By Amy Mullis, Home Ownership Editor

The problem with buying a new house is waiting for the closing date to sign the papers.  It’s not the waiting I mind, it’s that I think of so many do-it-Bill’s-self projects while I’m waiting for the calendar pages to turn.  He recently caught me smuggling paint samples across the parking lot to my sister’s car.  She’s buying a new house; a little something smaller than the one on fifty acres of overgrown pastureland that ate her lawn tractor six months ago.
 
It seems like an off-the-rack house never fits exactly right the first time you try in on. It requires taking up in the wainscoting or lengthening in the living room.  And it’s always a tight fit around the back porch.  I’m not the crafty type—the Household Government restricted my right to own a nail gun years ago—but it seems to me that a few adjustments here and there make the whole thing more comfortable for everybody.
 
An extra closet is always nice; a roomy affair designed to hold the day-to-day items you chip off the den floor when unexpected company drops by.  I always thought closets were like pockets—if you don’t think to tuck one in between the seams during the manufacturing process, you’re stuck standing in a long line holding your movie money in a sweaty palm and giving your jacket to the nice man behind you to keep up with when your hands are full.  It turns out that with the right frame of mind and a project manager that knows his ball peen from his plumb bob, you can add a closet as easy as sticking a letter in an envelope.
 
I checked with Bill to see what it would take to get a new closet.  He told me to write him a letter.