This much is important - the new house you build or buy should be yours. Even if you won't have a clear title for 17 years and 8 months, that house must be yours, in that it expresses as nearly as possible how you want to live, the things that are most important to you and your family.
Impossible? Not at all, and notwithstanding sky-high costs for everything from books to balustrades.
In these days, when more and more families are discovering there are no great mysteries in doing their own painting and carpentering and paper-hanging and sewing, homes have the best chance ever of being something really personal.
The new home of Mr. and Mrs. Jim Barker of Edina, Minnesota. To a very large extent, it was put together, piece by painful piece, by their own calloused hands and those of their close friends.
Guided by Architects Humphrey and Hardenburgh of Minneapolis, they discovered early that they had a third dimension to play with-up and down. This relatively new trick of splitting up floor levels gave great flexibility to their planning.
But most important of all, the home they fashioned so laboriously fits the Barkers like an old fishing hat. It's not a copy of anything. There's no faking. The house is simply an honest and straight-forward expression of how they wanted to live.
Did it come off? See for yourself. In the matter of area planning one section for conversation, entertaining, reading the evening paper; another for cooking, eating, laundering, studying; still another for sleeping, bathing, dressing the plan is superb.
And as they wisely insisted early in the planning stage the Barkers have every important room overlooking the little lake in their back yard.
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