If you continue walking north, you are in the living room. There are more wall units, but these hold a stereo, a CD player, a tape deck, a record player. There a record albums, tapes, and CDs. There is a liquor cabinet, with cherry brandy, strega, maybe rum. There is a pink couch, and a chocoloate brown loveseat, and hexagonal end tables. There is a carpet, just like the green one a flight down, except mostly pink. Here is the big, three-panelled window that allows you to look out at the front yard and the street.
At the east end of the living room you return to the landing. You can go up seven more steps, your feet echoing as you go, to find yourself in another long corridor. If you were to look behind you, and up, above the staircase, you'd see an odd little door that leads to the attic above the kitchen, dining room, and living room. It is fun to try to peer into the dusty darkness on the rare occasion when the door is left open. However, if you are facing the normal direction at the top of the stairs, you have a few choices. There is a door immediately on your right. Down the corridor a little are three more doors, and there is another door at the end. Along the corridor are pictures hung on the walls, of Victorian-looking children with their pets, a kitten or puppy.
The door on the right leads to the master bedroom. There is a red carpet, and a queen-sized bed with an end table on either side. One table has a lamp. The other has a clock radio. There are two closets, a large, upright chest of drawers, and a lower drawer with two large mirrors. There is a desk with a chair and a computer with printer on it. I like to play with the pulls on the drawers; they are shaped like modified tear drops and make a noise if you flick them. I am not allowed to do this, but I do so just the same. The drawers and closets are mostly full of boring things - clothes that smell like soap - but on the shelf at the top of my mother's closet there are some dolls in various national costumes, brought back from a trip to Europe.
If, instead, you started down the corridor, and entered the first door on your right, you'd be in the bathroom. There is a huge mirror on one wall, under it the sink and a long, green counter, and across from it the bathtub, with a shower. There is a toilet. Most of the room is tiled, except the wall behind the mirror, which has the same palm wallpaper as at the landing half a floor down. When the budgies are allowed out of their cage, the door to the bathroom has to be closed, because the blue budgie will perch on top of the mirror and try to tear the wallpaper. Under the window, in front of the toilet, is a towel rack. The towels are most likely brown, though there are others.
Next to the bathroom door in the corridor is the door to the linen closet, a small space with white-painted wooden shelves. It smells of soap and cloth and ironing. Across from the linen closet is another wooden door. Inside this door is a small bedroom. It has a mate's bed in it, with clown or star wars sheets, and the wall has green wallpaper with bunnies and squirrels and mice who live in trees or pumpkins. There is a small chest of drawers, and a window that faces the street. There is a small closet; in its ceiling is a trap door that opens into the attic above this part of the house. There is a greenish carpet.
The last door, at the end of the corridor, has two single beds with white brass frames. My sister's bed is the one near the window. Mine is the one near the closet. We each have a chest of drawers topped by a three-shelf bookcase. Mine is cluttered, books and knicknacks; a shiny metal bear that is also a coin bank, a statuette of a unicorn, some doilies crocheted by my grandmother. The carpet is pale pinkish-brown. The walls have wallpaper with pink roses on golden-toned branches. If you lie on the bed, you can see the white plaster ceiling and the light, which has a square, frosted glass shade.
If, when you first came into the house, you didn't go up the stairs, or through the door at the end of the corridor, you could still go through the other door on the right. This leads to another staircase, eight steps this time, down to the tiled floor of the basement. You come out in a large room with a tile floor. There is an old couch, an old rug, old end chairs, and a big TV. There is a big chest freezer hidden in the corner of the room, and a woodstove - and a fair amount of stacked wood. In the summer, this room is very cool, but in the winter the stove is lit all the time. I am allowed to put wood in the stove sometimes. When the stove is lit, there is always a kettle sitting on top, boiling. The room usually smells comfortingly of wood smoke. There is a funny, short door in the wall near the staircase, that leads into a small crawlspace under the ground floor. There are lots of windows, but they are all in window wells and you can't see much though them except the sky. Sometimes, there is a fish tank, with guppies or goldfish, in this room.
At the back of this family room is a second kitchen. It is generally more modern-looking than the kitchen upstairs, with dark cabinets, but the appliances are old - they were the ones that were in the kitchen when the house was bought, and the stove is avocado green and original to the house. A cream-coloured hamster lives in a red cage on the counter. He gets to run in a ball in the tv room nearly every day, and sometimes goes out in the backyard, too. The sink is again under a window, and across from this is a door that leads into the unfinished room that contains the furnace and water heater. The other door in the room is more interesting. It leads to the rooms that form the foundation for the terrace. The first is a laundry room, washer, dryer, two big washtub sinks, a flat countertop, and a handful of cupboards. The second room is a workshop, with an old desk, and lots of tools and hardware in a messy profusion.
There are two more doors from the laundry room. One leads to another short staircase, five steps into a sub-basement, the wine cellar. This room is always cold - cold enough to use like a refrigerator, but never cold enough to freeze. Sometimes there is milk and butter down here. It has concrete walls that form concrete shelves. Here there are carrots and potatoes, apples and onions, glass jars of peaches and cherries, cans of corn and soup, bottles of beer, and bottles of wine. There are commercial bottles of wine, and home-made ones, and demijohns of fermenting juice. This room usually smells of damp concrete (there is a rectangular well in the corner, covered with a square piece of plywood. It always has visible water, and the sump pump runs often), but at the right time of the year, it is filled with, first, the scent of grape juice, and then, the oddly delicious smell of half-fermented wine.
The other door opens onto a staircase that leads up to the backyard. If you are at the top of the staircase, you have grass on one side of you. This grassy area is bordered by beds with annual and perennial flowers, and fruit trees. There is a peach tree, two plum trees, a pear tree, and an apple. There is a row of spruces, a tall poplar over a small, metal shed, and a bed with woodland flowers, trillium, jack-in-the-pulpit, bloodroot, mayapples, columbine, herb-robert, spring beauties, and lupines. Against the fence is an elm hedge. There is a playhouse up on stilts, with a staircase on one side and a rope ladder on the other. Under the playhouse is a sandbox. Back near the house is a concrete patio, the roof and ceiling of the cellar. It is right at the sliding glass doors. It is shielded from the yard and the sky by a large trellis and arbour covered in grape vines and scarlet runner beans.
There is, of course, the terrace. Concrete, yes, but faced in sandstone, with a smooth limestone capstone at the top of the barricade, near the door to the kitchen. At the top there is the pole that the laundry line runs on, keeping the laundry well above the garden below. There is a picnic table here, with two benches. The stairs that come down from the terrace lead to the patio, and on the grassy, not house side, there are rose bushes climbing the wall, with herbs - basil, oregano, thyme, summer savory, sage, parsley - growing among the roses. There is mint, but it grows wherever it pleases and is mostly along the hedge.
Where the terrace comes close to the property line, there is a narrow space. You see lilacs growing there, white and purple, and a young ash tree. Along the fence is the woodpile, neatly stacked wood higher than a child is tall. There is also the grave where my cat, who was hit by a car, was buried.
On the other side of the property, you see that the house is much farther from the fence. The space is taken up mostly by a big vegetable garden. There are peas, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, beans, radishes, lovage, and rubarb. There is always zucchini, and sometimes pumpkins, cantaloupes, or sugar baby melons. The melons don't always get to ripen before the frost, even though you start them inside. One year there were Jerusalem artichokes that grew so high that I couldn't get a good look at the flowers. There is a path beside the vegetable garden made of concrete slabs. These lead to the gate that brings you out onto the driveway, beside the garage, at the front of the house.
Prompt: It would take too long to write out the whole thing, but basically it asks you to describe a place you lived as a child.
Source: https://www.wattpad.com/292837478-writing-tips-on-going-home - Wattpad's own maryltabor
So I broke my own rule, because this isn't fictional - or is it?!