STORY 11 / 3
She thought she needed a bigger kitchen.
A woman contacted me because she wanted to expand her kitchen, but the prices she'd been quoted made her nervous. I asked what she hoped the expansion would change. Then I kept asking why those changes mattered to her.
Eventually, she told me something about her childhood. Growing up, she'd been so embarrassed by her family's kitchen that she never invited friends over. Now her own children were getting old enough to have friends over, and she didn't want them to feel the way she had.
"Oh my God, I had no idea I felt that way," she said.
She'd come into the conversation thinking she needed more space. What she discovered was that she wanted her children to feel comfortable inviting friends into their home.
I don't know whether she'll ultimately expand her kitchen. She might. But she now understands what's driving that decision, which opens up other possibilities worth considering.
STORY 22 / 3
They were sure they needed an addition.
A couple came to me convinced they needed an addition to create a suite for her parents to live in.
I started asking why they wanted to do it. At first, the answers were practical. They needed room for her parents, and they wanted them to be comfortable.
But as we kept talking, she began describing everything her parents had done for her growing up. Now she had an opportunity to give something back. She said doing this made her feel like she was being a "good kid."
That was the first realization. What mattered most wasn't the addition itself. It was being able to care for her parents the way they'd cared for her.
Once we understood that, I asked whether we could explore another possibility. Their house already had rooms they rarely used. What if we rearranged those spaces instead of building new ones?
That was the second realization. They'd never considered that the space they already had could accommodate what they wanted.
They found a way to give her parents a comfortable place to live without building an addition, and avoided spending money on an addition they didn't need.
STORY 33 / 3
They'd been living with an unfinished bathroom for years.
A couple had decided to act as their own general contractor on their primary bathroom renovation. They'd gotten through framing, rough-ins, and closing up the walls, but then everything stopped.
When I visited, a five-foot-wide double pocket door in their bedroom opened onto a bathroom full of plywood and raw drywall. Boxes and boxes of samples from different vendors were scattered across the floor.
They'd talked to so many vendors and gotten so much advice that they didn't know whose recommendations to follow anymore. Everyone had an opinion about their particular product, but nobody was looking at the bathroom as a whole.
She preferred one tile combination. He preferred another. They both loved the same stone for the tub deck and vanities, but he thought the fabricator's price was outrageous. With every conversation and every new sample, making a decision seemed to get harder.
We spent our time looking at the entire bathroom, talking through how the different materials would work together, and sorting out which choices made sense.
When we got to the stone, I explained how fabrication is priced and what some of the alternatives might cost. Once he understood what went into the quote, the price didn't seem nearly as unreasonable. He felt comfortable choosing the stone they'd both loved from the beginning.
By the time I left, they'd agreed on the floor tile, wall tile, vanity color, and stone.
After years of living with an unfinished bathroom, they finally felt comfortable with the decisions they needed to make to finish it.
, a helper that can explain an exercise or help you find your way around between conversations.