Looking Down...

... the *Gallery* in our house. My entry for this week's Wide Angle Wednesday challenge - Looking Down. Thanks to Hobbs for hosting! By way of explanation of the word "gallery" here - when we suddenly took a notion ten years ago to add on to our at that time nearly, but not quite, 100 year old "Virginia 2 on 2" farmhouse - for the second time, actually - we availed ourselves of the services of an architect to come out and have a look and suggest how we might best do that. His design, which we substantially followed, involved a thing he called "The Gallery" which would connect the new kitchen at the south end with the new bedroom over new garage at the north end. The little cutouts in the right hand wall are *windows* that allow light into the rooms behind said wall. Ours is basically a pretty dark house, but the new spaces are quite light! Anyway - so there we were with a hall that seemed to be called a gallery. So naturally, the husband has hung some art. Some of it is his work - the (roast) chicken is his - some of it is found work - some of it is photographs by #2 son - etc. This photo is taken standing with my back to the bedroom door at the end and looking down the gallery to the kitchen, which is to the left at the far end where the light is streaming in one of the five doors that lead outside. Lots of ways out in case of emergency!

Virginia 2 on 2 - refers to a typical farmhouse in these parts that was two rooms downstairs, and two rooms upstairs - which is what this house was before we started messing around with it. When it was originally built, in 1912, it was attached to a chimney that had been part of a previous cabin that had burned down. It had the two down/two up configuration, plus a "summer kitchen" out behind, and an outhouse. There was nothing fancy about it in any way at all, and the husband has remarked more than once or twice that we should have torn it down and started from scratch. Oh well! Too late now.