Building a house can play games with your mind. It’s about space and defining space. It’s about seeing the trees over the wall one week, and barely seeing the tops of the trees over the much taller wall a couple of weeks later.
I like the game of opening up a space in the wall for a window. Suddenly you can see through the wall. As you build the wall higher, it becomes a frame around the outside scene. It’s an open-ended frame with unlimited potential. It could grow tall enough to frame the heavens.
The sensible lintel puts an end to all that romantic thinking. It caps the potential, it closes the frame. This is not a sad thing, though. It just focuses your attention on a certain view.
The lintel seems dominant when you install it. As you build the wall over the lintel, its visual impact gets smaller and smaller. Once the windows are in, you hardly notice the lintel.