Hidden Feature

You'd think that after living here a couple of years that there wouldn't be anything about the house that would have escaped my notice. Especially something that I had taken several pictures of and had looked straight at many times. But there is a difference between 'looking' and 'seeing'.

Here's what happened. I was walking around the east side of the house and glanced up at the small window of the closet above the dining room. Of course, I had looked at it before, but this time I noticed a detail that somehow eluded until this moment. I saw that it had a screen. Not just any screen. The original screen. Then a thought hit me: if the original screen is still in place, then the window would probably not be painted shut and would still open. So I headed upstairs to find out.

We moved the clothing rack that sets in front of the window (the reason why we've never paid much attention to it) and discovered that not only did it open, but the window is an exact match to the hopper windows in the dormers. Those are all painted shut, so we'd never had an opportunity to see how they worked. Now, not only can we see one in action, but we can tell how a screen (and presumably a storm window) would have been attached. Some day we would like to replace the unsightly storm windows that are currently on the windows with something more authentic. Having the screen will make that a great deal easier.

Here is a picture of the window and screen from outside.
From inside the closet. You can see why it is called a hopper window.
The simple but effective way the screen is held in place.