The third floor...

When I was a kid, we had a big house in Woodhaven.... there was a basement and three floors.  The first floor had the usual living room, dining room, kitchen, pantry... the bedrooms were on the second floor (that house had three), and the third floor had two rooms, one of which was my playroom.  My dad set up a Lionel train in the playroom, which was left out to play with all year long, not just at Christmas-time, and I had a blackboard and a little desk, and shelves of books and games and dolls.  Mostly books... I remember having so many books up there.

In my grandmother's house (daddy's mother), there were also three floors and a basement.  The third floor (which Aunt Dolly always called 'the attic,' had three bedrooms.  From the middle bedroom, where I would sleep when I was a kid, my cousin Connie and I would watch the planes taking off and landing at Idlewild Airport (way before it was re-named JFK Airport).  In that middle room, I would sit by the window with my books.... the bookshelves were in the basement of that house, but I would always carry the books up to the third floor so I could read by the window up there.

In this house, a design combination of that Woodhaven house and my grandparents' house, the third floor will soon (very soon!) be a library.  Once the flooring is put down and the bookshelves are built, I will be carrying all the books up there.  Fiction from my sitting room, non-fiction from the breakfast room, British history and travel books from the living room, decorating and reference books from the dining room, Christmas books from the second floor hallway, the classics from my dressing room... my Charles Dickens set, all of British author Beverley Nichols' memoirs.... all of those books will be going up to the library. The Library!

We already have a sofa for up there, and tables... and a lamp or two.  I've been buying pillows for the window-seats as I find them... and I will be taking accessories from different rooms of the house and arranging them up in the library.  Along the way, I will find accent pieces and artwork for upstairs.

My favorite place to be in the Woodhaven house was that third floor playroom.... in my mind's eye, I can see myself with my books, reading out loud to my Lady Revlon doll. (She had short dark hair, a bright red dress, tiny pearl earrings, and a white fur cape.)   I know that once the library is done and all of my books are upstairs, I will be sitting on that window seat up there, reading by the open window and feeling the breeze coming through from our back pasture. 

In the very first house I remember, the third floor was the place to be.  In this big old house, which I hope will be our last and forever house, the third floor will soon be the place to be.