We color-coded the houses down on Chestnut Street to keep conversations on a relevant level. What started out as plans for a studio and teaching area, turned into a necessary home for my daughter and me when I decided to leave our Illinois Avenue home.
The shotgun house was over 100 years old and in need of much work. I had watched friends tackle bricks and mortar tasks in the area and knew I could handle a lot of the work as I had helped some of them on occasions and had come to the conclusion that construction was putting things together with hammers and nails in much the same manner as I had used needles and thread to make clothing for myself and my children.
The building served as an art class teaching area as well as a residence for us.
In the middle of knocking down plaster from the walls, I learned about a restoration grant for which I could apply. The grant allowed me to hire a contractor for a much more complicated change to the building
By removing all the dividing walls and tuc pointing the entire structure before the contractor took over the project, my plan of running a hall down one side with two rooms leading off of it changed the building from a shotgun house to one with two private bedrooms. I removed a chimney along the hallway and inserted a window that provided cross ventilation unheard of in shotgun houses.
I had watched a bricklayer work at a friend’s structure down the street to learn the process of tuc pointing. What I didn’t realize was how often he carefully dried his hands with a rag tucked into his back pocket. That part went right over my head. In my way of thinking, to protect hands, one would, of course, wear gloves. The result was I ended up with wrinkled fingers minus their tips. Arriving at a family gathering to celebrate my birthday, band-aids and vitamin E eased my pain while the experience guaranteed I would not forget that lesson.
The rigors of being a Marine Corps wife had prepared me for those early years on Chestnut Street in Louisville, Kentucky’s Phoenix Hill Neighborhood.