Summit Hill House Tour

Sunday, September 22. 2024

Sometime in the last year, I saw something about the Summit Hill house tour and put a note on my calendar in August to look for it. I did and I was about to buy tickets, when I saw the button that said Volunteer! I’d had such fun volunteering at the Doors Open, I thought I would investigate. We got free tickets for helping for half the day – four hours. Worth it! Keith signed up with me. We were not allowed to take pictures, so it might not have happened! To be honest, we saw so many things, I can’t keep it all straight – or remember all that I wish I could remember.

Alexander picked up our shirts last week, so we didn’t have to go downtown. His office is not far from the place. We so appreciate his willingness always to help whenever we ask. We didn’t look at our shirts until today. Keith’s was a size smaller than he ordered. Uh oh. They were also both super wrinkled. I make my own winkle releaser using a tiny amount of fabric softener and water. I think it works wonders. This is my psa for today – Keith’s shirt as is on the left, mine on the right after a couple spritzes of wrinkle releaser and some quick stretches of the shirt. When I did Keith’s, he suggested I be a little aggressive in stretching. I was and he swears it got bigger. It fit fine, so that was a win.

The house we were assigned to was a bit farther away from the others. It was great. I was really glad we were assigned to it. It was one of the less grand houses. The owners had been there 5 years. It was 7000 sq. feet, built in 1889, and three stories. I was on the top level, showing the apartment that had been built there out of the original attic. The downstairs people (Keith included) were in charge of keeping people moving in the right direction for the tour and giving out a few tidbits of information. I got to gush over how charming my apartment was – how clever the lady who lived there was to figure out how to arrange the rooms – how the daughter had the perfect bedroom with the attached “top of the turret” room – how cool the tile in the bathroom was – and check out these super old floors that looked SO cool! I had a ball.

Keith was at the end of the second-floor hall, directing people up to see me. When the people came back down, many of them tried to return down the hall from whence they’d come. Keith told them to continue down the stairs to the main kitchen. Many insisted they hadn’t been down his hall yet. He assured them that they had. They insisted on going back. He let them of course, and then they would come back and say they’d already been down there. Yes. Yes, you have. They shook their heads at him, because obviously he should have told them.

The woodwork in our main level was next level great. It was spindly and fancy and extreme. I know that tells you nothing, but I have no idea what the right words are, and at least you can guess that it was special. The ceilings were 11ft high and I wondered if anyone had ever juggled in there. I used the “staff” restroom (first floor powder room) and the track of the barn door inside the room turned when I closed it and I was briefly stuck inside. I didn’t panic, because I knew there were tons of people to rescue me just outside, but I did rather not relish having to knock and say help, help. I figured it out and rescued myself.

My replacement did not arrive in a timely manner, so we lost almost an hour of the remaining time to visit houses ourselves. We were organized and didn’t dilly dally and got all but one done that we wanted to see. (One was a park, one was the James J. Hill house – been there – and one was a restaurant, so we put them low on the interest list.)

Here are random things I remember:

One house had fuzzy…no, fleecy…no, nobby, no…um…some kind of fabric on several chairs and ottomans and something elses in several different rooms and I liked it so much I had to touch it and I want some in my house.

I swoon over second floor balconies.

Art is great. GREAT!

Real people seem to live in unreal houses.

I would like to put molding around a square of wallpaper on a big wall. (Maybe you had to be there)

You can live on Summit Hill and have a pool!!

You can have so much house envy that you can sort of fray around the edges of your being.

When the concert grand piano looks regular sized over there in the living room, the house is really big!

Master suite is not a thing, because master is slave vocabulary and we are better than that. Primary or owners’ suit is the in thing.

Bold is great.

Light fixtures can be really, really amazing.

I really like non-rectangle rooms.

I keep thinking about that nobbly furniture. Whoof, I liked it.

You can have a little chandelier over your bathtub.

Sometimes big houses are divided into 5 condos and the one condo they let you in makes you want to see the whole rest of the house, because it is huge and amazing and how could there be more!?

I think we should put new carpet on our stairs – it maybe should be ziggaly-zaggaly and make Keith dizzy.

A second staircase is awfully nice.

It is possible for there to be too-much house. I would need to know many, many more people to even be able to find everyone at a party.

Butler’s pantries are so cool I just like to stand in them and absorb happiness.

We will definitely volunteer again next year!

After everything ended at 6pm, we spent some time looking at restaurants in the area. We chose one downtown by the Excel. One our way, we passed what looked like it used to be a Burger King, but was now called Master Chef. It was still a counter service place, but I suggested we stop. It is right by United Hospital, so maybe it picks up the lunch crowd during the week, but it was empty this evening. I had a shrimp po’boy, Keith has jerk chicken and rice, and we shared cheese curds. It was very inexpensive. The cheese curds were just what I wanted, so I now know a place in MN with good curds. The jerk chicken was enough for two meals (or two people) and was so spicy my taste blew me away. Keith will enjoy it for lunch tomorrow. My sandwich wasn’t the perfect po’boy bun or quite the traditional po’boy sauce, but it was a darned good sandwich that I really enjoyed. The fries looked like the kind I don’t like, but were oddly compelling – I just kept eating and eating and eating them. And still brought half the order home (Keith will enjoy them for lunch tomorrow with his jerk chicken).

What a day, what a day! The weather was spectacular. I enjoyed being out walking around a great neighborhood in the fall warm sunshine (what? where are we? when is it? it’s all confused). I loved chatting with all the people going around the houses with me. Happy, happy, happy day!