Un-level, defying three principles of physics? Check.
Chickens in the backyard … and sometimes inside? Check.
Old broken appliances displayed on shelves like art? Check
Rocking chairs on front porch, possibly with old man or critter sleeping in them? Check.
Wood floors that have surface termite damage forming a silhouette of Elvis, possibly Abe Lincoln? Check
Wood floors that appear to be leaching dirt? Check
Uh-huh. Uh-huh! I’ve finally figured it out. I finally have a label for my old, wobbly house: country chic. Or, at least that’s what I’m going to start calling it.
If your house is like mine — old, rustic, a lot of personality, warm, loaded with opportunities for transmitting tetanus — then you’ve always had to apologize for it.
People love the place when they walk in. Remark about this or that or how quaint it is to step straight through a broken floorboard. In these new houses, you just can’t step straight through a broken floorboard! Not like the olden days. Oh, it’s grand.
Inevitably I say, “Sorry, it’s an old house, you know. Mind signing this insurance waiver?”
But they find it quaint — like it’s part of the experience.
“Oh, it’s charming,” they say. “Just lovely and wonderful, these old places. Now, did you know there’s a squirrel living in your cupboard?”
And I apologize for that, too.
It takes a certain person to live in an old house. Usually deranged, and who likes to spend gobs of money and lots of weekends re-fixing the same thing over and over again.
An old house is a lifestyle — a choice you make. I’ve never questioned it — never doubted — but I could also never define it. What is this life I have chosen? This place to call a home? How can I define these four walls to the outside world, and even to myself? Because we all need definition. Just like everyone in my house needs a tetanus shot. (We hand them out at the front door.)
Then I read it — an article about a new book called, “The Way We Live in the Country,” which mainly chronicles European cottages and farm houses on the south of France. The houses look more like castles than my old Florida shack — which might just be leaning depending on the humidity — but I think I can just squeak in.
What is a “country chic” house?
Bucolic. Rustic. Comfortable. Charming (I’m taking certain liberties on this one.) Relaxing. Nothing matches. Odd things are paired with one another. A squirrel might live in the cupboard. You know, things like that.
It’s my house! All these years I’ve been a little bit country and a little bit chic. I just never knew it.
What a revelation — a reason for joy. I’m going to flaunt it now. Maybe put up a sign in the front yard.
I grew up in a bucolic house, but didn’t realize it until recently. I had always thought when people said “bucolic,” it meant the Health Department was about to board the place up and quarantine us for some kind of communicable glandular disease. Never took it as a compliment.
It was smack dab in the middle of metropolitan Tampa, just blocks from the mansions lining the bayshore. Yet, with its sea of grape vine arbors and flowing curtains that caught the once-in-twenty-years Tampa breeze, you got a rural, pastoral feeling. You know, “pastoral” like there might be grazing sheep in the next room over.
When I look at my house, there’s a lot that harks back to that. Frankly, that harks back to yesteryear. Lots of imperfection and personality. Lots of exposed pine and strange nick-knacks. Lots of things that defy labels and easy understanding in a world so dominated by the modern, the new. The overdependence on ultra-technology. It’s a getaway. An escape from it all. A place to come home to at night just to get lost. That’s my house. A place to be proud of!
Country chic, huh? Whoever thought that a floorboard lawsuit waiting to happen could have such a cool label. (Or, at least that’s what I’m calling it, whether it’s south of France or not.)