Getting to know the house I thought I knew

We left our house of 29 years on West K Street and are now five blocks away in our house of three weeks on West 6th Street. My senses have been on overdrive noticing things about life in the new house. I’m ready for that to stop so I can just get on with the rest of my life here. I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that I’m making comparisons between the old house and the new. I doted on what those changes should be for many months when I was designing the new house. Now I’m living the reality of all those choices.
As I move down a short hallway, for instance, I keep experiencing an impulse to reach for a certain light switch that seems like it should have been located closer to a corner (never mind that the corner is built up of solid framing that precludes that.) I suppose I’ll just have to develop muscle memory for using that particular switch.
Melody and I really didn’t like how the new dishwasher required pulling a rack all the way out to access the silverware receptacle. To experience that inconvenience over and over was to miss the old house over and over. Then Melody, true to form, took it on as an issue to be solved and contacted the supplier. It turns out there’s an adaptation you can make to the rack to place the silverware box at the front. Problem solved.
One of the first things I noticed after the move was that one of the light fixtures in the master bathroom spills light into the bedroom and across the bed, and that requires us to partly close the door to avoid irritating one’s spouse who may be trying to sleep there. We didn’t have to do that in the old house, so it feels like something I should have been on top of with this design . . . . . and now there is nothing I can do about it, and that sort of bugs me. Right around the time I am focusing on such things as this, I remind myself of Syrian families who are leaving everything behind to flee hundreds of miles just to try to have any kind of life at all, and I feel fairly ridiculous for fretting over something like having to partly close a door to keep light from falling onto a bed.
During construction, it was all about making the house as flawless as can be, and now it’s about making the place our own by taking screw-guns to walls so we can put up art and coat hooks and such. After all that time creating the house in my head (in which grand issues were wrestled with and important architectural notions pondered at great length!) it’s now down to adding white felt dots to the corners of certain door jambs so that a solid wood door will close quietly. The results of that are quite satisfying, by the way.
In addition to the little felt pads, I can also recommend the judicious use of “automatic on” light switch in places like a pantry. Set foot inside and the light magically comes on for whatever length of time you programmed it. (Make sure to get a “vacancy sensor” switch, not an “occupancy sensor” switch, if you are thinking about doing this.)
Lacey the dog is taking her time coming to terms with her life here in the new house. The yard at the old house was overgrown, and quite obviously needed to be defended from intruders. Especially from a possum that we think took up residence for a time in the massive head of vines that had grown over the garage. Lacey was vigilant in her duty of monitoring this situation and would put in a couple hours simply watching that clump of greenery, and that let her be true to her being. Like all sentient beings, she enjoys being true to her being.
This new yard is a blank slate. Mostly flat and covered with the natural grasses that vacant lots have this time of year. No hidden intruders to obsess about. We keep it mowed so it looks slightly more like a lawn. We added some temporary wire fencing at the open corners of our triangular courtyard so now we have an enclosed yard for our animals. I remind myself that the backyard at the old house started exactly like this in the early days – a blank yard with natural grasses surrounded by a wire fence. It took many years for it to morph into the shady Eden that it eventually became.    Somehow I have less patience this time around.
I heard a pet behaviorist on NPR say that dogs bond to people, but cats bond to a site. We decided on a strategy for moving the cats based on this and it worked. First, we moved our two kitties across town in animal carriers covered in a towel and straight into our front parlor room, along with some of their favorite pieces of furniture, a litterbox and ample food and water. We bought some “Feliway” spray at a pet store to spray on various corners of walls and furniture because it replicates the cat pheromones that they themselves use to mark their territory by rubbing their jowls on things. They can’t help but relax in such an environment. After the third day, we let them have access to the rest of our house. A week later, we let them out into the yard and used some nice juicy cat food to bribe them through the cat-hatch we had installed in the outside wall at the courtyard. Once they go through the cat-door for the first time, it’s in their repertoire. Now they seem to own the place, inside and out.
A favorite lounging spot of theirs is the indoor balcony overlooking the Atrium. The balcony is to the side of the human foot traffic coming up the stair, but has great views to any activity taking place at the front door below.
We humans are also finding our way with some of the house’s idiosyncrasies and making them work for us. I have discovered that the shady side of the garage is a very nice place to spend an afternoon building the shelf units I need for my office. The breeze there is just right, and there’s a view to the street. If I work past dark, there is a big square of light that shines out of a garage window onto my work area. I couldn’t have planned it better.
“Imagine this place in five years,” I tell Melody. “The way it looks now will seem so stark in comparison.” Of course, I’m saying that more for my benefit. Let it unfold and enjoy the ride. Maybe now I can start noticing that the glass is 98 percent full and quit worrying about that 2 percent.

Steve McKee is an architect specializing in residential design.
He can be reached on the web at: www.smckee.com  or at (707) 746-6788
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