My dad used to take the family for Sunday drives to look at open houses at least once a month. I thought it was dull, frankly. I didn't look at half-built rooms and rafters and see the possibilities, which I now realize my dad did. I liked it when we got to go into show homes that were already decorated; that seemed agreeably like snooping, which I enjoyed in a Harriet the Spy sort of way. But mostly I thought it was a waste of a day off from school.

Later, in high school, I used to help my dad draw blueprints of dream houses. He spent hours shading in the areas and drawing little diagrams for gardens. I mostly drew designs for interior objects like sofas with soaring backs, and impractical chairs. I read the architecture and garden magazines that he subscribed to, but I didn't pay much attention to the structure of houses. I wanted to look at the way people furnished them. I didn't make the leap from interior to exterior as a personal expression until after college.

Now I'm really into it. I think it would be so much fun to take a house and redo it from the beams out. I realize there's a great deal of money, contractors, and fuss involved, but I still think it'd be terrific. And I look with a critical eye at what people do with the outsides of their homes, even if they didn't build the original. I'm just fascinated by how a yard or a front door expresses personality. I think I admire a neatly planned and executed walkway as much as I do a perfectly painted dining room.

The eyes may be the window to the soul, but the window treatment you choose is also soul-revealing. So watch out. Some dark and stormy night, I may slip down your street, searching for clues to your inmost heart. I'm Architecture Cop. Just doing my job, ma'am. Just doing my job.