Hopetown Road

In the crazy world of home building, it makes financial sense to build a new home for personal use every two years or so. The large profit on the first home makes the down payment on the subsequent home so much less that the idea eventually is to have no mortgage at all. Landon and I catch on quickly and when we went to list our first home on Saturday Road and realize the huge profit, we think that we are onto something.

Things are going well until, faster than we realize, our dream home on Hopetown Road quickly escalates into an enormous and extraordinarily costly project. Every time I turn around, it seems that Landon is adding something else to the wood trim package, or he is having Steve design another wall of custom built-in cabinets or shelving. Landon has designed and ordered from Central America solid mahogany doors for every single opening. Mahogany planks from Panama arrive unannounced at our office one day, and Landon directs the driver to the warehouse to store them until needed. The mahogany, Landon explains, will be covering the walls of the foyer and on up to the entire second floor family room.

If Landon can rationalize spending that kind of money, then so can I. That same day, I decide to make a trip to a local boutique-style lighting shop that I have been frequenting for years with my clients. As per usual, my sales rep Andie, is helpful and encouraging. Andie loves working with me because it is my nature to choose very distinctive and edgy fixtures. The styles at the store are known to be very idiosyncratic, with most things unavailable anywhere else in the area.

It doesn’t take very long to outfit nearly every room in the house in one visit. I choose different styles from all over the world. I choose multi-colored crystal embellished oil-rubbed bronze sconces for the foyer, paired up with an enormous chandelier in antiqued bronze that is also dripping with crystals.

For the marble island in the kitchen I select three handmade silvery sage glass pendants sporting large cream-colored polka dots. Over the informal dining table (not to be confused with the formal dining table in the next room, past the butler’s pantry), I gleefully select a string of five tiny lights that were connected by a monorail and powered by a transformer to be installed in the adjacent kitchen pantry. Dividing the family room, eating area, and kitchen are three substantial brick columns that will frame the kitchen. Between these columns, large arches gracefully draw the eye back toward the sweeping views of the Low-country marshes through the four large kitchen windows.

It now seems as though Landon and I are stuck in a silent battle to see which one of us can blow our budget higher. With the profit from the sale of our current home on Saturday Road, which is rather substantial, and if utilized as a down payment on our new loan, our monthly payment should be fairly manageable. I speak with Landon about this one night, and it seems to make perfect sense to us both. So, the outrageous spending continues.