These Old Walls

My Aunts House

My Aunts house is big. It's as big as she is tiny. It's really old too, built a couple hundred years ago of large yellow bricks cut from the Jaumont Limestone found the neighboring countryside. It has big doors and tall windows. It has enormous rooms, and thick walls, and there are old keys and locks on anything that can be opened or closed. It's a mix between a castle, a museum, a hotel and a house.
The castle part is in the architecture. Like I said, big windows, walls so thick you can't get wi-fi in the next room because the signal can't get through, super high ceilings with crown molding, red and white checkered kitchen floor with decades of wear and tear. Most of the furniture is also very regal with inlaid wood, and curvy ornate shapes. It's all antique except for the couch, and who knows, maybe even that is too.
It's like a museum because of the eclectic mix of furnishings, and objects that are throughout. My Aunt has a table in the salon with artifacts from her numerous trips to exotic locals. She showed me a list she'd made of her travels. It included the names of 49 countries! There is a wall plaque from Bolivia in her hallway, and several souvenirs from India, Eastern Asia, and South America displayed elsewhere.
The decor of her home is a time capsule in and of itself of the late 1960's early 1970's. Every wall is wallpapered with 1960's glamour and style. There is a brown suede in the entry (that is soft to the touch), gold and brown swirly flowers in the staircase and upstairs hall, checker board yellow, baby blue and white in the kitchen, broad thick stripes in cream and salmon and flowers in my room, and jungle print in the adjoining bathroom. Almost all of the ceilings are wallpapered too! It never occurred to me that you could wallpaper a ceiling, but I actually think it looks really cool. Especially in the bathroom where the walls are tiled with white 4x4's up to about 5 feet.
Each bedroom has a bathroom and a theme, and corresponding towels and sheets, and when I arrive I almost feel like I am checking into a fancy hotel. My room had a deep tub and shower in addition to sink and toilet, a desk, two closets, a little couch, curtains that matched the wallpaper exactly, and my own adjustable radiator style heater. I even had a new pair of white slippers waiting for me when I arrived this time! For a couple nights my Aunt had other house guests, and in the morning we all congregated in the kitchen where she'd put out a fresh baked brioche and coffee. I joked with her that she should make her house into a bed and breakfast and start charging us!
And then there is the kitchen. It is my favorite room in the house. I love everything about it. Even my Aunt says it's the heart of the place, and that room really does feel like a home. It feels very "lived in" if you get what I mean. It's bursting with happy memories for me.
The house is so big  that we really only use a couple of the rooms, but there are many, many more. There is a large study that was my Uncles before he died. My Aunt has left it exactly how he had it, and it's very masculine and stylish even now. There is a small room adjoining that used to be a library, there is the large salon that I mentioned before, and also a sewing room. There is a little loft on the third floor with two smaller rooms that I think might have been a maids quarters, and also a huge attic space. There is a basement with curved brick doorways, several smaller storage rooms with old wooden doors and giant skeleton keys inserted as door handles, and a huge fireplace in the main room. There is a two car garage, and a detached gardeners house at the back of the property next to the river. There are herb gardens, rose gardens, apple and mirabelle (a kind of plum only found in that region of France) trees, and terraces that were used for sunbathing and entertaining back in the day.

My bedroom:)

After some consideration I concluded that my entire apartment would fit into her sal de manger, or dining room and adjoining hallway! I can't even imagine having that much space! Even for a couple weeks it was an adjustment. I'd get dressed and go downstairs and if I made it to the kitchen before I realized I'd forgotten something it was quite a hike to go back and get it. Four doors to open and close, large winding staircase, and about 7 light switches if it happened to be nighttime! And that was one way! Like I said, earlier, it's a big house.