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House rules

The homeowner envisioned a cozy library, but the room had a different opinion.

When we bought our house last year, I naively thought that we'd be renovating it. Now I've come to understand that it's renovating us.

We have, in fact, done some work on the place, and it's even starting to look a little like what I had in mind. But a lot of what we planned still isn't done, and I'm starting to realize that some of it won't ever be done - not because it was a bad idea, necessarily, but just because it's not what the house wants.

Take my plan for the downstairs room that I thought we were going to line with bookshelves. We have a lot of books, and the space that the original owners had designated a "music room" - he was a music professor, and it was 1882, so I imagine it didn't sound pretentious at the time - seemed like a logical place to put them. I could see putting floor-to-ceiling shelves all along one wall, around the windows, anywhere they'd fit. It would change the space, sure, but it would look fine, and it would solve our problem.

I got as far as putting a few unfinished bookcases in the room, just until we could do something more permanent. But my husband, a builder who's doing the work on our house himself, kept pointing out how awkward the shelves felt in the room.

At first, I confess, I thought he was just trying to get out of a project he didn't feel like doing, but the more I looked, the more I had to admit he was right.

Instead of the cozy den I had imagined, my bookshelves were turning this small but gracious room into a cramped, dust-collecting warehouse. I tried to argue with myself and with the space, but it was no good. This room just wasn't built for books.

So here's what's funny. Once I'd abandoned the library plan, I tried to figure out what we would use the room for. A few people suggested putting the TV there, but I hate the way the box takes over a room, so I'm leaving it in the finished attic.

Well, OK, it could be kind of a second living room, then. A front parlor. That seemed ... redundant.

We set up our CD collection in the corner, wired the speakers into the adjoining living room, and let things settle in a bit while we figured out what to do next.

Then I had a flash: a piano! I used to play, I've been thinking of taking lessons again, I'd love to buy a piano for our son to learn on someday, so now it's just a question of whether a piano would fit in here - suddenly I had to laugh. Of course a piano would fit. A piano is what the room was designed for.

All the while I had been thinking, and planning, and scheming, the house had just been sitting here quietly, nudging me back whenever I headed off in the wrong direction. And now, finally, I had come up with the solution it wanted. Somehow, I had turned into a person who wanted to have a music room.

What's interesting is that I'm truly excited by the idea of getting a piano again. The house hasn't imposed something on me that has nothing to do with what I am; it has just reawakened an interest that has lain dormant for years. It's as if, by finding this place to live, I have also found a missing piece of myself.

I came here thinking I would rescue a beautiful but rather tired house, helping it to be what it should have been all along, and now I find it's returning the favor. The renovation isn't even particularly painful, now that I've learned to relax and enjoy it.

I should note that the house's powers are not limitless. While the quaint little sleeping porch delights me, for instance, so far I have had no urge to move a bed out there. And we have a sort of shed in the backyard that was apparently once used as a chicken coop, but I have yet to feel even the faintest impulse to acquire a couple of Rhode Island Reds.

On the other hand, we could use the eggs ...