"I search for the realness, the real feeling of a subject, all the texture around it...I always want to see the third dimension of something...I want to come alive with the object." ~ Andrew Wyeth

I first time I walked into this house, I felt that I'd come home. It was a potent moment because I'd never felt that before, not in my entire life. I was a wanderer, even as a small child.

I'd come to meet this woman named Kerri. I'd been writing emails to her daily for the previous six months. A job afforded me the opportunity to stop over and meet her face-to-face. She picked me up at the airport [she was the one holding the daisy], we held hands and skipped to the car, talked non-stop during the hour-plus drive from O'Hare airport. When we arrived at the house, I laughed when she asked me to wait at the front door. She wanted me to come into the house through the front door but the key hadn't worked in years, so she ran around back to come through the house to let me in. When the door opened, with my rolly-bag in tow, I stepped into the house and caught my breath. I almost started to cry but inhaled my overwhelm back into my body. Home. I knew this place.

It was a festival of texture. Raw wood exposed through the aging, flaking paint. Immediately I could see that this woman populated her world with stories, surrounded herself with rocks and wood and tin. She lived in a tangible world, loved the raw and the real, and had a designer's eye. The dining room was a miracle of tortoise-esque pattern made when she stripped the wallpaper. She loved it so much that she abandoned her plan for paint and left the marks exposed.

This was an artist's house. The hardwood floors creaked. Some of the antique door handles popped off if you pulled too hard. "It's an old house and has its quirks," she explained as she pulled a screwdriver from the silverware drawer to tighten the screw that holds the screen door latch in place. I learned over time that there are somethings you fix and others that you don't because to fix them would interrupt the relationship with the house. Now I, too, weekly pull the screwdriver from the silverware drawer and tighten the aged-nearly-stripped-screw that holds the screen door latch in place.

Shabby-chic. They gave her style a name and she beamed the first time she heard it. "That's me!" she exclaimed, "Shabby-Chic!"

When my dad came for our wedding, he stood on the back deck and said to me, "If you don't put a finish on this deck, you're going to lose it." I told him that Kerri liked it that way. In fact, she'd throw herself in my path, she'd break my fingers, if I attempted to clean it, let alone paint it. He nodded and said, "Well, that's all that matters really."

Home. All that matters. Alive with stories that reach back and back and back. Texture and piles and projects everywhere I look. The lock on the front door still doesn't work. And, like my wife, Kerri, I wouldn't have it any other way.

read Kerri's blog post on SHABBY-CHIC