About Our Farmhouse
The Country Doctor and I began the construction our farmhouse in August of 2006. The house was completed sixteen months later in December of 2007. Dennis Adams, a local contractor with a legendary skill for building beautiful, sturdy homes built our house, aided by his grandson Jordan, and Jordan’s friend, Joel. They did almost everything themselves except for the plumbing, wiring, and sheet-rocking. This would explain why it took so long for them to build it, but we did not complain. Dennis and his crew built for us a wonderful home that will stand up straight and strong for years to come.
I first designed our farmhouse using graph paper and freshly sharpened pencils. These two items would quickly become my favorite tools in the whole world. I was forever buying new reams of graph paper, always on the look out for the larger sized versions. My electric pencil sharpener became my closest companion and I never seemed to have enough erasers on hand. I found inspiration for our farmhouse in the ’new/old’ homes of Russel Versaci, the philosophy behind Sarah Susanka’s ‘Not So Big House’ and the classic lines of the home-plans found at both the ‘Bungalow Company’ and ‘The Parkersville Collection”.
Eventually I moved my design process from graph paper to a simple computer program that allowed me to work in 3D. This program proved to be highly addictive. I wasted entire years of my life re-drawing our home in 3D. Whatever you do, DON’T GET A 3D architect program! You will never see your family again.
When we finally purchased the land for our house, I re-worked my plans to suit our building site. We wanted the main living rooms to look out on the pond, and we wanted a southeastern exposure in the kitchen/living/dining room.
We did a lot of things right in our home. We will never regret situating the screen porch off of the kitchen and living rooms. The deep front porch is a scandalous extravagance in our part of Kansas, but we love it dearly. The wide plank pine floors disguise dirt in a way that borders on the miraculous. However, we also made some stupid mistakes in the building of this home. We put the guest bedroom in a really dumb spot at the end of the entry hallway. We located the mudroom on the opposite side of the house from the kitchen and the pantry is approximately the size of a shoebox.
Some of our bad decisions were a result of having to choose between two things we wanted. For instance the Country Doctor wanted the mudroom to open onto the study and I wanted the mudroom to be adjacent to the kitchen. We both wanted the kitchen/living room to have a southern exposure. Ultimately, I placed the mudroom where the CD wanted it to be just to keep the process moving along. This turned out to be a frequent occurrence in the building of our house as well as in our marriage in general. Sometimes it works out for the best… and sometimes… not.
Still others of our bad decisions were made because we are idiots… both of us… including myself. For instance, all of our bathrooms in the new house are ridiculously large. Clay, who is my sister’s husband and is also an architect, told us that our bathrooms were absurdly big. We told him to stick it in his stick hole… and what did he know about anything… and we are sick and tired of living in a house with a bathroom so tiny you can’t even wipe your uh… your uh… feet.
And That is why our new house has enormous bathrooms.
And a tiny guest bedroom.
In a stupid location.
But overall, we love our home.
And it will do just fine.
Until we build another one.
Because we have to build another one.
To try to do it better.
And completely different.
Of course.
