Living room and dining room

Note the beautiful built-in bookcases between the living and the dining room. There are also shelves next to the door.


The floors are in excellent condition. I think the old man who lived here before I did never wore shoes indoors.

Kitchen

The kitchen is in great shape. A friend offered me $4,000 for the sink (which I believe is original to the house), but I told her that I didn't want to have to replace it.

I had under-cabinet lighting installed and added shelves to the door of the pantry. There is a pull-out cutting board above the silverware drawer. I think the hardware is original to the house.

The kitchen is big, with plenty of room for a breakfast table. There is a door to the back yard to the left of the table; the basement door is across from the back door.

The basement is unfinished and about the size of the kitchen. It's a great place to store wine, bicycles and pieces of wood you might need someday.

Bedrooms

There are two bedrooms and one office that could be used as a bedroom. They are away from the street and very quiet, although even streetside wouldn't be so bad now that the neighbors who never took their trash can in and always had wild parties have moved. The other neighbors with the three yippy dogs (the whole reason I had the eight-foot fence put up between our yards) have also moved. There are some birds that like to sing early in the morning, but the neighborhood cats should make short work of them soon.

Bathroom

Detailing

The house has beautiful original and authentic detailing, like this fireplace with a gas furnace. There is molding on all the ceilings , the door and windowframes are exquisite and many of the doorknobs are glass. The walls are plaster and solid: when a tree fell on my next-door neighbor's roof, his house barely trembled.

The house also has its original radiators and heating system, which works great. There is also central heat and air and a huge attic fan that keeps the house cool enough most of the summer so that A/C is not necessary. It's nice weather most of the year here -- nice enough to sit on the porch swing and watch the butterflies and hummingbirds.

The neighborhood

Central Gardens is one of the best places to live in Memphis. The neighborhood association puts on a Fourth of July parade every year and decorates for Christmas. The people are nice and they take good care of their homes.

Almost everything you might need is within walking distance of my house. Food within walking distance includes

• Baskin-Robbins
• Pei Wei
• High Point Coffee
• Sean's Smooth Moves and Gyro Shop, which also sells cigarettes and lottery tickets, should you be so inclined

Other useful businesses within walking distance are

• Happy Days dry cleaners
• The shoe repair guy whose dad had the business before him
• Outdoor Sports
• Several antique stores
• Midtown Video
• the Post Office
• Blockbuster
• Schnuck's grocery store, a St Louis, family-owned chain is a few blocks the other way.
• Kimbrough Liquor

Within walking or a minute driving

• El Mezcal (a wonderful Mexican place)
• the Philly cheesesteak place (run by a Pennsylvania Yankee)
• the Italian place
• The Cupboard, which is just about my favorite place to eat in Memphis. I will miss it when I leave.
• Walgreen's
• Cafe 1912

Within a mile:

• Easy Way, which is the best (and the only, I believe) greengrocer in Memphis. They buy local produce as much as possible and will have items (like persimmons and muscadine grapes) that you won't see at the chain grocery stores. In the summer, they sell local tomatoes for about 77 cents a pound.
• The only place that can beat their prices is the Vietnamese grocery store on Cleveland (where you can also get live fish, eels and shellfish), but there is almost never a line at Easy Way because their checkers are so fast.
• Home Depot, Walgreen's and Starbucks are less than a mile away and they are building a Target near the Home Depot.
  

Close entertainment includes

• Malco's art cinema, Studio on the Square, is within ten minutes, door to door.
• The The Playhouse on the Square is even closer.
• Peabody Place downtown has about 15 screens and shows more mainstream movies. It's 15 minutes door to door -- it's right past Autozone ballpark and next to the FedEx Forum.
  

Schools:

• Grace-St Luke's (Episcopal) and Immaculate Conception (Catholic). Grace-St Luke's goes to eighth grade; IC is K-12. Both are less than half a mile from my house.
• Idlewild Presbyterian. also only a few blocks, has a kindergarten, I believe.
• There is a public elementary school (Idlewild) less than a mile from my house. The public junior high and high school are about two miles away.
  
  

Churches:

• Idlewild Presbyterian
• Grace-St Luke's Episcopal Church
• Immaculate Conception Catholic Church
• Sacred Heart Catholic Church
• Union Avenue Methodist Church
• Lindenwood Christian Church
• Midtown Church of Christ