I tend to sit down to write these updates on Eden Hill thinking I'll have a lot to say. After all, a large portion of each day is spent thinking about, checking in on, or working on an aspect of the project. Sometimes it's realizing that the front doorframe was built a little too small on accident, and planning for how to fix it. Sometimes it's picking out clay bodies to test for our bathroom and kitchen tiles. Sometimes it's just standing in what will be the library dreaming about how it will feel full of books.
But then I come to write, and everything seems to fly out of my head. Perhaps it's because we live with the project so intimately that it is difficult to write about. Maybe when we're done (an eon from now, it seems) we'll be able to reflect on it with the insight and wisdom that escapes me today.
For now, a brief update.
With the ground floor done and the upper floor in progress, framing has begun to go up.
We'd been told a thousand times before we broke ground that the house would appear to expand and contract within the same footprint. The hole for the foundation would seem massive, and then the foundation itself would appear tiny. The exterior walls would shrink the space, while the interior walls going in would counter-intuitively expand it.
All of this has held true so far, with one addition. Seeing the wall framing also magnified my attachment to the house one hundred fold. What was before a bit of a novelty, now feels like an extension of our family, our work, and our hopes for the life to be lived there.
We are doing something audacious not simply by building a house, but by building a formal home. There is no living room, no space for a television, and no breakfast bar. There will be a Parlor, a Library, and an upstairs Study. We are building a space that is undeniably for us, and how we want to exist in the world, and seeing the framing took that idea that had existed as a floating concept and tethered it to two-by-fours in a way that has surprised and delighted me.
I've never felt more confident that what we are doing is ours. Now on to the upper story.
