Decisions... decisions.

I sat down hard in total disbelief. I asked the listing agent, “Your kidding, right?” “No. Sorry. Not kidding. A couple looked at the house a few hours ago and just called me to put an offer in. I called to let you know, just like you asked.” After a very deep breath I quickly got my bearings back, “OK. So Dave and I will talk tonight and decide if we are ready to make an offer. We’ll call you first thing in the morning. But can you let the owner know that another offer may come in the morning and to not make a final decision until then?”

I couldn’t believe it. We had thought so much about this piece of property, Dave was finally on board with it and we were really getting excited about the possibility of our dream coming true… and NOW SOMEONE ELSE PUTS AN OFFER IN ON OUR PROPERTY!?!?!?! We’ve come this close and now we might lose this!?!?!

No. This was just not acceptable.

I nervously waited for Dave to get home from work. How would I begin to tell him this? We really didn’t feel ready to drop an offer yet. There were still so many questions about whether this would definitely work. We had only just begun to really think about. And now we were being forced to make a quick decision about a major life-altering event under total duress. Shit!

Dave walked in, asked how my day was and I told him we now had about 14 hours to decide our fate. So, we did what any rational people would do in this situation… put the baby to bed, got a pizza, opened a bottle of wine and began to talk.

And we talked. And talked. And talked. We talked so long that at 10pm, we looked up and saw that Tate was still on the couch happily playing Wii and thrilled to have been able to stay up so late. We talked so long we forgot to put Tate to bed.

I don’t remember everything we said, there was so much. I just remember being really honest about my fears of buying the property and my fears of not buying it. Dave was equally as honest. And after all the talking, and all the wine, the final decision was YES. YES, WE ARE GOING TO PUT AN OFFER IN.

I do believe that we have made some of our best decisions under total duress. Somehow, we work very well together that way. I’m thinking the wine didn’t hurt either.

Searching - Part 3

I was out walking the dog, on a warm Sunday afternoon, a few months after Dave and I had talked about buying Mr. D’s property and deciding it would not work. It was a perfect spring day, when the sun is shining but it’s not too hot, and warm southerly breezes bring with them the clean smell of the ocean just a few hundred feet away. I walked by Mr. D’s house, took a good, long look at it, and I knew that it was mine. I HAD to have it. We would make it work. It was the opportunity of a lifetime to be able to build in our neighborhood, and I wasn’t going to let it pass us by without a really good, drag-out, hair-pulling, bitch-slapping, bloody, messy fight.

The next door neighbors happened to be outside and I stopped to talk to them, something I’ve been doing for almost six years since they moved here. They were doing some work to their garage to turn it into a studio space for Chris, a children’s book illustrator, so we talked about the progress of their renovations and they showed me around the inside. At one point, either Chris or his wife Anika, a children's book author, asked me, “So are you buying the place next door, or what?” I had previously mentioned to them my interest in the house, so they knew our whole story up to this point. I told them how weird the timing of that question was, as I had just minutes ago got the feeling that I HAD to get that house. I explained the situation of needing a variance to make it work for us and the fear we had of buying the property and then not getting the variance, leaving us holding a lot we couldn’t build on. They both said that they would do anything they could to help us, and that they would really love to have us as neighbors and “Damnit, you should just buy it!” That 20 minute conversation helped strengthen my resolve that this was meant to be, and I formed my plan of attack during the remainder of the walk.

I decided that I would first call the listing agent to see if there were any pending offers before I tried to rally the troops (aka. Dave, the pessimistic architect). On Monday morning, MaryBeth informed me that there had been three offers that were either rejected or fell-through and that at the moment there was no active interest on the property. I let her know my plan… discuss/demand/plead with Dave to take another look at the possibility of the property. If he was willing to think about it more, we would take some time to make sure it would work for us with some very rough, preliminary sketches and then decide to make an offer or not. I let her know that I’d probably need a few weeks to see what we would decide, and that I would call her as soon as I had an answer one way or the other. But, I smartly told her to call me immediately if an another offer happened to be made while we were deciding.

Monday night I discussed/demanded/pleaded with Dave, who pretty quickly said, “OK. Let’s look at it again.” I didn’t even have to bitch-slap him – kind of disappointing. He spent the next few days, with his head buried in architecture books, and I knew better than to ask any questions and just let him do his thing. On Wednesday night after going to bed, he got up again and went upstairs to the studio. He was gone a while and I knew that inspiration had struck. I fell back asleep. The next morning, I found the sketch upstairs… the sketch that began to solve the problem of fitting a well-designed, modern house onto a very tiny piece of property.

It was beginning to look to good for us. It was beginning to seem possible. But we felt we still needed some more time to be sure.

After one phone call at 6pm Friday evening, time was exactly what we would not have.

Inspired by the crazy.

Accompanying the house we bought, is the history of the owner – let’s call him Mr. D. – who left it behind. This history is littered with true stories from those that lived close by, personal experiences of my own, and much speculated about, illegal-goings-on-style neighborhood rumors and folklore. It wouldn’t be fun to keep this all to myself, so I will be sharing these stories – real and rumors – from time to time. And although these stories are a wee crazy and there is the possibility that there were some illegal happenings on the property, I actually liked this man a lot. Deep down, through the gruff exterior, he was a very caring person. He always asked me how my family was doing, especially Tate, and really looked out for those around him.

If you don’t already know this, I am also a potter and/or ceramic artist (use whatever terminology makes you happy) and I have not been to the studio since before Simone was born. It’s ok though. It’s hard to be a half hour from home, working with dusty, dirty clay and be exclusively breastfeeding at the same time. But, I’ve been ready to get back to the studio for a few months and really just looking for the proper motivation to make it happen. Today, I received that motivation.

I was thinking about Mr. D’s stories today while all was quiet and I was in the shower – which is the only time it is really quiet for me and therefore, I do believe, that I come up with some of my best ideas while naked in the shower. So there I was, washing my hair and thinking about what I am going to do next in the studio and what those pieces will begin to look like… and suddenly, the greatest rush of inspiration entered my brain on how to capture Mr. D’s stories and incorporate them into my ceramic work. I found myself sketching ideas on the steamy shower door and actually jumping with glee – carefully though… I was in the shower.

I now have plans for a series of vases, based on the neighbor’s stories and an entire dinner service for the new house, based on the animals that were raised and lived in Mr. D’s home. My first step will be to photo document the chicken coops, pigeon pens, rabbit hutches and cages in the backyard. That’s correct… you heard right. Chicken coops, pigeon pens, rabbit hutches and cages!!

I told you this property came with a history.

Searching - Part 2

The day of the open house, Dave was working and truthfully, not really interested in the property, so I packed Simone in the baby carrier, put Tate’s shoes on and we strolled around the corner and up the street. Just to see.

Walking through the front door, I was hit in the face with a wall of must and mildewed air. The floors were so uneven you could feel a different level with every step. Wall board was ripped down to expose water-rotted beams and joists, and there were actually mushrooms growing on them – inside the house! The ceilings were bowing in and cracking, with mold spores growing happily about. As I was wondering if it was even safe to have the kids in this house, Tate was being ever so helpful to the listing agent by pointing out all the spiders and bugs he spotted with his preschool eyes. She and I chatted. She quickly conceded that this house was a tear-down. It took her another month to convince the owner that it was a tear-down. Where, then, the house price was reduced to land value – finally in our price range.

Dave and I talked extensively about this property and how wonderful it would be to build right here, but he was very concerned with the size of the lot. It was only 8000 square feet and we were looking for no less than 10,000. The lot was also only 50 feet wide – incredibly narrow. I was highly optimistic and thought that if anyone was going to be able to develop this lot, it could be us – we could do it. Hell, I had an architect!! A pessimistic one, but a very talented architect none-the-less.

We looked up the plot map and the zoning laws. We placed the layout of our current house on the map with the setbacks marked (how far the house can be built from the property lines) and realized that our current house wouldn’t even fit in this lot. Dave shook his head, “NOPE. Not going to work. Forget it!” “But what if we went for a variance… couldn’t we do that?” I asked. Dave again repeated, “NOPE. Not going to work. Not going for a variance. Forget it!” {Remember that foreshadowing from before?}

So I forgot it. For a while.

Searching - Part 1

Barrington is a lovely, well-heeled town. It’s beautiful, close to water everywhere you look, and filled with traditional New England style homes – ranches, capes, bungalows and lots and lots of colonials. We now live in an adorable, front-porched bungalow a block away from a long, stretchy beach on Narragansett Bay. It’s cute, sweet and just too small. When we bought it a decade ago, we thought it would last us about 5-7 years – the extra 3 years has been a bonus. So, here we sat knowing we wanted to stay in town for the schools and thinking we’d have to sadly leave our beach neighborhood behind, because it was just too pricey to buy anything bigger than we currently had in and around these streets. Add into the equation that we are not “New England style” home people. And the chances of finding a house we loved in town was, slim to none.

Well, as luck would have it, Dave is an architect. A pessimistic one {foreshadowing}, but an incredibly talented architect, none the less. “Let’s buy some land and build!” Ready, set, go!!!

Only finding an affordable lot, proved impossible. First and foremost, there was very little out there for sale. Secondly, if we could afford it, it was either too small, on a main road, or it was sold before we found out about it. We went so far as to make an unsolicited offer on a lot that was not for sale. Which, obviously, was a chance we took that failed.

Then one day a house around the corner from us had a for sale sign in the window. I was driving by, spotted it, slammed on the brakes, jumped out of the car and ran to the sign. Now, since we moved here, I’ve been fantasizing about this house. It’s ugly, kinda contemporary, but not done well. I always thought that it would be a great remodel project or a great candidate for tear-down – no one would be sad to see it go. The loudly swearing, colorful man who lived there had passed away almost 3 years before, and the house sat empty and neglected for almost that entire time, falling into further disrepair with each passing season. So, there I was, staring at the for sale by owner sign, with a Florida telephone number to call, and a price so outrageously high for this derelict piece of property, that I got back in my car and laughed all the way home.

Months later it went on the market with a real estate agent for less than the original price, but still too much to make it a feasible part of our project. She had an open house. I went. Just to see.

From the beginning.

It was a late, cold, December night in 1992 when I met my architect. He stumbled out of his college bedroom after his roommate rudely pounded on his door loudly yelling, “Get up Rizzolo!!” He had on an RWU architecture t-shirt and red sweatpants pushed up to his knees. He groggily said hello while trying to wipe the sleep from his eyes, and in an instant I knew that he would be in my life forever. How in my life? In what form? Friend? Husband? Guy I used to be roommates with and always wonder how he's doing? I didn’t know. I just knew that this moment was significant and thought “damn, this guy is really cute.”

Fast forward… we moved in together, lived with Jon, then lived with Scott, had a mad water fight, graduated from college, kissed, moved to Providence, got real jobs, got a cat, got another cat, ate pizza every Friday night, bought a house in Barrington, started my own design business, got a dog, threw dinner parties, drank wine, played croquet, had a baby boy, played, laughed, watched Tate grow, vacationed in Alaska, got pregnant, went back to Alaska, had a baby girl, cheered at t-ball, drank more wine, looked at our house and said, “It’s too small, what are we going to do?”

This is what we did…