Acair Fearann

We have a peculiar assortment of rugs here.  The majority are lumped into the ‘oriental’ group with a scattering of others.   Originally, there were fewer.  As always, each generation perpetrated rugs, moved rugs in from other houses, and so forth.  The Keeping room floor was first covered only with a thin, green jute rug.  This was easily rolled up and out of the way to accommodate dancing.  At some point around 1920, the massive (14′ x21′) wool rug came, which is rather difficult to roll up, but then dancing doesn’t exactly happen much these days.  The Dining room has a large, elderly oriental but I strongly suspect (given the wear patterns on the wood underneath) that this room also didn’t have a rug originally.  In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that rugs were generally only in upstairs rooms.*  As a summer house, with many guests wandering in and out at will, rugs in the big rooms downstairs would have been surplus and a pain. Without a vacuum cleaner, regularly cleaning (or even seasonally cleaning) any rug over 3’x5′ becomes increasingly hard; and over 5’x8′ you really need multiple hefty people, especially with the heavy but floppy hand-woven types.  Unlike modern, industrial rugs, hand-woven rugs generally have no stiff backing: roll them up and flip them over your shoulder and they happily droop…if long enough (or you’re short enough) they hit the ground.  This gets worse with age and wear.  I am working on an elderly oriental rug at the moment that I think I could tie in a knot if it was a bit longer.

*Of course, you end up needing a lot of little rugs…  Or, as is evident in two rooms upstairs you can opt for the early style of wall to wall carpet: long strips tacked or whip-sown together.  Or, everybody wears bed-slippers.

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For their entire 110 years, the north basement stairs have stored the kerosene lamps.  Through the 1920’s, WWE would get up in the morning, collect the lamps, and then clean and refill them on the stairs.  The shelves and the stairs are covered in tin sheeting to avoid spills from soaking into the wood; originally the double-hung window was operable and would have provided ample ventilation and light.  It was a convenient, but discreet, location for a necessary task.  Since the house was electrified, the area has gradually acquired an odd array of spare fire-place tools, lampshades, vases, and mysterious glass containers of liquid.  Actually, three of those containers made of very pretty blue glass with cork stoppers and No markings are carbon-tet fire extinguishers.*  The fourth, a massive gallon jug claimed to be bleach, we decided that bleach had no right to be a nice dark brown.

However, we have plants, lots of plants, and no particular need for kerosene lamps.  Some of those plants need a good, cool place to overwinter: scented geraniums, fuschias, begonias, passion flowers…  And, frankly, we were all tired of navigating the stairs, highly breakable vases, and oddments with loads of firewood. 

And so, the kerosene lamps, their accoutrements, the fire extinguishers, and the purported jar of bleach** migrated to the cabinet that is built into/next to the little parlor’s chimney base.  This dry, dark, out-of-the-way location seemed to be a reasonable location for storing such things.  The odd bits of electrical fixtures got put with the other odd electrical bits.  The vases got rearranged on some safer shelves on the stairs, another shelf got built, and the whole thing got vaccuumed.  The hanging array of fire-place tools and oddments remains, as does the ridiculously sharp fire-axe.  I daresay I will fill the space with plants in no time flat…

*worthy of a post on their own, liquid carbon-tet is very effective at putting out fires…that it (if the fire is hot enough) can also create phosgene gas while doing so is a less desirable quality.

**what else can one do with it?  I am not dumping such things in a public watershed, even on dark and stormy nights.

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While this house is rather large and rather spread out, it is also remarkably easy to hear things in it… from certain places.  Upstairs, sound does not travel in between the north end and the center (never mind the south end) despite the short distance: this makes sense given the bent hallways and multiple walls.  It makes even more sense when one remembers that one of the walls in question was formerly an exterior wall containing a staircase.  On the other hand, in my room at the extreme north end on the second floor, I can hear the fire alarm above the washing machine located in the extreme south end in the basement.  Which doesn’t make sense right? 

Well, except that the basement going north is basically a long narrow box made of stone.  When it hits the north end it jogs around the old foundation wall (the same wall which is a former exterior wall on the second story), which would stop the sound, except…  The old hot air ducts for the forced air coal furnace are still in  place, but open at the bottom.  The sound is neatly funnelled into those and bounces on up to the second story quite neatly.

Now I suppose, that same alarm might not be audible in the center and south sections, despite being closer, since the hot air ducts are not in those areas.  I ought to experiment.

Useful to know the fire alarm will wake one up though.  Granted it took awhile since it was just a flat battery and not the full-on shriek.

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