Some jobs require a top-down approach, while others work better bottom-up. Building a house, for example: I’m a firm believer in the traditional way of doing this. You lay the foundations: check. You build a few walls: check. You add a roof (for which the walls come in handy): check. And so you continue, until you get to hanging curtains and reorganising the furniture for the tenth time. This is the way sensible people do it.

So why is Ilze in London at the moment, shopping for doorknobs? We don’t know whether the foundations will need reinforcement, our walls need to be lifted to increase volume, and the roof needs to be replaced completely. In addition, we have several tons of industrial equipment littered about what should one day be our kitchen and living room, and no obvious way of shifting them.

So Ilze went for an alternative approach, getting the doorknobs first and making sure the rest of the house matches them. She comes from a great contrarian tradition; when all the other rats appear to be swimming downstream, why not break your back going upstream, because clearly this is where the greater reward will be. By the end of the week we will own several pairs of spiffy English doorknobs. Now to just add some doors to those…

Categories: General
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