Back in 2002, my husband and I decided to build a custom home. We were extremely excited about the prospect of building a new house. There we were, thinking what a great experience it would be, building our own home, just the way we wanted it. It turns out that there are a LOT of decisions to make when building a custom home. Not dozens, not hundreds but thousands. Bill and I are both snappy decision-makers (not the type to bring home five different cabinet knobs and mull them over for a week), so we figured we’d whip through it. But the sheer number of things to decide was mind-boggling. Stair parts, for example. Halfway through the building process we met with the millwork guy to talk about the stairs. We thought, “yes, we want stairs … what’s to talk about?”

“So,” the guy said, standing next to the unfinished open-board steps in what would someday be our foyer, “what kind of balusters and newels do you want?”

“Um … do you have a catalogue?” I said.

“What’s a newel?” said my husband.

And so it went. We would end up picking something, anything, after a few minutes of confused discussion and sometimes a frantic Internet search. It’s a miracle the house doesn’t look like something Pixar dreamt up.

Something else we learned from the process was to watch out for what I call the domino effect. Making one little change seems like no big deal … until it affects something else. The best example is our decision to make the family room a bit wider. Just five feet. Wouldn’t cost that much, and no big deal, right? It’s fun to reflect on how stupid we were.

Here’s what happened over the next two months after we made that decision:

The starting point: Decided to enlarge family room by five feet on one side.

To balance out the new larger room, and have a view of the backyard, decided to move fireplace from the back to the side of house.

Discovered that the masonry for the relocated fireplace would jut strangely into the master bedroom above the family room. So might as well put a fireplace in there too. Bill wanted one anyway.

Read in a book that big rooms with low ceilings look strange. Alarming! Decided to ask builder about increasing ceiling height.

Decided we’d better go with nine-foot ceilings (on first floor only).

Realized that front windows in family room would look funny since room was now both wider and taller than originally planned.

Decided we liked triple windows all close together, but that looked even funnier.

Triple windows in a bump-out with gable going all the way up to the roof looked great. For that money, why wouldn’t it?

Surprise! We need a bigger master bedroom window to balance with the bump-out and the triple windows below.

Decided that since we had high ceilings, we should put transoms above that triple window in the family room. Wouldn’t that look nice!

Builder pointed out that we might want to balance out the transoms by adding a few others elsewhere. He suggested nine.

We turned down two of the suggested transoms on the side of the house (hey, there WERE brakes on this runaway train), but thought the others looked great.

Hmmmm. If someone was standing in the family room and there were transoms above the front windows but not the back ones, would that look funny?

Decided to add transoms to the back family room windows as well.

Realized that raising the ceilings meant ordinary-height interior doors might look funny.

Decided to go with seven-foot four-panel interior doors. Why the hell not.

Discovered that raising the ceilings means more steps in the stairs going up to the second floor (duh).

Discovered that the extra steps were causing a problem with the coat closets in the foyer … not enough room.

Decided to nix a closet and put it off the kitchen instead.

Decided the one small closet left in the foyer was too small. Ended up moving dining room doorway to accommodate a slightly larger closet. Still pretty small though.

With closet/pantry taking up space in kitchen area, no room for kitchen table. Put stools at the island instead.

ALL because of adding five feet to one room! Most everything turned out ok in the end, except our narrow garage. We were giddily moving things around on the plans as construction was starting, and failed to look closely at the final measurements. At the last minute, the garage doors were pushed more to the sides, to make room for an ordinary door in the middle, and the result is that every time I open the passenger side doors to my car, they thunk against the concrete wall.

There are many other things we love about our house, of course … mostly the fact that this is where we began our family, and where our children will grow up. That would make any house special, even if we didn’t build it ourselves. At least that’s what I tell myself every time I thunk the car door against the wall.