House-Hunters: Unaffordable

I grew up on construction sites. My dad owns a construction company, and as a kid I'd ride along in his truck to go check on houses, close down job sites at the end of the day, or take lunch to his workers. And some of my favorite memories are of the nights when my parents would pack all of us kids up into the car with our pillows, blankets, and the bulky TV/VCR combo we used to own. 

We'd pull our car into the driveway of whatever house my dad was building, unload of all our stuff, schlep it all into the house, and set up camp near a power outlet. Mom and dad would spend all night working and cleaning, and I'd snuggle down into blankets with my sister and brother and watch movies. It might sound strange, but there was something comforting about looking through the darkness of the house and seeing a dim light glowing out from the room where my dad was working. Mom would be around the corner in another lit up room--sweeping, dusting, cleaning windows; and I'd sit bundled in my blankies, comforted by the darkness of the house that wrapped staircases in black silence and filled hallways with mystery.

Something about the emptiness made them seem so big--the houses that is. 

They were big, but they weren't ever scary because even though I couldn't see my parents, I could always hear them. The lights would be dimmed where my siblings and I sat, sometimes my parents turned the lights off completely in the hopes that we'd fall asleep in our pillow land on the floor. Mom and Dad would work late through the night and into the early morning, and we'd drift into our dreams, surrounded by the smell of new carpet and the lingering woodsy scent of swept up sawdust.

To this day I love the smell of new carpet, fresh paint, and sawdust. And almost any clean, empty house can spark a flashback to those childhood days of comfort where the darkness of the houses muffled the sounds of my dad and mom working.

The hallways and cupboards of those houses-not-yet-homes were empty of memories, and my siblings and I got the chance to drop the first memory-pennies into these piggy-bank homes before Dad passed the keys on to another family to let them fill up with the house with their own stories.

When I look back, I know it's these memories that fuel my interest in home design and architecture. But it's not houses in general that interest me, it's empty houses. Houses where furniture and family pictures are absent and in their absence my imagination is free to fill the house with millions of "what-ifs" and "I wonders."

In an empty room, the mind is not confined to the ordinary. A bed in a room typically makes it a bedroom, an oven makes it a kitchen...but an empty room can be anything--all it takes is some imagination.

And, apparently, using the imagination in House-hunting is contagious! At the beginning of summer I made a quick detour with the small group of junior high girls I hang out with. It was a Sunday, and on a whim I took them to an Open House--Sunday's are particularly good Open House hunting days.

Two of my "House-Hunters: Unaffordable"sidekicks.

Even though open houses don't provide the level of freedom and fun that the construction sites of my youth allowed, walking into a good Open House (where they don't stage the rooms) is a fairly decent substitute. It's like sticking a key into the imagination, swinging open the gates, and saying 'have at it, mind!'

Now, personally, I don't like staged houses simply because I don't like when people try to A) tell me what a room should look like and B) try to trick me into thinking it's bigger than it is.

These girls I took with me loved Open House-ing! It was so much fun to see how their minds took off in different directions. When I walk through a house, I see ways I can change the room and create new things, but these girls walk into a house and don't just paint with their imaginations on the walls in the rooms; they imagine whole new lives and stories and then paint themselves into the world they've built around the house.

At one house they decided they would all speak in accents and pretend they were orphans--I have no idea where this idea started! They were from Russia, and their home had been bombed by the communists. At another house they pretended that I was their mother which was one of the more awkward Open House trips. Do I look old enough to have 4 daughters in junior high? I hope not! And still at another house, they went through ways to redecorate the kitchen cabinets and sink fixtures.

This Open House-ing has become something of a habit for us. We usually stop at the Golf n' Grill in town before we go, so we can grab some Mongolian BBQ because, duh! what else would you serve at a Golf n' Grill? If we're lucky and have some money left over, we might stop by Starbucks to get a drink for the road.

(Starbucks and Mongolian--she's really excited for lunch!)

Last weekend, however, we ran into one not-so-dreamy home. We got inside and realized it was far too grandmotherly and full of personal items to let our imaginations go crazy. We got out of there as quick as we could.

As we high-tailed it through the kitchen, however, we got a little side-tracked. There was one redeeming quality to this house: the Wild West style saloon doors leading into the laundry room. We stopped for a photo op:

Every house offers a chance for some kind of fun. You see, there wasn't exactly anything wrong with the decorated home; it's just that we prefer the chance to ponder possibilities. I guess we figure that if we're gonna dream about buying the house, we might as well dream about the priceless treasures we're gonna fill the house up with, too!

This bathroom fit right into our dreams perfectly!

Dreaming is all we can do right now. But maybe someday I'll be able to design my own dream home...and, more importantly, be able to afford it!