I am helping clean out the attic of my husband’s grandparents’ home. Our best archeological find yet is a stamp that presses the words “Good Morning” into a piece of white bread, so – when toasted, the depressed letters stay white. “Talking toast”, it’s called. This is from the 1970’s, and each decade has a representative or two in the eclectica of Poppy’s house.

In Michigan, we slip into our summer rhythms. Go for a run; jump in the lake; work while the kids nap; go to the beach; grill some dinner. Heaven. The family bumps into each other and shares space in a 1920s home, which is part of the spell of the vacation.

We accept the proximity, the room sizing, the petite kitchen – and let ourselves be a way of being in it, which is different from home. We understand that sharing a bathroom is no great concession. We know that we can, in fact, fit through a 24” wide door, and that the gap under and around the doors is just a part of the way life flows, not so hermetically sealed off from one another. Feeling the whereabouts of anyone else inside this solidly built, but drafty, bit of architecture, is transportive. A vacation home of any kind can do that, and this one is marvelous at its job just because it sticks so firmly into a pattern of living which is novel to us.

A handy addition was completed in the 1960s; a laundry area off the back of the home. Aside from this, there was one window replaced, electrical systems mostly updated, and vinyl siding covers the stucco.

The bedroom I sleep in is in the front of the house facing a two-lane state highway, which is much busier and closer to the bedroom than when the home was built. A root heave in the road announces the passing of any truck to drive by, and this is usually corroborated by a two-year-old, who recognizes the sound, if she’s nearby. She yells “Truck!!” She is at the age where knowing something, anything, is a triumph worth sharing.

We have discussed adding a bedroom off the back, away from the road sound. I argue this as practical because I value sleep. But we hesitate to do so for fear of breaking a spell. A laundry shed is one thing; laundry machines are a newer bit of function that didn’t exist in 1920. But the home has bedrooms already, so this new bedroom would be different. To add a bedroom ‘from’ 2025 might create a break in time. The challenge is set.

This is one of the joys of architecture, to find the program in the program. This program is only just sort of ‘a quiet bedroom’, but’s it’s also trying to create a dash of something new without ruining the whole.

I know, I know, I know. I know the rules. The rules are that when you build an addition onto an historic structure, you must make the addition look distinct, comprehensible as an addition – or you run the risk of muddying the waters of understanding. Make something discrete, but that does not wreck an experience by adding a new note. This approach may offer preservation, but it also makes the experience have a jagged feeling anytime you pass from the old area to the new area. I don’t want that.

I occasionally think of architecture as a challenging game of sorts. The chess board is set for this one.