quote:

HUGE basement is retro in flair with rich pine paneling and throwback bar area.

Boy, do I ever remember this style. My parents' friends had basements that looked like this one, except there was no carpeting on the floor. Usually asbestos tile.

A home version of a Wisconsin supper club.

Basements are too claustrophobic for me. My grandfather had the only one I knew of when I was a kid and it required a sump pump.
The water table was so high that houses with basements would float up.
Now builders know how to build them in Swampeast Missouri.

Oh yeah, we had the knotty pine look too!

The only basement I remember as a kid was my grandmother’s in Minneapolis. It was a dark, musty affair with a big scary furnace, an incinerator, and a bunch of ductwork that looked like it could spring to life any moment.

As if that wasn’t scary enough, she had a mangle next to the giant concrete laundry tubs that steamed and hissed like it was possessed. The washer and dryer were down there too, (Bendix, doncha’ know) with glass doors in front so you could watch the clothes spin around.

As a wee tyke I had a sandbox down there to play in when it got cold. After the cat found it I didn’t get to play in it any more.

Best post of the year

I do remember the knotty pine era. My most distinct memory of it was when my parents and I and my sister visited a family we had known in Ohio who had moved to Baltimore. I have a very distinct recollection of going down the stairs at their house in Baltimore, surrounded by knotty pine paneling.

Big Al

The pictures are from the real estate listing for a house a block away from me. Sweet little ranch but it's across the street from a large park, it's on a corner, and while it's well maintained it's a bit dated in some ways. They've been on the market and dropped their price a couple of times. They had an offer but the deal fell through so it's still on the market.

To those of us who remember this style.....I guess we have a few new adjectives to describe us...."retro" and "throwback"....

When we moved into our house in 1995, it had a basement with blue/red plaid carpet, a wet bar, and a mirrored wall behind the wet bar. Classic!

I vaguely remember the basement in my grandmother’s Victorian house. It had dirt floors, a big octopus style furnace, and spiders. Lots and lots of spiders. And hanging bulbs for lights. I didn’t like it down there.

The basement in my childhood home was closer to a cellar - dank, low-ceilinged and only partly accessible beneath our 1722 preRevolutionary house.

Its great charm was a hand-made (by Dad) Grandma Moses village in Winter, designed to surround a really cute H.O. scale train set that went through a mountain and landmarks of the little town, complete with all such a town's traditional landmarks: P.O., schoolhouse, grocery store and other shops, Church, station house and rows of little houses.

Plus, of course, snow-covered pine trees on little hills, and an elaborate relay system directing the train line - the locomotive, coal car (real coal. It smoked!), and a variety of cars ending in the little red caboose. Dad and my little brother took turns as engineer, pulling the levers to switch the tracks' paths, both wearing the traditional cap and red bandanna.

I wish I could find the slides that projected those unforgettable images (still have the antique projector!) and can hear the clickety clack and haunting whistle. The train itself (apart from the antique style New Haven cars and locomotives complete with cow catchers), was like a prototype of our two-car trunk-line between our home town New Canaan and Stanford, CT. It brought serious commuters back and forth, with the new line at Stanford carrying the commuters to the terminal, majestic Grand Central Station - the hub of the world. In the morning, they were tented behind their fresh inked NYTimes; in the evening, a goodly number traveled jovially in the popular bar car.

The commuters were almost all Daddies; the Mommies staying home tending the house. (It took me a long time to realize some Daddies worked right in their towns, much less that Mommies might take the train to NYC on weekdays for their own adventures.)

It was only that HO set up that could induce anyone to descend to that cellar where we could hear myriad rats rustling in the darkness, beyond where only brave children could explore, hunched over beneath the antique rafters. They may well have been the great-g-g-g's of the ones that nibbled the grain of the original pre-Revolutionary builders of that "Visitation House" (a plaque in the entry attested to its having served as an occasional Church led by itinerant ministers going town to town.) (Note, this is not at all what the article says. Who knows? Can't really see many pregnant women roaming around then.)

Memories!

I was thrilled to find photos of our house online - apparently it was on the market five years ago. Dad would have been proud that the former "Stevens house" is now jointly named after the Stevens family and Dad!

Hope it doesn't sound like bragging to post the whole listing which includes a great deal about Dad's career. It is so reminiscent for me it seemed a natural continuation about my recollections about that basement/cellar.

This is the only picture I found that looks as I remember it At least it doesn't show the McMansion next door. The price has definitely NOT gone up with the rest of the town. They must have discovered the fuel bill wasn't as charming as its history, not to mention the rats. I'll bet they're still around!

(I HATE HATE HATE what they did to the interior - all but the wood, and especially the *yuck* kitchen and the pingpong room?!?)

228 Weed Street, New Canaan, CT



The Joseph-Stevens-Charles-Saxon house

This reminds me of how I went through my whole childhood correcting teasing about the street name - that it's named after a family, not a plant.

Amanda, beautiful! You were lucky to grow up there! Yes, they ruined the interior but hopefully someone will put it right again.

I *love* that basement with all the pine. The basement in my house (where I "grew up" from sixth grade on) is similar, but fake wood paneling and no bar. It does have a fireplace. It was clearly left unfinished by the builder and finished by one of the early owners of the house.