He didn’t even have to stand up to reach for the plans sitting on one of the two tiny bureaus we’d been able to squish into the room. After he pulled the rubber band off the plans, he unrolled them and held them open so we both could see. He marked a spot with one finger, then pointed at the wall beside me.

“This is where the existing wall will come down between this room and the one next door—”

“The boys’ room,” I said.

“Right.” He pointed to the cold blue lines of the plans again. “And that will give us space for a walk-in closet here, and for an en suite bathroom that will back up to the existing bathroom. And these two other bedrooms will remain intact. One will become a shared office—with built-in storage right there and a double desk along that wall.”

“Right,” I said. “And then the other room, my parent’s bedroom, currently inhabited by my brother-turned-hippie, can be a guestroom, or you know—” I remembered we were on a baby-talk timeout, so I stopped myself before I mentioned what else this room might be used for.

“So . . . where were we?” John said as he found his place on the plans. “Okay, then this room at the end, the one that opens into the long screened-in balcony—”

“The sleeping porch.”

“Right. The sleeping porch stays, but we’ll put in new energy efficient double French doors leading out to it. And the room next to it will become our separate living space. Since the living room fireplace is directly below, they’ll open up the chimney behind the plaster and put in a vented gas fireplace.”

John tapped his finger like it was a magic wand. “Mantel here. Television over it. Nice couch here. A couple of comfy chairs here and here. It’ll be cozy, but we’ll have a place to get away whenever we need it.”

“And we’ll definitely need it,” I said. “Don’t forget to tell me about the moat filled with crocodiles again. The one that will give us clear boundaries and make us feel that buying this house wasn’t the most bat-shit crazy idea two relatively sane people ever came up with.”

John pointed. “Well, it’s not quite a moat, but our space will have this new door at the top of the main staircase. And when we build the new garage, we’ll have a private staircase going up from that as well.”

“The word private,” I said, “never made it onto my family’s vocabulary list.”

John turned the page, tucked it carefully behind the others. “I told Joe to install the biggest locks he can find.”