Ownership

Owning here is a different proposition from owning almost anywhere else, for one structural reason: most owners are absent for most of the year, and the house is not. It carries on through a humid summer and a wet winter with nobody in it, and what it costs, in money, attention and other people's judgement, follows from that fact more than from the size of the building.

These pieces are about the parts nobody mentions at the point of sale. What the fabric of a lakeside building does over a year. What has to be done when it is empty. Which appointments matter, in what order, and why the person you choose to hold the keys is a more consequential decision than the architect.

The costs are covered in the guides, where they can be kept current. What sits here is the reasoning around them.