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Originally posted October 2007

Over the course of building our house, I have had a few very minor disagreements with my builder, Dennis.

A few months back, he did not appreciate my decision to leave the pine treads and risers on the steps to the loft unpainted.   I had originally told him that I was going to paint them and with that in mind, he did not choose flawless boards for the treads. Some of the boards have tool marks, and some minor dents and dings, but I don’t mind. I think they look rugged and edgy and cool and I am just going to apply a few coats of polyurethane and call it done.  

Dennis does not agree, and would have chosen perfect boards if he knew they were going to be left exposed to every eyeball that ever looked their way.  

He also does not like this medicine cabinet.

That is to say – he does not like that I am not going to re-finish this medicine cabinet.

When he first saw it, he asked me if I was going to paint it.

“No” I said, “I think I am just going to leave it like it is.”

“With all that peeling paint?”

“Yes – I think it looks cool.”

Dennis shook his head, sighed deeply, rolled his eyes and said, “You are a dingbat.”

I bought this medicine cabinet at Architectural Salvage in Kansas City. I bought it because according to every single home design article I have ever read in Country Living Magazine, This Old House, Country Home, BHG, Popular Science, The New Yorker and National Geographic – if you don’t have a piece of salvage in your house it is not really a house. It is really more like a hovel…or a cave…or a hole in the ground. Desperate to live up to the standards of these style setting tomes, I went out and got me some salvage.

I must say that I do really love this cabinet, and I do really love the peeling paint. I am not just some sort of mindless, catalogue junkie, magazine article directed, bunko playing, ceiling fan watching housewife without a brain. Dingbat is a much more accurate description.

It is pretty ain’t it?

When I saw that truck, I threw some clothes on and rushed downstairs to snap a few photos.  I had to take the photos quickly,  because I was not going to be able to hound them all day long with my camera as I now have a job.  When I told our builder, Dennis and his crew that I would not be able to take pictures of them working on the house all day long, they just sat down on the grass and started sobbing.  

Anyway… what I mean to say is that they spent Wednesday installing the screens on our screen porch and giving the front porch one final coat of paint.  It was so nice to see them.  I am so glad that Dennis and Jordan built our home.  Even if I did torment them the entire year they were building it, by being a constant nuisance with my camera, and my changes, and my questions.  

I think that counts as a hand raising. Yes… I think it does.

The foundation for our house was dug in early September. After years of dreaming, planning, and drawing hundreds of houseplans, we had a hole in the ground. I drove out to the site one hot afternoon as a work crew was setting up the forms to pour the basement.

Three pick up trucks were parked around the building site but there were no workmen around. I decided that they must have all gone to lunch in one truck as I got out of the van with my four year old son. My son scurried up one of the big dirt piles as I slowly walked around the foundation snapping pictures. As I approached the back of the hole I noticed some boots beside one of the trucks. Wait, those were not just boots, there were also legs…attached to the body of a …man! No wait – two men. Two men were lying down in the shade under the truck taking their lunch break. I was a little surprised to find them there, but tried to pretend that I had known they were there all along. I nodded and smiled at them and continued to circle the foundation taking pictures.

As I rounded another corner my perspective on the basement changed and I saw another man stretched out in the shade at the bottom of the hole. He had long flowing white hair and looked sort of like a wizard in jeans in a t-shirt. I waved at him and tried to remember if when I got out of the van I was picking my nose or talking to myself – because I was so sure that no one was there. As I completed my walk around the foundation I suddenly noticed another man quietly sitting in one of the trucks with a cold drink. He raised his hand in a slight wave. I slight-waved back.

It was odd how the men were separated from each other and so quiet. I suppose it was just a way to have an efficient break maximizing your rest without having to go somewhere for lunch. The silence was pronounced, but they didn’t seem like the kind of men that would be chatty under any circumstances. The strangest part however was not the quiet or the odd places they seemed to be in (under the truck?), or even the wizardy appearance of the guy in the hole, but rather how I felt suddenly disassociated with my own house. I mean I had planned, and drawn, and sketched, and sharpened pencils, and learned to draw elevations, and read books, and articles, and clipped magazine pictures and figured out a virtual reality architecture program, and measured staircases, and ceiling heights and porch depths, and taken pictures of every old house that turned my fancy to get to the point of actually building a house. And now walking the perimeter of the foundation of my dreams there are suddenly four strange men involved.

Four strange men I have never seen before. Four strange men I do not even know their names. Four strange men hired by our general contractor to build the foundation of our house. And suddenly I feel like I am a trespasser. I feel like an intruder. An intruder in my own dream.

The men were just men – hard working men on their lunch break. It was not their job to shake my hand or tell me that my foundation was the most spectacular foundation they had ever had the privilege to work on. And it was not really my job to shake their hands or critique their work or ask a bunch of questions since I had no idea what to ask and I know nothing about building a foundation. So instead I climbed the dirt pile with my son and looked at the hole some more and snapped a few more pictures. I was trying to make myself feel like this was my building site and this would be my house and I had every right to be here. But I didn’t. I felt like an outsider. So I loaded up my son and we drove home. Later that evening I crept back out to the site and walked around again. This time I was really alone and the house felt like mine again.

This is a picture of the driveway that leads to our house. As you can see it goes over the dam that created our pond. This driveway was a long way coming and somewhat of a sticking point. Before we could build a house, we had to decide where to put the house. We had eight acres to choose from, but there were really only two spots that made sense. One was in front of the pond and one was behind the pond.

The type of house we wanted to build included an expansive wrap around porch, and it seemed clear that it would be nice to sit on the porch and look at the pond. However, building behind the pond required quite a bit more expense including building a dam that was large enough for a driveway, and longer electric and water lines. We actually gave up the idea of building behind the pond for these reasons and I designed a house to build in front of the pond. But it just was not the kind of house we wanted. Why bother constructing a beautiful deep covered porch to overlook a road, when you could overlook a pond.

Finally we gave into the ancient architectural theory of chi, which demands that the mountains be at your back and that you face the water. We moved the building site behind the pond, re-drew the house to fit the new site and bit the bullet on the extra money. It is easily the smartest decision we made as the house is so beautifully sited, reflecting on the water, with a treeline at the back and a few trees framing the house as you look at it from the road. Trust the ancients. They knew what they were talking about.

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