Describe Your Childhood Home

I had a few childhood homes. 

I was born into my grandparents' home on Olive Street in Coatesville. That's me in 2012, with blonde hair, visiting back east.  I had the front bedroom (the window far right), and my parents slept in the fixed up basement apartment (sans bathroom).  My grandparents had the back bedroom, all were quite small. There was one bathroom, a living room, dining area and kitchen. It was a quaint 2-bedroom ranch house with an ample back yard for gardens and fruit trees. It was built with my dad's GI bill in about 1950 or so.  I spent the first three years of my life there. It is very like my first purchased home in Telford, a ranch style, only we had three bedrooms.

Added 2017--the hedges and rose bushes are gone

Added 2017--to the left is where the cherry tree used to be. My grandmother's clothesline is till there.

Added 2017--this back yard used to be full of fruit trees and a big garden, and hedges all around it

My second home was right down the street at 1417 Olive Street.  It was a 3-bedroom stucco Tudor-looking home with living room, dining room and kitchen on the main floor, 3 small bedrooms on the second floor and garage and basement on the first floor.  The back yard was large.  Funny how I remember the basement most of all from that house.
My mom would do the laundry down there and I would play with my dolls.  She had a wringer washer/dryer.  I can remember that thing moving up and down as it chugged the laundry clean.  Then my mom would hold the laundry through the wringer to flatten it like pancakes.  Then she would set up a clothesline in the basement during the winter to dry the clothes (summer was an outside line). All the while she would listen to soap operas on the radio.
Meanwhile, I had a knock-off version of a Betsy Westy doll.  I had a bath-a-net for her and I would bathe Betsy while my mom did her laundry.
The basement was also where I had a place set up to do my painting.
I can also remember when my grandmother's dog, Pinky, had her puppies.  I played down in the basement with the puppies there.
This photo is recent (2012). Our house didn't look like this. The bottom was brick, but the top was stucco with wood--Tudor style. I'm not thrilled with what this family did to the house. Orange siding with red brick . . . uh . . . no.

Added 2017--they added a front porch and a garden 

Added 2017

At the end of first grade we moved again to a home north of town at 1107 Scott Drive.

It was a 4-bedroom split level to accommodate our growing family of six at that time, soon to be grown to 10 in the next few years.  It was red brick and wood siding.  That is where I spent the remainder of my childhood.  In the beginning I had my own room.  When Kathy was born, I shared my room with her and any subsequent baby that was born, as a crib was incessantly in my bedroom. We always had two cribs, one in my room and one in another room that housed either my brother, Henry, or my grandmother when she lived with us for awhile.

Consequently, my dad made over the attic into a boys dormitory when I was about 16.  I got my own room; Kathy and Chrissy shared a room; Henry got his own room, too; and the rest of the boys: Andrew, Warren, John and Jeffrey took over the dormitory. My parents, of course, had the master bedroom/bath.

We had 2-1/2 bathrooms.  The main floor was the kitchen, living room and dining room.  A few steps up into the bedroom area, then a few steps up into the attic dorm.  A few steps down from the kitchen was what we called the play room or rec room.  There was also a laundry room and a powder room.  The 2-car garage was off the play room.  In the beginning we did have 2 cars in there, but as my mom began her careers in Home Interiors and quilting, the garage was turned into a warehouse/workplace for her, then a quilt shop.

We had 3/4 acre in mostly oak trees and others like poplar and some evergreen.  My dad was like a master gardener and built lots of gardens with all the stone that was dug out of our yard.  He never could grow grass much because of all the shade trees, but he loved to grow flowers.  We had beauties all over the yard.

With as big as our family was, it astonishes me that we didn't have a vegetable garden.  That was something I undertook when I got my own houses later.  But, like I said, we did not have much sun except in the front yard, so I guess my dad just stuck with flowers, which he loved.

As a result, a few of us siblings have green thumbs like my dad and his dad before him.  Gardening is one love that runs in the family.  I hope my children will inherit that love of plant, tree, flower and vegetable gardening.

How many childhood homes did you have?  What did they look like?