Making Room

I never once thought our house was too small. Not when we designed it, not in the years that followed, not even as friends and family came and went in a steady rhythm. We were fifty-five when we bought Tahilla Farm, already looking ahead, planning for retirement in our sixties, and imagining how we wanted to live once the urgency of raising children had quieted.

Tahilla was built for a grown family. For return visits, quiet mornings, long dinners, and early nights. It was shaped for reflection, for life after expat life, the one we were stepping into as our children stepped outward. The house suited that vision. It held us well.

And then one day, I looked around and noticed the tide of change.

A maximalist at heart, I have always collected in the spirit of storytelling, layering objects from past and present, each carrying its own thread of memory. But it was the newer things that caught my attention. Baby toys tucked into baskets. A play gym slipped over our large square leather coffee table, the books beneath it taking quiet cover. Board books stacked beside art monographs. A travel crib folded neatly in the corner of a guest room. Pampers boxes stacked high. The latest purchases of baby clothes, my new addiction, neatly arranged on the bed waiting for the next visit. I used to call the rooms by the names of our children. With grandchildren in the mix, those names are slowly reshaping into a new generation.

The house itself has not changed, but we have. Or perhaps the season has.

A few years after we moved in, we redesigned the existing carriage house into a living space of its own: a studio, a gathering room, a bedroom, and a bath. It suited us just fine. It felt like an annex to the life we were building, a place to create and to host. Then Mr. H retired, and retirement has a way of shifting scale. The days widen. The hours rearrange themselves. What once felt sufficient begins to feel provisional.

So we sat down with our architect for the third time. Out came the drawings again, the careful measurements against the existing footprint, the familiar rhythm of imagining what could be. This time, the vision stretched beyond walls. We brought in a landscape designer as well, wondering whether the land itself might hold something new. A pool tucked into the slope. A gathering terrace. A place where summer evenings might linger a little longer, where grandchildren could splash, and adults could sit with books in the late light.

Inside the carriage house, we sketched an extension: an extra bedroom, a small kitchen, a generous room lined with tables and books, and space to gather. I imagined it filled with conversation and creative energy, a reading room expansive and light, something reminiscent of the library spaces I have always loved. The plans felt thoughtful, measured, and possible.

And then life moved again. Two weddings. The loveliness that follows. Family expanding not through architecture, but through vows and celebration. The extension plans were rolled carefully and placed in a basket by my desk, waiting for another season. Not forgotten, just held.

Even now, it is not that we do not fit. We do. We always do. Yet I find myself wondering whether the house could stretch in spirit, not necessarily in footprint, but in possibility. On snowy winter days, when the fields are hushed and the Adirondack chairs nearly disappear beneath drifts, I drift back to another winter, the one when we were building this house. We were living in Vietnam then, in a tropical season of steamy afternoons and the scent of jasmine and gardenias drifting through the air. I would sit on our veranda between sips of Vietnamese coffee, café du sữa, sending image after image to our architect in New Hampshire. Pinterest boards filled with stone walls, light-filled kitchens, and long views across open fields. I can still feel that longing, dreaming from a distance and imagining the life we would one day inhabit.

That was our dream house.

Lately, I have begun opening that old file again and asking what the dream would look like now. There is a grandchild in Australia, one close by in Massachusetts, and soon one in Arizona. The geography of our family stretches across continents, just as it once did when we were raising our children abroad. Only now we are rooted here, watching the map widen from a fixed point.

Do we all fit? Yes.

But when I revisit those carriage house drawings, I imagine something softer than I once did. Children sprawled on the floor with blocks and soft books. Muddy boots and snow gear piled by the door in winter. Rock piles and mossy tableaus carried in from summer walks in the woods. Visits that feel less compressed, less negotiated around guest beds and hallway traffic.

Beneath these practical considerations lies a quieter question. As we age, where is the best place to be? Do we extend the carriage house and eventually move ourselves into a smaller single-level space, letting family spread out in the main house? Do we remain exactly where we are and simply adapt the rooms to the life unfolding inside them? Do we build outward, or inward?

There is no urgency to these questions, only awareness.

Ten years have passed since this house was completed. The gardens have settled. The stone walls have weathered. The rooms have absorbed our memories and those of others before us, stretching back to 1790. The place feels established now, rooted in its landscape and in our lives. And yet here I am, imagining again.

Not out of dissatisfaction. Not out of regret. Not even out of restlessness. But from the understanding that a house, like a life, is never finished.

We designed Tahilla in our fifties for the people we hoped to become in our sixties. Now, edging further into our late sixties and into grandparenthood, I see that design is not a single act but an ongoing conversation with time. A house reflects not only our taste, but our stage.

For today, I sit inside the possibility. Snow outside. Toys inside. The old Pinterest file open on my screen. Dreaming costs nothing. Reality will ask its questions in due course: budgets, logistics, and practicality. But imagination is generous. It allows me to rearrange the future without lifting a hammer.

And perhaps, at this stage of life, imagining is its own form of building.

A Small Note

For those who enjoy seeing where inspiration begins, I have kept a few Pinterest files over the years. They are the thoughts behind Tahilla Farm. The early design notes were gathered while we were still living in Vietnam. The garden ideas continue to shape how we plant and replant.

I return to them from time to time to remember how dreaming evolves.

Tahilla Farm Design Notes
Garden Notes