Grandma’s wall
While working on my grandmother’s house, my uncle snapped a picture of this and shared it on Facebook.
Some families have a similar system of watching their children grow by notching a door frame or marking a giant ruler… or doing what my grandmother did and just marking it straight on the wall. My grandmother did it for all of her grandchildren… the biological ones and the ones who were absorbed by our family.
When looking at the wall, I also noticed that my mom’s name is on there at least once, my aunt is on there, great grandchildren were added and people I don’t even know are on the wall. This wall charted the growth of nearly 20 people since the year that I was born (at least that’s the oldest date I can make out on the wall).
I was the youngest of all the grandchildren and most of the marks below the light switch are mine. I remember standing against that wall in her kitchen and having a line drawn for my height while grandma or my dad rested their hand on my head. Once the line was drawn, my name and the date would be put next to it and I would compare how tall I was that day to how tall my cousins were at one point.
To me, this is absolutely amazing!
So cool! We marked ours on the door frame in the kitchen for a long time until my mom decided to paint over it.
It makes me sad to know that someone will eventually paint over this.
What a great idea and a great way to make lasting memories!
That said, no one in my family would allow a wall in their home to be vandalized like that.
My parents (from your grandmother’s generation) have a wall like that. It’s all written right on the wallpaper. They put up different wallcovering in the room except for that (now totally non-matching) wall. I’ve thought of photographing it up close, so we have all of those details/ memories. In our own house we used a door molding that is hidden when the door is closed. 🙂
There was a section of wall in my grandparent’s house that looked just like this. They moved into that house in 1952, and when my grandmother passed away in 2010 the wall was still there unpainted. 58 years of markings of all the kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids. I know when the house was sold we all took one last look at the wall. It was tempting to remove it and preserve it, but none of us knew who or where it should be “museumed”.