Problem-Solving on Paper

At the end of June, Carl and I had a two-hour meeting with the builder and his realtor. The four of us (our realtor couldn't be there) went over all of the changes that we had been working on, and the builder gave us his recommendations. Very productive. I took on the job of writing up all the notes from the meeting, and I sent them out to everyone a couple of days later. We got them back with a few handwritten comments, mostly about how some of things we wanted would be more expensive, which we knew. I thought our plans and adjustments to the specs were fairly set, though there are a few things that we still need to talk about, at least according to those notes. So it was time for the builder’s offer letter.

But that letter still hadn’t come last week, despite emails from our realtor to the builder’s realtor. We got email assurance from the realtor that the builder was just really busy and that we would have the response by Monday. But.... I found myself thinking that maybe we should look at other land. I still liked the idea of building, but maybe this wasn’t the right place or the right builder. Besides, some of the things about the house aren’t perfect. And if we’re going to pay $16 gagillion for a house, it ought to be perfect, right? Cold feet, anyone?

Friday night (Yes, Friday night. What do you do with your Friday nights???), I decided to look online at other floor plans to find our perfect house. I got excited looking for houses between 2300 and 2600 square feet with master bedrooms and laundry on the first floor, islands in the kitchen, and bedrooms that share a wall. Suddenly, I am seeing lots of floor plans that could work. Tweak this here, that there. All we need is a piece of land, right? The problems were bigger than that, but I could pretend, at least for the night.

My pretense led to dreams of carrying a masonry stove trying to find a place to put it down, which then dissolved into my waking contemplation about what to do with an extra living room we wouldn’t need, a feature included in many of the floor plans. I decided to do the smart thing: Talk to my professional worrier husband.

He quickly got the heart of the matter. "What's bothering you about the floor plan?" he asked. "The second floor," I answered immediately. Because of the roof line, the layout of our offices is never going to work right.

Here’s the problem that led to the second floor problem: Carl and I both have home offices, but we cannot share the same space. He spends much of his time on the phone in conference calls, and I need quiet most of the time to work effectively. He likes music with words, and I can’t work to that music because words are my work – and I need them to be my words, not the lyrics of a song or the distraction of an aria. Our offices had been in the same room, and this arrangement worked fine when Carl was going into Boston most days. I could work around his being next to me on the weekends. But not once his company started letting him work from home. Suddenly, I couldn’t get anything done.

In an attempt to give us both work space in our current house, when one kid moved out, we moved me into one of the bedrooms upstairs. As in, away from Carl, with my own door. Mostly I’m happy with this arrangement because I’m able to be productive, but Carl hasn’t been. He wants me nearer. And honestly, my marriage is more important than my productivity. What we have now is only sustainable because it’s temporary.

So when we were house dreaming, before we ever started looking, we decided to set up adjoining offices, probably in a couple of bedrooms with a shared wall. We’d put a door between them, so that when Carl needed to talk or his computer needed to ding at him or he was having a real hankering for opera, we could shut the door. While it might seem a little odd, I’m fine with this. I don’t mind having a connected space for work, as long as I get a room of my own for my office.

The house plan we are currently using has the perfect first floor: great room, kitchen, mudroom with laundry, dining room, master bedroom. No extra living room, which many of the plans I perused on Friday night included. Fabulous. (Well, there’s the half bath that Carl would prefer that we get rid of….)

But the second floor has to be jerry-rigged into adjoining bedrooms by killing a closet and putting three doors very close together, so much so that it would make more sense to leave the area open. Except that I can’t work that way. We tried to rig the plans and the builder has been trying to work with us, but I know in my heart-of-hearts that we aren’t going to be happy with the result.

So when I called in the expert problem-warrior (no, that’s not revenge of autocorrect), I identified the second floor. Carl agreed, saying that he’s never liked it (why didn’t he say so earlier?), but he thought he could live with it since I seemed to like it. But I don’t.  Without a hesitation, he says, "Let's see if we can get the second floor redesigned."

Huh? Really? It never occurred to me to contact the designer of the original plan to see if modifications are possible. But that’s immediately what Carl thought of. He called Shane Structures, and I emailed the designer a PDF of my very crude attempts at whiting out and moving walls around, along with an explanation of what the wall migrations were really about. The designer says that he should be able to look at them today. We’ll probably go to his office later in the week to talk about the results.

This is an example of how Carl and I work well together. Carl doesn’t talk much about the things that are bothering him unless they are a major bother. I’m the one who brings most of this kind of stuff up. He’s a problem-solver. A very good one.

I’m looking forward to seeing the solution.