My wife, Donna, and I decided that since our children were now all on their own, we might want to downsize our house. We bought some acreage, and then I started building a shop. The idea was that I would build a shop with an apartment on the top floor, then we’d move all our stuff in there and kind of camp out while I built the house.
Nothing works as planned, and two things threw a wrench into our well-laid plans. The first was COVID-19. I struggled to get materials, and what I could get was extremely high-priced. Sometimes the cost was double or triple what it was before COVID. It was a nightmare. I searched the want ads constantly, looking for things at a reasonable price. When something I needed became available, I would buy sufficient quantities, often more than I needed, to make sure I didn’t run out.
That brings me to the second problem. When I put on the plans that we planned to live in the apartment while I built the house, suddenly the permits increased substantially, as did the inspections. Instead of building a shop with a simple apartment above it, I built an apartment with a shop below.
But that is all behind us now. The shop and apartment are built, and we have moved in. The shop is packed with all the stuff from our other house, and the apartment is comfortable. So, what is the problem in moving forward? The problem is the challenge in deciding on a house plan.
We started that process about a year ago, while I was working to finish up the apartment. I thought I had found the perfect plan, but Donna pointed out some things she really didn’t like. I could see her point and continued to search. We finally hit on a new approach. We would search independently and record the plans we liked, then we would come together to see which ones we both agreed on.
That method was much easier in the beginning, but when we reviewed our lists, there wasn’t all that much in common, and we each had about forty plans. We thought our similar ones might be the answers, but they weren’t at the top of either of our lists.
So, we decided to try another approach. We took all the ones from both lists and put them on our tv screen. Together, we discussed what we did and didn’t like. This was helpful, because we learned what was critical to each other. We were also able to eliminate some that one or the other of us could not stand.
This helped us narrow things down a lot, but we still have around twenty plans and have not been able to settle on a final solution.
I ran into an architect friend of mine and asked him how he went about working with a husband and wife to get the perfect plan they could both agree on. I told him what we had done, and he said he often had husbands and wives do the same things.
“However, there is one first step I usually do,” he said. “I have them each do a simple sketch of what they want.”
“Then you design it from those?” I asked.
He shook his head. “It is very seldom that easy. The plans are almost always so far apart that it is impossible to create a single plan from them. So, I ask each of them what the absolute musts are. But even that doesn’t work, because often what is a must-have for one is an absolute no for the other.”
“So, how do you ever get to the point that there is a final decision?” I asked.
“There is only one way you can get the two of them to agree on a single plan,” he replied.
“What’s that?” I asked.
He grinned. “Shoot one of them.”
I guess Donna and I will just have to keep narrowing down the number of plans.
