Building our first house was a learning process. The smartest thing we did was lay out each room — floor by floor — in string on the empty lot once we had a baseline design. From there, we walked each hall, toured each bedroom and conducted a spatial-relations thought experiment of how we’d operate the kitchen, situate a family movie or configure ourselves for Thanksgiving dinner. We then tweaked the blueprints with our architects at Nested Design Studio. Even in hindsight, I wouldn’t nudge a single wall this way or that. Our custom floor plan is spot-on.