craftsmen

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We met the GC, architect, electrician and brick layer at the job site at 7 this morning. I don't know how our experience compares to others, but it's blowing my mind to consider the magnitude of what we are doing. We aren't just building a home...we are building a custom home. OUR home. There is no other home like it, anywhere. It's a big ol' work of art, right there in my yard.

For years, I spent lunch hours looking over floor plans and elevations online. I remember printing out a few that had promise and bringing them home to M, where we'd go through them together before deciding they didn't work for us. They'd go in the recycle bin and I'd start over the next day.

When it came time to build, we considered going with a GC who has a portfolio of homes that one can customize. We decided that there was no way we could customize it enough, no matter how great the original floor plan looked. There are just too many goofy things we want. A digital darkroom? A workshop with access to the driveway? A bunch of outlets in the front of the house and along a long counter in the basement?

I suppose we could've made something work, using a spare bedroom for my darkroom (which would have been a lot of wasted space) and shoehorning in the rest, but it would always feel like something wasn't quite right. After years of living in a space that wasn't quite right, we were done with settling.

Our home is designed just for us, with every one of our needs in mind. It is being built to our specifications, at the level of quality we desire. Would I like the doorbell here? A light switch there? How high would you like your wall-mounted toilets hung, ma'am?

I stood in my front door today and watched the bricklayers work. Their motions practiced and fluid, every brick an exercise in artful grace. They stop every so often and throw a level on the top row, tapping gently here and there to make sure everything is just so.

Many, many years from now I will look at that brick and remember these craftsmen, and all who worked so hard to make our home truly ours, stripey brick and all.

And I will continue to be so, so thankful.