I Contain Multitudes…of Houses! (Part 1)

With apologies to Walt Whitman and the grammar police, what I really mean to say is that, house design-wise, I feel that I am the sum total of all the experiences I have had in my lifetime with houses, gardens, and architecture in general. But you can see what an awkward title that would be!

I started thinking the other day about influential spaces and moments in my life that have informed my attitudes and values about what makes a house a home. I’m organizing my ideas around a concept borrowed from a favorite book of mine, “At a Journal Workshop” by Ira Progoff.

Gaining a House; Losing a Life?

To paraphrase Bette Davis…Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy blog post.

Just in case you thought building a house was all a bed of roses; paint chips, lovely fabric, and a sunny move-in day, I’m here to give you the lowdown—this will be one of the most (if not THE most) stressful times in your life.

At some point you will wonder why you ever started the project. You will worry a great deal about whether you can afford to finish it. You will hang on every real estate story watching to see if house prices are falling or rising, and then calculate whether you can still get out without losing everything. And that’s just the stress over the project itself.

Spirit and Soul

Have you ever noticed how quickly a house recently emptied loses its “life force?” Each time I have left a home that I loved—an apartment I rented or a house I owned and sold—I’ve noticed that almost immediately after the last box is packed and carted away the place feels like a shell and no longer feels like “home.” This is a good thing since it helps ease the pain of leaving. You can’t mourn what no longer exists.

And I suppose this should also be a lesson in how it is people and experiences and memories that make a home, and not physical space or objects. But—material girl that I am—I don’t think this means the physical space and objects are irrelevant. There are houses that are inhabited fulltime and still never feel like home, and others occupied only infrequently that practically pulse with life. What is it then that gives a house its life force?

The Literary House

Here are some house and home quotes that I enjoy. Do you have a favorite house quote? How about houses from novels—what houses stand out as memorable from your favorite books? I’d love to hear about them. Have they influenced your sense of “home?” Please share!

“The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Basements, Cellars, and Scary Places, Oh My

All the houses I have lived in have had basements. Typical Pacific Northwest basements—dank, with low ceilings, prone to seepage and flooding, sometimes only halfway dug, and usually home to a sump pump in the corner sitting in a perpetual pool of smelly water. For these reasons and others, we decided to forego a basement in the new house, opting instead for an attic with view potential. But things have a way of turning out differently than planned...

Back to the Beginning

How do you know where an idea comes from or when it starts? I think it is only in hindsight that it is easier to retrace the steps that built idea upon idea, and then decisions and commitments, until the original thought has been made a reality. Even then, it is hard to say where one idea ends and another begins because they are all so linked together. I have always dreamed of building a house. But when did the idea to build THIS house begin? And why on Sunset Hill?