Not a Murder House w/ Katie Hughes-Pucci

Katie Hughes [00:00:00]:
So this is the front page of the Providence Journal. And there's a photo of our house from 1903. And it's like, it's, it's a pretty decent shot. Now, granted, it's black and white, and it's microfiche quality, right? But it's a pretty decent shot. And you can see the architecture of the house. You can see, you know, some of the, the molding and the trim work. You can see the porch. And it was really cool because something that I noticed right away, the chimney, which is currently right outside of the front door, wasn't there.

Nakita Reed [00:00:42]:
Welcome to tangible remnants. I'm Nakita Reed, and this is my show, where I explore the interconnectedness of architecture, preservation, sustainability, race and gender. I'm excited that you're here, so let's get into it. Welcome back. This week's conversation is with one of my longtime friends, Katie Hughes Pucci. We went to summer camp together decades ago. Shout out to independent Lake camp in Orson, Pennsylvania. And there's a group of us that still stay in touch during the pandemic.

Nakita Reed [00:01:14]:
Our friend group would have somewhat monthly Zoom calls, and we started talking about the idea of getting together, renting a lake house for a girls getaway weekend. I and we finally made it happen earlier this year. So fast forward to this year. One of the days when we were on the lake hanging out, Katie started telling me about what she learned about her turn of the century house once she started researching it during some of the free time she had during the pandemic. Now, Sidebar by turn of the century, I mean turn of the 20th century, not the 21st century. I'm putting that caveat out there for all you students who like to refer to the 1990s as the late 19 hundreds. We're talking about a house that was early 19 hundreds. So turn to the 20th century.

Nakita Reed [00:01:57]:
Anyway, the more Katie told me about the research that she did and what she found out about her house, the more I knew I wanted to have her share her story with this tangible remnants audience. And so I was so excited when she agreed to join me for an episode after our trip. And it's always a good time talking to Katie, but being able to hear her talk about something I'm super passionate about and work on every day was so fun. She's not an architect or preservationist, but she totally gets that old buildings have stories to tell, and being a steward of an old house means honoring and respecting the house's history and taking care of it for future generations. As I relistened to the episode, I realized we did actually a pretty good job of not talking exclusively in inside jokes, but one did slip through. So I wanted to provide context for the club that no one wants to be a part of, and that's our shorthand for the Dead Dads Club. Unfortunately, there are a number of us in our friend group who are reluctant members of that club, and as we get older, the club's membership, unfortunately, only continues to expand, so we lightly touch on some heavy topics. But I promise there is so much joy in this episode.

Nakita Reed [00:03:06]:
So let me provide you with her bio so you can have more context on my friend Katie before we jump into the episode. Katie Hughes Pucci is a Rhode island based writer and sometimes adjunct professor. She lives with her husband and daughter in the historic Edgewood neighborhood in what she lovingly calls a stunning victorian death trap. Child safety, of course, wasn't at the forefront at the turn of the century. Her likes include elder millennial pop culture, old homes, buying craft supplies, and then abandoning the project and fighting the patriarchy. Dislikes include wet socks, open floor plans, parties that don't serve cheese, and putting books on the shelf backwards as an aesthetic. You can follow her on Instagram as she researches old homes in Rhode island, starting with her own homesri, and we'll make sure to put a link in the show notes as well, even from her bio, I hope you get the vibe that Katie is a good time. And as always, you can check out the tangible remnants Instagram page angible remnants, where you'll see photos of the building that we talk about.

Nakita Reed [00:04:12]:
And if you haven't already, you can also sign up for the podcast newsletter where you'll be able to access financial resources and guidance that can help you complete your next project or whatever you're trying to learn about with existing and historic buildings. All right, well, I think you have enough context and backstory to truly enjoy this episode. So without further ado, I hope you enjoy this conversation between me and Katie Hughes Pucci. So I'm excited that we're gonna talk about your true crime house, which is not a murder house. Not a murder house.

Katie Hughes [00:04:45]:
Not a murder house.

Nakita Reed [00:04:45]:
No, exactly. So I guess, why don't we start with a little bit of context and talk about what drew you to the house and when did you buy the house and what got you excited about it.

Katie Hughes [00:04:56]:
Yeah, so we bought the house. It's an old victorian Queen Anne style in Cranston, Rhode island, and we were originally, we were living just down the street in a three family house that we owned. My husband and I and my dad had to move in with us for some health reasons, and those health reasons lasted longer than we originally thought, which ultimately is a wonderful thing, because it meant he was with us for a longer time. However, Joe and I were newlyweds, and so we were living in a two bedroom apartment, one bath, with my dad and his cat and my dog. We realized we needed a bigger space, and so we reached out to our realtor, who happened to also live in the neighborhood, and he said, hey, this is a little unorthodox, but I'm actually putting another house on the market for another seller. If you want to take a look at it, I can do a showing before the open house. And so we're like, yeah, sure. We didn't really know anything about it other than it was two blocks away.

Katie Hughes [00:06:20]:
And we're like, sure, that sounds great. We love the neighborhood. Let's take a look.

Nakita Reed [00:06:24]:
Okay.

Katie Hughes [00:06:25]:
We got to the house, and it was just gorgeous. It was a dream house for both Joe and I. We both have an affinity for older houses and, you know, victorian architecture, especially new England.

Nakita Reed [00:06:42]:
Yeah.

Katie Hughes [00:06:43]:
Victorian style homes. And we walked in, and we kept looking at each other like, is this for real? Is this for real? And then, honestly, in a very pragmatic sense, it had a full bathroom on the first floor.

Nakita Reed [00:07:00]:
Okay.

Katie Hughes [00:07:00]:
Which my dad was going to be living with us for his health reasons, and we were going to convert, at the time, the dining room into a bedroom for him. And so he would essentially be one floor living.

Nakita Reed [00:07:14]:
Yeah, that'd be nice.

Katie Hughes [00:07:15]:
Which really helped us out in the short term. And then, spoiler alert, I got my formal dining room back.

Nakita Reed [00:07:27]:
Joining the club no one wants to.

Katie Hughes [00:07:28]:
Be a part of. I know no one wants to be a part of it, but it's literally life.

Nakita Reed [00:07:33]:
Yeah, exactly.

Katie Hughes [00:07:36]:
And so we kind of rushed into buying the house out of necessity, knowing the neighborhood, knowing the realtor trusted him as a good friend, and getting to know the previous owners, who had put a ton of work into the house. They had redone the entire heating system, so it was all upgraded heating. They had done a lot to the exterior to, you know, patch things up and keep things working and all of that. So they did a lot. They did a lot of, like, unsexy renovations and updates the stuff that, you know, doesn't actually sell houses, but keeps them comfortable and really, like that. Deferred maintenance was non existent when we moved in. Like, all we had to think about, you know, in the short term, was some cosmetics here or there.

Nakita Reed [00:08:32]:
That's awesome. So then when did you start doing more research into the house and kind of what prompted you to want to look into the history of the house?

Katie Hughes [00:08:40]:
Yeah. So it really. So that was 2016. I really didn't do in depth research until the pandemic. Around the pandemic time. The one little bit that we did do is the previous owners. I guess all of the owners over the decades have passed along since they got them. These blueprints of the house, they are not the original blueprints.

Katie Hughes [00:09:09]:
They are blueprints from the forties when the house was converted to a two family home, which I guess was customary or not unusual during World War Two for folks to take bigger homes and subdivide them. So that was really neat, and we framed them as, like, a cool piece of history, but honestly, we didn't really, like, go any deeper than that. Then the pandemic hit, and I was watching some. Some genealogy show with Joe, and they mentioned how you can do a little bit of digging on, you know, a person or a family by actually researching the address where they lived. And it never occurred to me to do that.

Nakita Reed [00:09:56]:
Right.

Katie Hughes [00:09:56]:
Just, you know, go. Go into, you know, the newspaper archives and search for our address. And so we live in Rhode island, so there's really one major newspaper that's been around since the 18 hundreds. Actually, I think the 17 hundreds don't quote me. And. And they've done a fabulous job of digitizing everything, and I have access to the digital archives. So I went on and I just plugged in the address, and I'm like, oh, we'll see what we find. And originally, you know, it pulled things up, and it's the most recent occurrence of the address, and it goes back in history.

Katie Hughes [00:10:41]:
And so, like, the first few things were real estate transactions, and, you know, really nothing, you know, maybe the wedding of somebody who once lived at the house, a funeral, that sort of thing. So then I sorted it backwards from oldest to to newest.

Nakita Reed [00:10:58]:
Right?

Katie Hughes [00:10:58]:
And the first article that popped up was from September 16, 1903, when a. I'm sorry, the 17th, 1903. I know. Very important. When two burglars had entered this house and shot the woman of the house.

Nakita Reed [00:11:22]:
Oh, my gosh.

Katie Hughes [00:11:23]:
At 03:00 a.m. and let me just say, I'm a huge fan of journalism in general.

Nakita Reed [00:11:30]:
Right.

Katie Hughes [00:11:30]:
But the art of journalism in the 19 hundreds, the early 19 hundreds, we're talking like, this is. This is storybook narration. This is long sentences with beautiful descriptions and, you know, stuff that you couldn't get away with nowadays because of word count limits. And honestly, people's attention spans. But so this article just was so. Is so dramatic. It's so wonderful. It's not wonderful.

Katie Hughes [00:12:03]:
Sorry. Burglars entering a house. Not wonderful. The geek in me, who enjoys flowery language and history, loved it. And so we found out that the woman of the house, her name was Annie Pierce, she heard a noise in the house around 03:00 a.m. opened up her bedroom door to find two burglars climbing the stairs. And as she was turning on the light, one of them shot her pretty much point blank.

Nakita Reed [00:12:35]:
Dang.

Katie Hughes [00:12:36]:
Yes. And so the gun goes off. Like, the basic timeline is the gun goes off, the burglars leave. The husband, who's hard of hearing, actually hears. He hears the gunshot. Thankfully, he didn't hear the burglars. And the three year old son in the next room is okay, but this woman has a bullet that just went through her.

Nakita Reed [00:13:02]:
Oh, my gosh.

Katie Hughes [00:13:03]:
It missed every major organ. It missed every major artery. They called to the neighbor's house, like, actually, like, hello, neighbors. Like, out the window.

Nakita Reed [00:13:14]:
Right.

Katie Hughes [00:13:15]:
And had the neighbors ring a doctor.

Nakita Reed [00:13:18]:
Wow.

Katie Hughes [00:13:19]:
Who came to the house and, like, stitched her up at the house. There was no going to a hospital or anything like that. They found the. The ball of the bullet. It was. It had hit. It ricocheted off of a door jamb.

Nakita Reed [00:13:34]:
Yeah.

Katie Hughes [00:13:35]:
And so they. They saw that it had gone through her cleanly. It wasn't in her. And she ended up making a full recovery.

Nakita Reed [00:13:43]:
That's wild. And I think also remember when you. I remember when you first tell me the story. I think that's part of why I was like, oh, it's a murder house. Because I was like, she got shot in the chest point blank. Like, this woman died, obviously. But, no, she didn't. She survived.

Katie Hughes [00:13:56]:
And she was in her twenties, like, 28, 29, something like that. So she was very, you know, presumably fit and. Or at least young, and so perhaps more able to recover from an injury like this than perhaps an older person, but, yeah, so the cool thing, too, was. So this is the front page of the Providence Journal, and there's a photo of our house.

Nakita Reed [00:14:24]:
That's so cool.

Katie Hughes [00:14:24]:
From 1903.

Nakita Reed [00:14:26]:
Yeah.

Katie Hughes [00:14:27]:
And it's like, it's a pretty decent shot. Now, granted, it's black and white, and it's microfiche quality. Right, right. But it's a pretty decent shot. And you can see the architecture of the house. You can see, you know, some of the molding and the trim work. You can see the porch. And it was really cool because something that I noticed right away the chimney, which is currently right outside of the front door, wasn't there.

Katie Hughes [00:14:57]:
So the fireplace in the living room, our current living room, was in addition, at least after 1903.

Nakita Reed [00:15:06]:
Right, right.

Katie Hughes [00:15:07]:
Which sort of makes sense when reading about the crime itself, because the burglars entered into from the windows off of the porch, where there is now a fireplace.

Nakita Reed [00:15:19]:
Gotcha.

Katie Hughes [00:15:20]:
So it could be, and this is total speculation, that it was such a traumatizing event that they're like, let's board up that whole egress or area of the house and turn it into a fireplace. That's a bit of a leap. I don't know if that's actually how it happened, but plausible.

Nakita Reed [00:15:38]:
And I love the fact that you're able to find historic photos of your house, number one. But then even to find, like, the historian something, the rather, the history and something that actually happened in the house, how was it once you realize what happened? And even, like, when you told Joe about it, how. How did you guys react to being like, oh, this happened in our house?

Katie Hughes [00:15:57]:
So initially, there was, like, this spooky element of, oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. And. And, you know, even though there was no, you know, death resulting, I then, like, went up to the bedroom, and I was scouring the trim molding to see if I could find any, like, bullet holes. And I was, like, looking at everything. And then I also. The second page of that article, they had a layout, like, a hand drawn layout of the first floor of our house, showing where the burglars entered into the house, which would so not fly nowadays. It would be against every privacy.

Katie Hughes [00:16:37]:
Totally, you know, law. Like, here is a. Here's a diagram of my whole house. Come on, burglars. Check it out. You know, but it was so cool because I was able to take that and kind of map out what has stayed the same and what has changed over the years. And for the most part, the major walls and room structures have all stayed the same. The only major change was the front room, which was, at the time of the incident, it was divided into two rooms.

Katie Hughes [00:17:11]:
There was, like, a smaller receiving room, reception room, and then a parlor drawing room next to it. And now it's currently all one room in its current configuration. So that was really cool to kind of, like, walk the house and then even reading the descriptions, because these descriptions were so wordy and detailed and so that, like, things like, you know, the. The burglars ascended the stairs and hit the landing and saw out the window and turned. And I'm not doing it justice. It was. But you. So, like, I kind of, like, followed along the steps of the burglars so that get a sense.

Katie Hughes [00:17:55]:
And I could find out, oh, they moved a wall here. They moved a door there. That's interesting. So all of that was, you know, almost a forensics experience experiment for me in, like, you know, reenacting the scene of the crime and noticing any of the changes in the architecture of the house. That was really fun.

Nakita Reed [00:18:16]:
Yeah.

Katie Hughes [00:18:17]:
And also, like, spooky.

Nakita Reed [00:18:19]:
Yeah. Legit.

Katie Hughes [00:18:20]:
A little spooky.

Nakita Reed [00:18:21]:
That's fair. And so then. But I do love that. Like, you stumbled into this kind of, like, just like, oh, totally. Watching the program.

Katie Hughes [00:18:28]:
Let's see what it is.

Nakita Reed [00:18:29]:
Yeah.

Katie Hughes [00:18:30]:
I'm a theater major. I am a writer. So, like, there is. There's certainly part of me that is. Is drawn to the narrative of it. Drawn to.

Nakita Reed [00:18:40]:
Right.

Katie Hughes [00:18:41]:
The research of it. I love. I love digging. I love. I'm also the friend in the friend group who, like, you give me a first name and a middle initial, and I'll find every bit of detail about somebody that you're potentially stalking slash starting to date, you know, you know, in a very professional and responsible way. Exactly. So, like, it really scratched an itch. And it was honestly, because of the pandemic.

Katie Hughes [00:19:09]:
We're all stuck in our house, right? We're all looking at the walls. We're looking, oh, I gotta paint this room. I'm sick of looking at it. And then with our house, because it's an older house with a lot of character. Now I'm sitting in a room that I've sat in for five years or so, and now I'm like, wow, I never noticed that molding there. I never noticed how it turned in that direction. Oh, that kind of looks like maybe. Maybe this was two different rooms.

Katie Hughes [00:19:37]:
Or there was actually one thing. I don't even know if you remember this. Back around the same time, maybe before the pandemic, where I was trying to figure out if I had pocket doors in the front entrance to the living room, I was like. It seemed like there was something, because I saw some metal work remnants, tangible remnants.

Nakita Reed [00:20:04]:
There we go.

Katie Hughes [00:20:05]:
If you will. I'll take my fee later. But we saw those in. In the molding, and. And it was actually, I think it was you who said, you know, it seems like it probably would be a bifold door more so than a pocket door, and you were right on the money. Because I then went back to the 1944 blueprints, and sure enough, it labels it, you know, in this funny little.

Nakita Reed [00:20:32]:
Right.

Katie Hughes [00:20:33]:
You know, isosceles triangle and said bi fold door. And. Yeah, stuff like that is just really fun for me to think about. And in terms of, like. And we've talked about this before, but the house is not my house, technically. My husband and I own the house, along with the banks and mortgage companies. But, like, we are at stewards right now. This house has been around since at least before 1903.

Katie Hughes [00:21:01]:
Right. I know the land was purchased in 1897. I know that the Pierces were married in 1898, and I know that Annie Pierce was added to the deed in 1902. So something about that.

Nakita Reed [00:21:20]:
Right.

Katie Hughes [00:21:21]:
Somewhere around there, the house was started and completed. So, like, if we're using round numbers, let's just say 1900. Right. But. So this house is going to outlive me and Joe, God willing.

Nakita Reed [00:21:33]:
Right.

Katie Hughes [00:21:34]:
And so I'm here for a little while, and my job is to take care of her and notice her and, you know, I don't know, honor. Honor her bones and, you know, yeah, I can put my spin on certain things. We redid the kitchen. We didn't blow out any walls. We didn't change any of, like, the structure of anything. But, yeah, we are going to have indoor plumbing, and we are going to have, you know, a refrigerator, and we actually, we have two sinks. I don't want to be bougie, but I'm going to be bougie. We have a bar sink and a regular sink.

Katie Hughes [00:22:13]:
There, I said it.

Nakita Reed [00:22:15]:
I love it.

Katie Hughes [00:22:16]:
I know. I know. Your listeners are like, ooh, you can't. I know.

Nakita Reed [00:22:20]:
Totally loud. Believe me, we're not preserving things in amber. We're adapting to change, sensitive change.

Katie Hughes [00:22:25]:
Yes.

Nakita Reed [00:22:27]:
When we were talking about this kind of in the pre calls and when you first kind of tell me about it when we were at the lake, I was like, oh, this sounds amazing. Aside from, like, oh, murder house. But then I was like, not murdering. Not murder house. Yeah. But I love that you, like, your view of preservation is very much how I think of it and approach it in terms of, like, stewardship and kind of thinking about who came before, who's coming next, and we're just kind of here in the middle. So I was super excited to hear you say that.

Katie Hughes [00:22:51]:
I don't know if this is woo woo or spiritual, but, like, I believe that the walls retain energy of the people who lived here before us. And, I don't know, I think it also absorbs the energy that you put into it. And so I want to make sure that we're a happy family, a loving family that appreciates and honors and takes care of. I mean, the woodwork. How. Wow. You can't. It kills me that somebody decades ago painted over some of this dark, beautiful woodwork in our foyer.

Katie Hughes [00:23:31]:
And it's. It's my roman empire to. To strip that someday.

Nakita Reed [00:23:36]:
That's fair.

Katie Hughes [00:23:37]:
I have to wait until, you know, the kids are older because it's all that toxic chemicals and things.

Nakita Reed [00:23:42]:
There is that. And you're gonna protect yourself, too. You're not, you know, not just for the.

Katie Hughes [00:23:45]:
Exactly. Exactly. And, well, and there's almost certainly lead paint underneath it all, and so, you know, but, like, boy, do I dream about it. And it's gonna be my retirement project. I can't wait.

Nakita Reed [00:23:58]:
Amazing. Amazing. And so. I know. So we've been talking about the house a good amount, which is exciting, but I'm realizing we can't leave this episode without talking about Gladys. So if you don't mind, can you tell about Gladys?

Katie Hughes [00:24:13]:
Gladys? Well, this really ties in nicely to my woo woo ness, because we have a giant silver maple in the back of our house smack dab in the middle of the yard, and I have named her Gladys. And I don't know where the name came from. It just kind of came to me. She is approximately the same age as the house, and I was able to identify that. There's a really cool calculator online where you plug in the species of tree, and then they tell you, okay, at the five foot tall mark on the trunk, measure their circumference, and depending on what kind of species it is, you multiply it by a certain number, and that gives you a rough estimate of the age. So right now it's 127 28 years oldish, nice. And it's been pruned along the way, so it's been kept healthy. It's been.

Katie Hughes [00:25:19]:
You can tell people have. Because it would be very easy for somebody to buy this house and be like, I want a swimming pool.

Nakita Reed [00:25:26]:
Right?

Katie Hughes [00:25:27]:
And the only way to do that, because it is smack dab in the. In the yard, would be to take down this tree. And I can't. I can't. I can't do that. And so Gladys and I have a relationship. I talked to her. I may have hugged her once or twice.

Nakita Reed [00:25:45]:
That's fair.

Katie Hughes [00:25:45]:
But I. You know, I. Especially when it's really windy and the wind is howling against our old leaded windows, I'm like, gladys, protect our house. Keep us safe. And she always does. And then I'm staring at her right now as I'm talking about her. So it's really. It's really funny.

Katie Hughes [00:26:02]:
And I know this is really jumping the shark here, but there's. There's something. There's something. Again, she's like, we're her stewards, too, right? We are her protectors. We put on a little deck in the backyard, and my first concern is we're not digging into the ground. We're not hurting Gladys's roots, because the root system of a tree this size is enormous. And her root system talks to the trees next door to us and talks to the trees behind us. And it's like this whole system.

Katie Hughes [00:26:37]:
I don't know if you've ever read the novel the overstory. No. I highly recommend it. It's a novel kind of told in different points of views, but there is a perspective of, from the trees perspective of things. How interesting. It really goes into, like, how connected the trees are. I realize this is really sounding crazy.

Nakita Reed [00:26:58]:
No, it's amazing. Like, I love it because everything's connected, even the trees. I love it. It is.

Katie Hughes [00:27:03]:
It is. You know, I'm one town over from a college town in Providence, and, like, you see some of these beautiful, beautiful homes, turn of the century, victorian style homes that get gobbled up by corporations, a lot of them universities, and get torn down to put up dorm buildings or torn down to put up office buildings. And there's. There's a better way of doing it. You know, let's. Let's use the space. And. And they actually did that.

Katie Hughes [00:27:35]:
Down the street from us is a university, Johnson and Wales University, and they took a house that was. It was actually a home for wayward women. It was, you know, honestly, it was for unwed mothers. Right. Like, back in the day. But it was a beautiful manor, and they bought it and they kept it. They kept. They didn't tear it down.

Katie Hughes [00:27:59]:
And they were able to turn it into dorm rooms. They were able to, yes. They. They have to do some retrofitting with fire suppressant systems, and they have to do, you know, certain things to make things ada compliant, but they were able to keep the bones of the building and the structure of it still there. And that's, like, that's my goal. Like, that's what I love to see.

Nakita Reed [00:28:22]:
That's awesome. And so then, as you are stewarding the house, what are some of the projects that you're thinking of working on kind of next steps?

Katie Hughes [00:28:32]:
Yeah, that's a great question. I think one major project, which has nothing to do with maintaining the integrity of the house, is to give Joe a little man cave in the basement.

Nakita Reed [00:28:46]:
That's fair.

Katie Hughes [00:28:47]:
And the basement is such a cool space. Actually, it's the entire footprint of the house, and it's kind of segmented into these cool little honeycomb rooms.

Nakita Reed [00:28:57]:
Oh, nice.

Katie Hughes [00:28:58]:
And so there's one larger space that, you know, Joe wants to kind of turn into a little.

Nakita Reed [00:29:03]:
Yeah.

Katie Hughes [00:29:03]:
Hangout zone, which I am all for. So I think that's honestly what's. What's happening next. The long term project, which will probably take at least a decade, is the major project of reglazing our windows. So our windows are all original, and they're leaded, and they're beautiful. We have storms over them.

Nakita Reed [00:29:30]:
Okay.

Katie Hughes [00:29:31]:
Which are not original. But the. The leaded windows themselves, the glazing is crumbling, and so they're all functional. They all work great. But every time you open and close the window, a little crumble of glazing kind of falls off. And so my. My father in law actually taught himself how to do it because they also live in an older home.

Nakita Reed [00:29:52]:
Nice.

Katie Hughes [00:29:52]:
And he and I have been talking about taking a workshop that is offered in Providence for how to. How to restore these older windows. But either way, we're going to do it piecemeal. You know, a window here, a window there. I think last time I counted, there were, like, 37 windows in this house, which is insane. And they're. They're all odd shaped ones. You know, they're not standard sizes or anything like that, and they're.

Katie Hughes [00:30:18]:
And they're beasts. They're really heavy and solid wood. And so I think that's gonna be the slow and steady honoring the house, using the right materials, using the right tools, taking our time so that we can get it right project.

Nakita Reed [00:30:40]:
That's awesome. One of my friends and actually former guest on the podcast, Ariana Macau. So she is a glazer in Oakland. And so I'll send you some of the resources that she has, because she's like, hey, here's how you can do some of this. Because, yeah, she does a lot of granite. It's a lot of, like, stained glass work, but she also, like, sure, it's related. And, like, taking the window out and best practices, how to put it back in, all that good stuff.

Katie Hughes [00:31:01]:
Oh, I would love that. That would be amazing.

Nakita Reed [00:31:05]:
Yeah. And so I'll make sure to put links in the show notes and all that good stuff, but I just. I was so excited to be able to, like, nerd out with you about your house and, like, preservation and stewardship and kind of what you found.

Katie Hughes [00:31:17]:
I think just a shout out to people who are undertaking the hurdle or the who look at these old houses and get nervous, right? Who see the real estate listing and they're like, oh, it's beautiful. But, oh, it's going to be a lot of work. The spoiler alert. It's going to be a lot of work. Whether it's a new house, a house built 20 years ago, a house built 60 years ago, or a house built 100 years ago, it's all going to cost money. It's a money pita owning houses. Money pit. The cool thing about old houses is there's tons of resources available on how to do the thing that you need to do.

Katie Hughes [00:31:57]:
And there's always somebody in the neighborhood who knows, oh, yeah. Back when I was a little kid, they used to have this over there and, like, embrace it as exercise, a challenge and an adventure. You know, it's fun and it's worthwhile, and you have a real sense of accomplishment when you can bring something back to life.

Nakita Reed [00:32:21]:
Thank you so much for listening. Links to amazing resources can be found in the episode's show notes. Special thanks to Sara Gilberg for allowing me to use snippets of her song Fireflies from her debut album, Other People's Secrets, which, by the way, is available wherever music is sold. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe to the show. And now that tangible remnants is part of the Gable Media network, you can listen and subscribe to all network partner content@gablemedia.com. that's Gabl media.com. until next time, remember that historic preservation is a present conversation with our past, about our future. We don't inherit the earth from our parents, but we borrow it from our children.

Nakita Reed [00:33:05]:
So let's make sure we're telling our inclusive history.

Katie Hughes [00:33:08]:
I saw the first Firefly, and right.

Nakita Reed [00:33:15]:
Then I thought of you.

Katie Hughes [00:33:19]:
Oh, I could see us catching them.

Nakita Reed [00:33:22]:
And setting them free. Honey, that's what you do. That's what you do to me.