Midstokke: Not all rules are meant to be broken

There is a mythical land beyond the invisible boundaries of our neighborhood, a place where rules don’t apply and lawlessness is the sweet reward of those who plow their own roads and take their own trash to the dump. It’s a place where red tape is unheard of, Tyvek counts as siding, and nobody is coming to see if your Grassed Infiltration Area meets volume requirements.

It’s called “county,” and right about now it sounds pretty fantastic.

We’ve chosen to build our house among the civilized, and the price of that maintained road and proximity to power is a little thing referred to as “meeting code.”

As far as I can tell, this arbitrary set of rules was well-intended. Maybe a few houses caught fire or tipped over and someone thought establishing general guidelines or pesky laws of physics would reduce the contractor casualties. Equally, “code” seems to hold the same biblical weight for my husband as the Ten Commandments might for a faithful Christian who also prefers their directions included.

Code has become the ace up his sleeve for any disagreement we have about building anything or shoving dirt around our property or the giant holes we’ve had to dig. It is more fair – and truthful – to say he’s had to dig. I just point and use hand gestures for clarity of my demands.

If it were up to me, we’d be filling up the house with our stuff already, but Charlie said we’ll be fined hundreds of dollars a day for moving personal items in before we’ve received a Certificate of Occupancy. I reminded him that we live in Idaho, which I thought was the Wild West paradise for homebuilders. And he reminded me that I’m thinking of county and we’re city now and city folk have rules.

My problem with rules is that I like to break them. Charlie is a rule follower. Which is why I’m a writer and he’s a builder. It’s also why he lies awake at night hoping I don’t bump into the inspector and explain with great use of adjectives what my creative workaround was for drainage. Because I wanted a koi pond and refuse to accept that there’s much of a difference between holding water for a long time and holding water for a less long time.

There are so many reasons beyond my creative building exploits for Charlie to freak out. Our final inspection is Friday. There’s no Grass in the Infiltration System, outlets are not covered, and I’m bouncing around inside the house saying, “Will you hang these gorgeous towel racks?” while crawling into the empty bathtub to see if my whole body fits (it does).

While my husband does the work of ensuring our house won’t wash down the hillside come next spring (boring), I’m scrolling Etsy to find artisan coat hooks (thrilling). Most of my boring work is done, including staining nearly three miles of siding, a football field of shelving, and all that awful math necessary to making things fit. My tolerance for the doldrums of checking the rule boxes is about zero. I want to pick out rugs and figure out where my dishes go.

Which is when Charlie reminds me that I will not be able to afford a rug if we break the rules, and I try to get my way by pshawing away concerns with a wave of my hand. I mean, who ever heard of a whole house washing away? But somewhere in an office I imagine to be stuffed with gray filing cabinets and a rolodex of rules sits a man under buzzing fluorescent lights just waiting to rain on my koi-pond-parade with a clipboard and a red pen and the only word I hate more than decaf: No.

Turns out, the guy issuing the certificates is a 23-year-old hipster who rides a fixie and drinks IPAs, which kind of spoiled my fantasy of killjoy departments. I asked him how one self-selects a career in ruining people’s days and he said something to the effect of the importance of mitigating the negative environmental impacts of construction. He added, “And your home design does that really well.”

So now I’m forced to like him with the same measure of reluctance that I accept Charlie’s expertise on the importance of meeting code. Which, I guess, is primarily about actual standards and safety. I suppose I can accept those, too, seeing as how disappointed I would be if my house and all my fancy hooks washed away after all.

After nearly two years of living in limbo under the glare of streetlights, I can hardly wait to hear the sound of the woods and see the stars at night again. I guess that’s worth following a couple of rules.

Ammi Midstokke can be contacted at ammim@spokesman.com.