"He is like a good prewar house-solidly built. They don't build them that way anymore. He's also been repainted several times."

Yesterday a carpenter worked here all day replacing the stair treads on the staircase going upstairs. Three of the stair lips had snapped off. I was the injured victim of one of those and wanted no more victims on my conscience. The carpenter told me that the wood was really dry. He said it happens in older houses. That got to me to thinking.

My house is nearly thirty three years old. I bought it brand new. In the first years the mortgage was half my monthly salary. When I moved in, my den had a desk, the one I'm sitting at now, a TV and a studio couch, and that was it in the whole house. I had pictures for the walls, African art, carvings, sculptures and fabrics but no furniture. When the phone man came, he asked if I wasn't living a bit primitively. I didn't care. It was mine, empty or not.

I took time to furnish my house, doing it a bit at a time and looking for just the right pieces. Some were old like the kitchen table with the silverware drawers I bought at the tail end of an auction. It was around forty dollars. It still sits in my living room. It has been joined by a handmade tavern table from the workshop of a local craftsman. The living room rug was found at an antique fair. It was pretty dirty and really cheap, but I fell in love with it. It was made in Turkey and has men smoking pipes and drinking coffee while sitting in front of houses. It also has herds of sheep, lots of sheep. I have a bookcase in there painted along the top by an artist called Christopher Gurshin. He mixes stenciling with free hand. I also have a few of his paintings and other stuff he's painted like small buckets and metal boxes. The living room is red, not a subdued red but a deep red.

The dining room has a table a local carpenter made for me from plans I found in a book about Shaker furniture. It was made so long ago it only cost me $200.00, but it took me a long time to save up the money. Around it are mismatched chairs. I found them all over the place though one did come from my mother's house. There's a beautiful old chest and an antique schoolhouse clock. Both came from the same antique store, but they weren't all that expensive. My antiques seldom are. The room is painted nutmeg, and it is my favorite color in the whole house.

I won't give you a whole tour of the house, but I will tell you that the other rooms too have odd combinations of stuff I found. Each has an antique or two for character and also some special touches. On my bedroom wall is a child's cowgirl outfit in the exact accent color of the room. The guest room has a top hat, a mustache cup and old men's collars on one shelf. The fig tree has old ladies hats on it.

The house reflects me. It has my quirky taste in its furnishings, a casualness to make it comfortable, color to give it life, and it's getting older by the day.