Fredericksburg.com - When Your HOME is Your 'CASTLE'... -
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Published on: 1/7/2006
Last Visited: 1/7/2006
James Willden personally had the bat signed in 1980 in Atlantic City.
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From Gothic to Light: Lori and James Willden have transformed "the castle" on Washington Avenue.
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"We moved in on Halloween night, which seemed really appropriate," James Willden says.
James, 35, is vice president of engineering for Avalon Bay, a real estate investment trust.
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"Someone's got to see the house," says James.
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Stoker, like James, recognizes the Gothic feel of the house.
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James says a woman knocked on the door a couple of months ago and said she had lived in the house as a child.He asked her last name and suggested she had the wrong house.
"She said to me, 'Young man, I do not have the wrong house!'" he says, laughing.
She promptly asked if the big tub was still here, he says.And she cried as she walked through the house.She was 13 years old when she had last lived here, and must be 70 by now, he adds.James enjoyed being able to see the home through her eyes.
"We would love to see more old pictures of the interior of the house--to replicate what was originally in here," he says.
They are up for the job.The couple goes antiquing five or six days a week.They've been doing so for more than a decade, and have built a collection of sought-after Americana and folk art over the last five years.As James says, they have an affinity for "the aura of the old stuff."
They have given much thought to every room, what objects should reside there, how to display them, even what colors the walls should be painted--oxblood red, seafoam green, Colonial blues and yellows.A visitor would need hours to absorb all the details, but what could be museumlike actually feels very loved and lived in.
"We buy things that we like and we love.There's not a thing in here we don't love," James says.
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"It's traditionally good luck to leave a Bible and salt," says James as he climbs the stairs to the second floor.
Did you find salt, too, a reporter asks.
Yes, James says with a laugh.
He often spends three or four hours a night enjoying his favorite room, the "gallery" at the top of the stairs.The gallery has "some of the best folk art around," he says.
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James says the farmer who commissioned it must have had a sense of humor, as locusts and grasshoppers are the last thing you want to visit your farm.
The guest bedroom has another prominent folk portrait, one that James humorously refers to as "the toothless old man." The picture of the older gentleman with receding hairline and collapsed mouth hangs on the wall facing the high bed.His piercing green eyes follow the visitor around the room.
Off to the side, a well-loved rocking horse sits atop a bureau.James points out the paint on the "floorboard" has been worn away by little feet and that the horse's reins are similarly ragged."There would have been no video games for this child," he says.
Even with such a storied and rare antiques collection, what Lori and James most enjoy about their "castle" is surprisingly simple.
Besides the deep windows that ring the house, Lori loves being able to sit out on the front porch.
For James, "it's the stone itself, the 12-inch thick walls."
"If we won the lottery, we wouldn't move.I don't think you can beat the house or the neighborhood," James says.
"The house has been good to us.It's literally a rock."
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