On Friday of week 3, Mark took Julie to the house to see the
progress and to revel in all that had been accomplished. Upon arriving at
the construction site, and seeing the new space for the first time
delineated by the walls and the steel beam in the basement, Julie went into
an immediate funk. The new space, she feared, was simply too small.
How did our heroes end up in such a
situation. It was really quite simple: Mark was right and Julie
refused to listen to him.
As the project began, Julie and Mark described to their first
builder/designer (BDx-1), their vision for the new space, and BDx-1 provided
a set of preliminary plans for their perusal. At that time, the total
width of the new space, measured north/south, was 16 feet. Mark took
out a tape measure, walked off the space, thought about how they intended to
use the space, and said that he thought the 16 feet was not enough.
BDx-1 said that Mark was wrong and that the new space was going to be huge.
Julie, by virtue of the fact that she can turn into Tyrannosaurus Wife when
she doesn't get her way, knew that she was going to have the final say, yet
she didn't get out a tape measure, or walk off the space, or think about how
they planned to use the space. Instead, she relied on the tried and
true "wife" method of agreeing with anyone who disagrees with the husband.
Mark was fairly sure he was correct, and he continued to argue for making
the total addition 24 feet; Julie reluctantly agreed to 20...until she saw
the space that warm, sunny Friday afternoon.
By the next day--which is about 2 years in "husband years"--Mark had
contacted their current builder and had made arrangements to get an estimate
for adding another 6 feet to the current hole--the addition to the addition.
Those numbers were painful--fully 6 times what they would have been had they
simply made the space bigger from the beginning--but Mark and Julie agreed
that it was too important to their enjoyment of the space.