I was so glad to have my dad along as my partner in crime, he loves checking out historic houses as much as I do, and when I stopped to think about it, we managed to get three of them under our belts this trip, no wonder I am exhausted! We visited San Jose for the Winchester Mystery House (awesome), then on the way to Anaheim we stopped in at Hearst Castle (amazing) and while we were in San Francisco we popped over the Bay Bridge to Oakland and went to the Dunsmuir Estate. That is three extra cities that we visited on our trip!
The Dunsmuir tour was only available for one tour a week, 11 am on Wednesday and we were lucky enough to find this out in time to attend. We actually took the kids with us on this one while Mike was at his conference. Kade of course, was great, asking questions and listening, and Ivy was, well, she was three years old. Actually, she was pretty great for an hour tour of a house, how interesting could that be to her?
The mansion itself is over 16,000 sq feet, with a grand total of 37 rooms, most of them absolutely gorgeous, with the exception being, of course, the servants areas. Though I must admit, even the room off the kitchen where the servants ate/relaxed was pretty nice. It was really neat to see how they had their own stairs so they could be unobtrusive and not be seen by the family,as well as that room on the other side of the kitchen where the family would never set foot in, I am sure. The rooms upstairs were amazing, the bathroom fixtures were so cool to see, Kade was fascinated by the funny toilets and tubs, while I myself just wanted to take one of the large claw footed tubs home with me.
I don’t have many good pictures due to not being able to take flash photography (hard on those ol’ antiquities) but also I had to use my dad’s camera which I am not as familiar with. I wasn’t able to capture how beautiful the wood in the games rooms was, and how open and airy and pretty the bedrooms were.
To give you a good perspective of how huge the house is, look closely at the picture I posted, and notice that on the left of the stairs, the left pillar at the base, there is a little dark spot, that is Ivy standing where she shouldn’t be standing! I have a few pictures that are postworthy, so here they are…..click to enlarge them.
Here is the dining room….
A bedroom furniture piece, but you can see not only myself and Kade, but some of the bedroom reflected in the mirror.All except 2 pieces are not original to the house, unfortunately.
The original kitchen stove and light fixtures, very neat.
