They threw filth at you!

I broke my routine again this morning because I had to go to the bank on Seventh Avenue. Walking up President Street, I noticed a new construction site and stopped to look. The building is about the size of ours--a 20-ft-wide lot, three stories, formerly industrial. The facade had been stripped and the interior gutted down to the brick. Masons stood atop the structure, adding new stone, perhaps creating a fourth story. Many people have come up with clever, inventive ways of converting small buildings, especially on the fringes of Park Slope and in Gowanus, where we bought. The New York Times last week featured a couple in Fort Greene who bought a vacant lot for $180,000 and built an industrial-looking but spartan 4,200-sq-ft home for $550,000, or $130 a square foot.

I watched the masons work, laying the mortar and hoisting the heavy stones into place. That'll be us next year, I thought, and remembered that we're meeting with our architect tonight to see what designs she's come up with. I stood in reverie, admiring the handiwork, as a dump truck from a construction site next to me unloaded a pile of dirt onto the street, enveloping me in a cloud of dust. Thankfully I was wearing earth-toned pants. Water yesterday, dirt today. What's next? Mud? Or maybe this: