'We're pretty much there with the floor plans,' we said, as we sat down with our architect. 'Just a couple of tiny tweaks - a window in the garage, and a sink in the upstairs lounge.' And that's how it went. Just as we were about to roll up the floor plans and start talking about exterior finishes, The Love of My Life cleared his throat and said 'there's just one thing I wanted to ask about before we move on'. I tensed. I knew just what that 'one thing' was. A goddamn subterranean wine room. We had one, of sorts, in London for a while: a damp, dark, cool cellar. Ever since then TLOML has hankered after some sort of wine cave. There's a practical benefit to keeping wine underground - it should need minimal refrigeration, if any. But I think the real appeal is that of a bunker, a secret sanctuary. Maybe even behind some kind of secret door. Based on a largely fact-free offhand conversation I once had with a builder, I told TLOML co...

Over the past couple of months this house grew. The idea of a modest, 4 bed+ house around a spacious courtyard spawned the floorplans for a 6+ bedroom colossus, around an ever-decreasing courtyard. Some things (my office, the deck off the master) got smaller or deleted altogether. But then we started throwing on things like the o-furo, an outdoor workout space, a mudroom, a wine room with space to actually sit down, and more balconies and decks. And then I got the fear. I was afraid we were creating a monster with many empty leaf-strewn balconies.  Since then we've ditched the o-furo and the outdoor workout space, plus several hundred square foot of balcony. I think we're in a saner place now. It is now a 5 bedroom house with 2 living rooms (okay 3 if you count the library nook), 2 modest offices and a wine room. It's no Versailles, and although it does still look like quite a large house I'm confident we'll use every room. No redundant 'formal' dining ...