Treehouse.

I always wanted to build something like this on the Montana property. A secret garden room that would be the escape the big house escape was meant to be. The place I could sit and read books and big issue THINK without having to worry about anything but my own happiness. It never happened. Perhaps it would have, someday, if I could have stuck it out a little longer.

On leaving, I was still waiting for water to the art studio. It's strange to think of that now - I can wash my brushes in the bathroom sink and the bathroom needs so much work I really don't care what happens to it at this point. There's a lot of freedom in that. Is it wrong to think that if I'd lived there with J. that he'd have piped the water in to the studio before he started working on anything else? Or is it that he'd rather see me in the art studio than keep a perfect sink?

I would say, in any other situation, that whether or not you built a treehouse was up to you - no one else. If you want something, figure out how to do it, then get it done. I'd have built it from old windows and decking that had come off of the big house. Or I would have bought a ReadyMade blueprint for a pre-fab summer cabin and tucked it into the woods.

But I couldn't have done that, not there. It was a great pleasure to me to remodel the downstairs bathroom entirely from luxury fixtures found at Habitat for Humanity's ReStore. We tiled the entire walk-in shower for $5. It looks awesome. It was fun to do together.

I find myself having to balance, now, against the standard I have in my own mind for tarting up this house with the experience of the people living in it. To me, it sometimes seems slow. To J....he told me the other night that there wasn't a single stick of furniture left in the house that had been there when I arrived a year ago. Not entirely true, but almost.

I have to remember to let him sit and enjoy it. And though I know I can pull off a second bathroom remodel - my plans for this one even fancier - I have to wonder if I'd be better off making it utilitarian. Muji meets garage. Because at the end of the day, the question is not really about what you want the house to look like - but what kind of life you want to live in it. Do you want to spend your time protecting the granite or do you want to do your best not to ruin it, all the while making really, really interesting stuff?

Comments

[teent]

What about a compromise? You can still make it nice, but be able to use it without worry. And make stuff. Always make stuff.

[Kristen]

"the question is not really about what you want the house to look like - but what kind of life you want to live in it. "

Yes.

And once I was in such a place, such a tree house. It was in Missouri, across the street from the house I helped my young dental students buy in Kansas City. The neighborhood had a nice sized lake - man made - and this house backed onto that - the ground sloping away steeply in the back. So they had made the tree house bedroom - all windows and pilings and barn wood, with a plump, high bed piled high with great, flamboyant pillows. I loved that room, with the lake below it - and the fireflies flashing away outside the windows. My own bedroom is a tiny, tiny bit like this - but not the wild, open place that was.

But I don't know if any room, however romantic and rustic, would be the answer for my own crisis of imagination. I'd be too restless to hold still in it.