25. Waiting for a house, part 1

When I was a little girl of seven or eight, one of my favorite pastimes besides reading was to make houses out of shoeboxes. While my peers were teasing out the hair and changing the clothes of their Barbie dolls, I was digging through my mother’s sewing drawers for objects I could use as furnishings. I cut windows and doors in the sides of the boxes, and designed cardboard beds and thimble footstools for my mini-houses. They had no roofs, so I could clearly see the arrangements of the space, as sort of a bird’s-eye diorama. I could spend hours gluing down scraps of fabric for rugs, or decorating the top of one of those plastic things that go into pizza boxes to keep the cheese from sticking to the top so I could use it as a table. I never populated them with humans or pets; I just loved designing cozy rooms.

At the age of 12 or 13, as my cohort were giggling about boys and dreaming about what their future weddings would be like, I started drawing house plans. My father was a builder, so there were often architectural drawings—hand-drawn, more often than not—around the house. I studied these and started designing my own future houses. Houses, not house, because I couldn’t possibly limit myself to just one design. There was the English cottage design, the A-frame on a lake, the former horse barn (inspired by one I had actually been in that had bedroom lofts on both sides above what were previously stalls), the craftsman bungalow like my grandma’s house, and so on. Each design was constantly changing. I took inspiration from houses I'd visited, magazines, museums, movies, fairy tales, and my own imagination.

I even went back to these designs as a young adult. I remember watching the film “Green Card” with Gérard Dépardieu over and over again—not because of the story or the actors, but because of the shots of that fabulous rooftop greenhouse. I became slightly obsessed with having an indoor Victorian conservatory, and re-drew my plans to include one. I just knew that one day, someday, I would have the chance to make that design a solid reality.

Life is funny, though, in how it rearranges our priorities. I got to have the dreamy wedding that all the other middle-school girls would have been jealous of. I became acquainted with all the toys that little boys of seven or eight like to play with. My son took zero interest in my diorama idea. He used the boxes I gave him to store some Legos. My house plans got shoved into a box stored in the eaves of our attic.

And then we made the move to Stillwater. We looked and looked and looked for a house that inspired us, but soon realized we would have to create that inspiration for ourselves. So, I got to work, drawing up and modifying existing plans for the house we would build. I could picture all the rooms, all the finishes, where my furniture would go. We bought our lot in March of last year, and soon after met with a local, well-respected builder. He was personable and positive, and he seemed to be excited about our project. But April flew by, then May; then Junejulyaugust swirled into a vortex of packing, moving, and school starting. Plans would go to the draftsman, then be returned with incorrect changes. Meetings took forever to schedule. We were too particular, our builder was too vague. When we finally got a price for building our house, we nearly keeled over from shock. We wouldn't be able to afford it, not even close. We returned to the drawing board with what we thought was a new-and-improved, more compact plan. More going back and forth, more corrections, weeks and weeks to make a bid. Just before we left to Illinois for Christmas, the second bid came back. It was $50,000 more than our first bid.

Turtle Cove was not to be. No transom. No house. Just an empty lot with a lot of weeds on the less fashionable end of town.

But the new year dawned, and with it, a spark of hope. We contacted the realtor who helped us buy our lot (and who had patiently shown us house after house, undaunted by our stringent requirements.) She's a lady who knows lots of people and can get things done, so we asked her for a builder recommendation. She knew a couple of folks we could talk to, she said. We got excited all over again, but this time, a bit more cautiously. After all, we had waited almost nine months already; what was a few more months? Little did we know how much further our patience would be tested....