This Time for Real

Even though we were happy in Lexington, the urge to move to Lincoln was getting stronger.  My son was in second grade, surrounded by kids playing "game boys" and other gizmos.  I wanted a more rural atmosphere where he would become less interested in electronics and more in fishing, hiking, biking, etc.  Also, having spent twenty-five years designing and building other people's homes, I wanted to design a home for us.  While I had completely renovated our house, it wasn't a clean slate where I could do anything I wanted.  And what I wanted was Modern, which is not all that popular in this neck of the woods (New England).  I figured if the house had any hope of resale at some point, I had better do it in a town where people still appreciated modern residential architecture. As I explored Lincoln I realized that Weston also valued open space (a lot) and modern design (some).

In fact, one of my favorite houses, and an inspiration for what I would eventually build, is an International Style house on Sudbury Road. I love the corner windows, cascading flat roofs, and pristine white walls.  So we expanded the search to include both Lincoln and Weston.

We fell in love with a house on Baker Bridge Road in Lincoln, a short walk from the Gropius house.  The property included a Deck House overlooking a stunning private pond, and a buildable (maybe) lot on the opposite side of the pond.  It seemed like the perfect situation- live in the Deck House while we built the new house, then move across the pond and sell the Deck House.  However, it wasn't entirely clear that the lot was buildable.  This was my introduction to the somewhat murky world of conservation commissions, whose rules seemed a little less clear than the planning, zoning, and historic boards that I was used to dealing with.

As we tried to get something definitive about whether we could in-fact build on the other lot, a new house came on the market.  It wasn't much to look at, just another Deck House surrounded by tall Pines.  Being used to the openness and views in Lexington, it was definitely not love at first site.  But, like the mature middle-agers we had grown to be, we made a sober assessment of its merits.  It was on a conforming two acre lot, so building a new house seemed relatively straightforward.  It also overlooked a pond- not a pristine swimming pond like at the other house, but more than a swamp.  It was also on a dead end road that led to a trail to Cat Rock in Weston.  It was in relatively bad shape, which would make it affordable to buy and a good candidate for renovation or demolition down the road.  And so we "fell in like" with the house.  We didn't want to "let the perfect be the enemy of the good", and we didn't want to spend the rest of our lives looking at houses.