Houses

When we were at my in-laws house today for the family reunion, I looked at it with a new eye, thinking 'what features of this house would I like if we were building', and which were nice but not necessary. It was not a revelation, but I realized that I didn't necessarily want a large house -- which to me is one over about 2200 square feet. (By comparison, our present house is about 2300 or so; if we add on the new bedroom as we talk, that'd probably put it around 3000 with the elevator and such).

Not that their house is huge; it's probably bigger than ours by ten percent or so, but it's laid out differently downstairs, with a galley kitchen (we have a full room, about fifteen by twenty feet), and four moderately large rooms -- one's a living room, one a sunroom, one a dining room, and one a -- well, I guess its sort of a library. The house is quite nicely done, but it's not to my taste. I realized that I don't really like the big spaces so much as spaces that feel usable, that welcome you. I can't quantify that. This picture has a little bit of the feeling that I want, though it's more formal that we'd like. The colors are cheerful, and the layout just looks good to me.

Outside, their home is on the somewhat magnificient side; its atop a hill, and you can easily see for thirty miles in most directions. They've done some work in landscaping that I like, especially some stonework on a patio area. The best way I can describe it is that patio would fit in nicely with the home of an uncle of my wife; he's a self-made multi-millionaire, and his home really is on the grand side, inside and out. This patio is just nice. In an odd way, it's welcoming, just like that room. You can see yourself sitting there on a warm day, reading, watching the clouds scud by.

But the water source, if its a well, can be problematic. Turns out, if you have about thirty people over to your house for a reunion, and you have a well, you can run out of water, causing certain bathroom problems. Not cool.