Most likely this is the house that started the love of all things purple. Since the remodel began in the late 80s, this house has been several shades of purple. I first saw it during one of our last family adventures to the Sidewalk Sale downtown. If you walk two block further down the sidewalk and one block left from this photo you are at the start of downtown, specifically, the old gaslight district. Which we don't call it anymore because Petoskey, to our north, famously calls its shopping area the gas light district. Anyway, during the sidewalk sale two blocks of Front Street are blocked off, there is little parking and you end up having to park in people's front yards to get there. One year we parked in front of this house on Washington.
I could have looked at it all day. Most of the houses around us on 11th were white like ours or muted period colors. In other words, the same old worn out colors that they had been when they were built 80 years prior.
The garden hadn't been in place then. It was just this great stucco building with a brilliant red violet paint.
When we built the house out in the country this house was my inspiration. I was going to go purple. I had the whole thing worked out. I was promised that I could do anything that I wanted. And when I said purple I was vetoed. My sketches were not even looked at. So I went blue.
And stayed in the safe mode until just a few years ago.... gosh no. That was almost a decade ago when Michelle still lived here. She wasn't afraid to try something new in her house and it was amazing. Even the bits that she decided she didn't like were amazing. So I threw myself into the things that I love even more than I already had. And so my purple fetish was born.
I think this would have turned out better if I had not been photographing on a hazy humid day. The front of the house shows all of its character. The original house wasn't stepped out like this though, it had more of a bay in the front façade. And that gave the house a taller posture, this is a little more squatty than it used to be. But it is still adorable.
