That Old House #SheilaConnolly @mysterydenizen

LUCY BURDETTE: I am so happy to introduce you to today's guest, Julie Williams. She is the daughter of our much-missed old friend Sheila Connolly, and she had the bittersweet task of finishing Sheila's last book, THE SECRET STAIRCASE. Welcome Julie!

JULIE WILLIAMS: I grew up in an old house. My parents bought a three-story Victorian from the 1890s in a suburb of Philadelphia when I was a toddler, and there we lived until I was 18 — at which point they moved into a three-story Victorian from the 1880s in a far exurb of Boston. The first place was a real fixer-upper, but my parents were very handy people (a trait I sadly did not inherit), perfectly capable of learning the basics of electrical wiring, caning chairs, hanging wallpaper, repairing insulation, and a bevy of other home repair tasks, from books and endless episodes of “This Old House.” Norm Abram and Bob Vila were our household saints. To be honest, I found the show deathly boring as a child, but I've lately come to appreciate all the answers and helpful advice it offered. In a confusing and tumultuous world, I truly do want to learn the best ways to weatherproof an attic. (Not that I have an attic. But if I did — it would be so weatherproof.)

My mother's taste ran toward the Victorian inside the house as well as outside. Velvet drapes, uncomfortable antique couches, elaborate lamps, and loud floral wallpaper? Yes, yes, yes, and check, please! She decorated our home in a style you don't see much anymore, and I loved this about her — she could follow an idea through in all its details, so that the whole room hung together. Here she is in the front parlor of our house, sometime in the late 1990s:

(Notice how the wastebin is covered in extra wallpaper? Now that's what I call attention to detail.)

I looked up our old house on one of the big real estate websites recently. It's not currently on the market, but there are a dozen photos from the last time it was, about five years ago. I don't know if the look of the interior reflects the recent owner's aesthetic or that of a realtor who staged the place, but hoo boy, is it ever not my mother's taste. Most of the walls are painted a bright, modern white — unless they're painted a muted, modern slate grey; there's a breakfast bar with stools in the dine-in kitchen; and in the main bedroom, front and center, sits a utilitarian brushed-aluminum bedframe. It's all quite, as my mother would pronounce, "mod-rin." (At least they left the stained glass window panels on all three floors — those simple pops of color apparently remain charming even to the most contemporary of eyes.)

But then again, clean and spare is the look now! Many people like to gaze around a room and not see so much — how can I put this? — complication, so much visual detail. Encountering such a stark decorative difference reminded me of this photo I took a few years back in a neighborhood in Chicago, where I live now:

I posted it on facebook with the simple caption "Strange Bedfellows," assuming everyone I knew would agree that the house on the left, a simple and handsome worker cottage built in the late 19th or early 20th century, was far superior in style and feeling to that boxy behemoth on the right, built circa 2015, occupying the corner lot (to the exclusion of any lawn whatsoever) next door. A friend, perhaps not catching my drift, replied, "I love the place on the right! Watched it going up a few years ago." Which stopped me in my tracks! I had to cock my head, let go momentarily my bias toward the old and the decorative, and consider the charms of contemporary shapes and shades. I'll bet whoever lives in the house on the right really likes it. (At least I hope they do — it must have cost a pretty penny.)

(Here's another case of "strange bedfellows" in Chicago — a common sight these days!)

In The Secret Staircase, Kate Hamilton embarks on an ambitious project to save her hometown of Asheboro, Maryland by turning it into a "Victorian Village" historical tourist destination, beginning with the stately manse of Henry Barton, a 19th-century manufacturing magnate. Because Barton's house has sat untouched (aside from basic maintenance) for the last 100 years, Kate has a decision to make: to update or not to update? The house has all the wonderful charms of Victoriana — elegant velvet furniture, dark wood, stately proportions; and all the drawbacks of it — impossible to heat, a bear to dust, and fussy in every detail. Kate wants to fix up the house's large kitchen so as to make it functional for events, but not at the expense of its character and educational value as a remnant of another time. Oh, and then the contractor finds a hundred-year-old body behind the kitchen wall, and... Well, things get complicated from there.

I had the honor of finishing the book's edits to move it into its final form for publication, after my mother died last spring, and as I worked on it, I thought of our old houses — both of them, in different stages of life, in different states. I felt a new appreciation for all the work my mother and father put into those houses, over many years. I thought fondly of my mother's abiding love for Victorian houses: their grand proportions, their practical peccadilloes, and their old-fashioned, fussy charm.

What about you? Do you love old houses — all that dark wood, and luscious fabrics in saturated shades? Or do you gravitate more toward simple elegance — the spare, Scandinavian look? Or somewhere between, or outside of these styles entirely? Inquiring minds want to know. And does anyone still watch “This Old House”?

Link to book at publisher 

Link to book on Amazon 

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