In three years of writing this column, I’ve often said I can’t leave my house without bumping into a story idea. This last weekend, I had to leave the house because there was too much story.

The cause wasn’t plumbing or electrical; it was actual drama because a theater group was using our home to film not one but two movies. The house “got the part,” but we weren’t even needed as extras.

It all started with the piano.

When my daughter was 6 or 7, she wanted piano lessons. I put an ad in this paper, “Seeking free piano.” A woman in Burien called to say her children were grown, and the piano was ours for the moving.

I took lessons longer than my daughter but never progressed beyond “Love Me Tender.” Plus, the piano never physically fit into the old house.

When we moved last year, the piano almost didn’t make the move during the snowstorm, which is another drama in itself.

The 1905 upright piano now looks at home in a 1920 Craftsman, or as one visitor said, “It looks like this house was made for that piano.” Too bad nobody plays it.

Then last fall I met Ballard resident John Helde of Try This Films as part of a film festival at Sunset Hill Community Association. I loved his short film “Hello” and later watched his documentary “Made in China.”

When he emailed to ask if I knew of any homes where he could shoot a film project with a local theater group, I didn’t think of my own house at first. Until he mentioned that a piano would be a plus.

So there came to be rehearsals in our living room and two 10-hour shoots over the course of the most beautiful February weekend on record.

Members of The Community Theater had been rehearsing in their roles since December; it was my suggestion that they might want to also “inhabit” the house before filming.

We learned there were two casts, each interpreting the same roles in their own way. One Sunday night when the Blue Cast was rehearsing, I snuck upstairs. “What’s happening down there?” Martin asked. “The mother wants to sell the house,” I wailed.

As the weekend of the shoot approached, Martin reveled in my sudden embrace of tidiness as I removed clutter and washed windows.

At 8 a.m. on Saturday, Helde and the crew arrived. They began hanging curtains, placing lights and moving furniture.

Then the cast arrived, and my office became “the green room.” Coffee and snacks were on outdoor tables. Another family moved into the house, with their own food and photographs.

“They’re filming a movie on Sunset Hill,” I wanted to trumpet. But, in fact, nobody noticed.

On Saturday night, the cast took a few minutes after a dramatic ending then went sweeping through the downstairs for their things, washing dishes and saying goodbye to each other and the characters they have been sharing since December. They were done.

On Sunday morning, Helde and the crew arrived to do it all over again with a second cast, unusual even for a director and crew.

This time we didn’t make a clean getaway and at one point just sunned in the backyard waiting for when it would be safe to go into the house and grab another set of keys.

Sometimes I could hear someone picking out notes on the piano and the words “action” and “cut.”

I don’t know what seemed less real that day: the magnolia already in bloom against a clear blue sky or the unseeing stranger looking out of my kitchen door as he prepared emotionally to walk into his scene.

Filming on the second day went long, so we snuck in through the basement and shut ourselves upstairs. There were occasional shouts and the sound of the front door opening and closing, opening and closing. Then silence.

Along with the cats, we crept downstairs. The drama was over, but the house was not yet ours.

Another family had argued and eaten dinner; this film had had a very different ending but again the actors gathered props and stemware and took down the curtains. The furniture was returned to its place.

Stamps and letters rested against the piano again instead of fingers on the keys. One by one the actors and crew left, with director John Helde the last to leave.

Whatever stories unfolded in our home will not be revealed until the films have been edited. Along with the confused cats, we sat quietly in a living room that didn’t seem ours yet, as though waiting for someone to say, “action.”