Don Quixote and Me

.Sometimes when I get very discouraged I ask myself, "How did this insanity get started?"
I try to remember.  We wanted to have someplace comfortable to spend the summers.  My long-suffering wife has stayed with me for 33 years in Tucson even though she hates the heat.  We could spend our summers in the cool mountains! 
On a visit to Italy, where her ancestors are from, we fell in love with the charming stone houses with their slate roofs - 'tetti di pietra' in Italian.
We sat down with our architect, explained our concept, and he came up with an "artists rendition".  We were smitten.  It was love at first sight.  We were hooked.

 Of course, you can't build things like they did 400 years ago.  But, you can use materials that are available to you and try to reproduce the concept.  The challenge, of course is meeting modern building codes.  It proved very difficult to go against the grain.  In Arizona, everybody is building houses with with "stick frames" with exterior walls of styrofoam insulation covered with stucco.  Roofs can be terracotta tile or cement-based manufactured tiles.  But, like Don Quixote of legend, we had dream and nothing could dissuade us in pursuit of our quest.  We wanted a house that looked 400 years old on the outside, but had all the modern conveniences on the inside.

It's difficult looking at it now and envisioning how it will look like the original artist's drawing, but we have faith in the final outcome.