When we bought this house, it was the only house on the street for sale. It had been built three years after the already-existing houses in a lot set aside for a different architectural plan. All of the other houses had been sold and were being lived in, on this quiet street backing onto a wooded ravine.

When we first viewed its interior it was in an unfinished state. What attracted my husband to the house was its huge wall expanses where our collection of paintings and Japanese kimono could be showcased. Since that time paintings have edged out most of the kimono.

It is the houses across from us that back immediately on the forest. As a backdrop to our house, there are other houses. The sight of which offends my husband's aesthetic. He would much preferred to have backed on the ravine, so we could view trees out our back windows.

Our appreciation of the interior of the house, its exterior design and its placement on our lot all were of immense attraction to us. The fact that we had immediate access to a wooded ravine directly across the street from our house was another, invaluable dimension of excitement. For the ravine, to us, expresses immeasurable quality of life. Not only because it bequeaths us with cleansed air quality, but because it also affords us the opportunity any time of the day or night, to explore its pathways and enjoy the closeness to nature.

In the years since we moved into this house that has been our home for over twenty years, my husband has steadily made all manner of personal improvements that suit our decorating tastes, inside and out. Among which has been the installation of stained glass windows and doors. We did not actually envision that the entire house would eventually be converted to stained glass windows covering the existing windows, but this is precisely what has occurred.

And yesterday, my husband installed another panel of stained glass in our living room, at the curved top of the Palladian window set, up at the second-story height. I don't mind admitting that I would gladly have foregone the pleasure of seeing that exquisitely coloured-and-designed window not being installed. But it was, and soon to join it will be two rectangular windows, completing the stained glass coverage of that window wall.

When we bought the house my husband also purchased an industrial-grade set of two scaffolds, thinking ahead to when he would be performing all manner of work and upgrades in the house, and outside the house. It is time-consuming and heavy work setting those scaffolds up for use. When a similar window at a similar height was installed years earlier in the foyer, I clambered up on the scaffolds, one installed over the other, to assist in the installation of that window.

Because of exterior retrofitting work my husband had been engaged in during the summer months he had used the scaffolding outside, on the deck, to allow him to work in relative safety at the exterior second-floor level. He had decided to store the scaffolding parts in the larger of our two garden sheds which he had constructed several years earlier. We're currently in the throes of winter, with plenty of snow and ice built up, and it would have represented an even more involved and difficult bit of work to haul them indoors to set them up in the living room.

Instead, my husband brought into the house from the garage his tallest ladder and set it up in the living room, blithely setting aside my protestations that he wait until spring when all three windows would be ready for installation and he could use the scaffolding. He devised a way to bind the window with a 'handle' on its top, so he could slowly haul it, one-handed, up that ladder, to plunk it into the window frame and secure it. At the bottom of the ladder my heart was pounding.

His self-confidence and flawless measurements succeeded, as they always seem to. He managed neatly to slip the bindings out from under the window, then gently tapped small nails into place as a temporary measure to ensure the security of the windows before finally securing them with the moulding he had prepared.