Why is Moving so Hard??
Written by Callie
UPDATE: the price has dropped on the house! If you’re still interested make sure you contact the realtor!
Did you see our Instagram stories over the weekend? I hope you did because I think they were great! But anyway, Kenzie and I were at our grandma’s house over the weekend helping her start to pack things up because on November 1st, she’s moving!
I wasn’t a kid that moved much when I was little. The house my parents still live in is the only house I can ever remember living in. So when my grandparents moved when I was about 8 it was really sad to see them leave a house that I had so many great memories in. Luckily, they moved to a super awesome Victorian home and the whole family was able to make so many more amazing memories in that one. And now it’s time to move on once more. Our grandma’s house is really just the coolest and I’d had so many great plans to make it a B&B again (her and our grandpa had once run it as a B&B when they first moved there) and a wedding venue because it’s just that cool. But times change and Ginny (our grandma) is moving closer to mom and Kenzie and will have a super adorable home with a neat greenhouse so that fact is making this move more bearable.
Anyway that’s the back story, this blog post today is really just a love letter to this amazing house. If you or anyone you know is in the market for a historical Victorian house in Texas, see the listing here and contact the realtor!
The house was built in 1878 and has the original smoke house and barn still on the property! If you follow our blog you know that one of the cool outbuildings that used to be the servants’ quarters was destroyed earlier this year when one of the 200 year old Pecan Trees on the property fell and smashed it.
Like I mentioned earlier, before our grandpa passed away he and Ginny ran a B&B here. It was so cool to see them have their own business and being around their business is one of the reasons that I think I want to have my own business someday. I remember running around the house when we were little and the phone would ring and sometimes if we were brave enough we would answer, “Bower’s Mansion B&B can I help you?” and then immediately ask them to hold on while we went and found someone that actually knew what was going on.
Our grandparents loved to garden and they turned the 1 acre property into a wonderful oasis. The giant trees overhung the whole yard and spring time there was always the best with all their flowers blooming. I remember one time I took a photo of a flower in their garden that I just thought was the best damn photo in the whole world and that’s when I got very into photography! (spoiler though, it was not the best photo ever)
One of my favorite places in the house is the upstairs sleeping porches (Kenzie posted a photo of it on Instagram earlier this week). The windows are old crank windows and line the entire porch. It’s one of the best places to read!
Oh another thing that I vividly remember from when they first bought the house was that the windows in the ground floor doubled as doors and opened out to the wrap around porch. I don’t know why but I remember loving opening those windows and going through the screen doors out to the porch, I thought it was so cool to use a window as a door and it felt like a secret passageway.
There’s also a ghost story to the house that our parents only told us once we were well into our teen years so as not to freak us out too much. So there’s a room upstairs that has an amazing bathroom (that Ginny and Pa added in) that’s probably the best room and highly sought after when the whole family would stay there. And of course, this room had to be the scene of the crime.
I don’t know the whole story but the basics are as follows. When the Bowers’ lived there in 1956 Mr. Bowers decided to kill his wife. He went into her room (the best room) and shot her. He then called the police and as they were walking up to the house he shot himself in the foyer. One article said that people were so scared of the house itself after that, that they wouldn’t even walk down the street in front of the house. Which is so funny to me because my little Christian grandma has been living there (alone for a few years now) and nothing even remotely weird has ever happened. But it’s a fun little ghost story for the town.
Then there’s a really cool cupola on top of the house that we were never sure why it was there/what it was for/or how to get into it. One time one of mom’s brothers climbed a giant ladder and got into the cupola from a window from the roof. But he was the only one brave (or crazy??) enough to get on the insanely high roof. Then a year or two ago, me, mom, Kenzie and Jason were remodeling the master bathroom and decided to rip down all the sheetrock in hopes that we’d find shiplap. And we found all the shiplap we could ever want! But we also found a trap door that lead to the cupola on top of the house!! So we got some acrylic and now the cupola is a skylight for the bathroom.
So many fun memories happened at this house. From making ice cream the old fashioned way and then having competitions to see who could hold their hand in the ice water the longest, to side stitching nights of laughter playing charades and evening walks through downtown, even our oldest cousin’s wedding was out in the garden under the trees. But I’m learning that it’s not the place that made those memories, it was the people I was with and that leaving the Bower’s Mansion won’t be the end of all those great things, they’ll still happen, just maybe not in as awesome a location as this house.
For more photos of the house and gardens click here.