She showed up
in boots.
I showed up
in pale jeans.

The night before Makena came to site, we spent an hour choosing her outfit.

Not my outfit. Mine was never the question. Pale jeans, old gum boots done. I was ready in four minutes. Makena does not work like that.

Makena is the designer in our home and in our life. She does not just show up. So the night before, there was a process. The boots came first, proper ones, for the occasion. Then the checked shirt, tied at the waist. Then the hat, because there was no way she was arriving in a standard safety helmet that would destroy the fit. She found the right hat. Of course she did.

The result: lumberjack chic. Intentional, considered, completely her.

We drove to site with Fifth Harmony playing. "Work from Home, that is the song you should have in your head when you picture her outfit." That is also the song she wishes I had shown up dressed for. I was in pale jeans. We compromised on the music.

The crew was doing formwork that day. The walls are up which means there is not much to record, more to watch. The kind of day where you walk the site slowly and look at things properly for the first time.

Makena looks at things differently to me.

I look at a bathroom and I see how it functions. Where the door opens, where the plumbing runs, whether the space works. Makena looks at the same bathroom and sees where the vanity mirror catches the light. Where the sink sits in relation to the window. Where the bathtub goes not just which wall, but at what angle, for what view. She has it mapped in her head before she has said a word. She is just like our daughter in that way plans everything in her mind and wants it to go accordingly.

We made changes that day. The sink moved. The stone column height went up. Small adjustments that I had looked at twenty times and not seen until she stood in the room and pointed.

We ask questions, she and I, even when we think we know. Acting like we don't know so we can learn and not make mistakes.

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Not because we need the numbers. Because the people who find this place through someone who loves it are already the right people.

Then we came to the fence. This is where it got a little heated.

Makena wanted a prefab fence. Clean, defined, immediate. On any given Sunday the prefab is the right answer it goes up fast and looks finished. My problem with it: we would feel closed in. A property above Lake Naivasha with a fence that makes it feel like a compound is a fence that is working against the view.

I wanted an electric fence. Safe, secure, open. Her problem with it: you can be seen. Privacy matters. A resort without privacy is not a resort.

We went back and forth.

You can't dismiss what makes sense. Eventually we landed here: electric fence on the perimeter, live fence from the inside, landscaping in two weeks to tie it together. The view stays. The privacy comes. The fence earns its place.

On the doors she conceded. Folding doors on the front instead of sliding my instinct, her eventual agreement. On the terrace I conceded. A small extended pergola to complement the look and protect from the sun her instinct, my eventual agreement. Neither of us got everything. Both of us got something better.

Not one person deciding and the other agreeing. Two people who both have a point, both know it, and have to find the same door anyway.

The mood board.

Before a single wall went up, Makena had already designed the interior. Every material, every finish, every detail documented, considered, decided. When she stood in that bathroom and moved the sink, she wasn't improvising. She was correcting the gap between what was built and what was always supposed to be there.

At some point in the afternoon Makena pulled out the picnic set.

Blanket. Umbrella. Snacks. On a construction site, surrounded by formwork and cement bags and a crew of workers who had seen many things but perhaps not this.

I was not surprised. Not even a little. That is the thing about Makena she was not just saying I came to site. She was saying have a seat, enjoy the view, it should not just be all work and no play. So we sat. And we looked at the valley. And she told me exactly where the couch should go not approximately, not eventually, but specifically, with reference to the mood board and a few adjustments she had already decided on.

The couch exists in her mind. It has for a while. The resort just needs to catch up.

I wore pale jeans to a construction site and my co-founder wore boots.

I see structure. She sees beauty. I look at the foundation and think about what it holds. She looks at the same foundation and thinks about what it becomes. I track the build sequence. She tracks the experience of being there when it is done.

We are not building the same thing. We are building it together, which is different and better.

The walls are up. The formwork is going in. Next is the rooftop slab.

I already know it works. Makena stood at the terrace and looked at the valley and she was not looking at what is there. She was looking at what will be there.

I trust that look more than any spreadsheet I have ever made.

Next issue: the walls are done. Now we build upward the rooftop terrace slab is next. Makena already has opinions about the view from up there.