Thoughts on the extra rooms in my house
When my sister moves out (which might be next year if she gets her duckies in a row) I will have two free bedrooms as well as the Green Room downstairs--one of the extra rooms in my house.
There are actually two extra rooms in my house that serve no real purpose, other than to add onto the square footage. And my quandary (dry?) is that I'm not quite sure what to do with them once she moves out.
Initially, it will be easy. I'm planning to use the Green Room (which is currently my nephew's toyroom) as a staging room for moving everything from the living room so I can tear down the fake dropped ceiling and paint. Then I will do the same with the dining room stuff, and the same with the entry room stuff, etc, until the downstairs is done.
However, what should I do with it afterwards? And in that same vein, what should I do with the Entry Room as well?
Let's go there first.
You walk through my side door into the Entry Room, which was called the 'breakfast room' when the house was for sale. It is the former kitchen, before the kitchen was added on in the 50s or so. This is the room where I tore up the fake plastic floor and found lovely linoleum underneath. (Its loveliness is debatable, I realize. But I digress.)
Anyway, so I have this rather large room that is too large to be a real mudroom. There is a five foot wide opening on one side that is the entry to the kitchen, a door that leads into the dining room and another door that leads to the basement on the same wall, and then the door that leads into the Green Room after that.
I had intended to stick my free piano in the Entry Room, but now I'm not so sure. Since the kitchen is large enough to be an eat-in kitchen, there's no real reason to put a table in the middle of it and call it a 'breakfast room', and I have a formal dining room already, so I don't need one of those.
This is Mabel's room, too, so it houses her crate and toys. It also houses everything that doesn't quite have a home yet, like my typewriter desk, my hopefully soon-to-be new to me bathroom sink, and other stuff I haven't gotten around to putting away yet.
This is not a great thing to see when you first walk in the door.
I should probably mention that there are no closets at all downstairs. I hide my vacuum cleaner behind my quilt rack. The closest thing to a closet is the laundry room, where we stick all the kitchen stuff that doesn't have a place. Our pantry is stuck in kitchen cabinets and jars displayed on the shelves.
I have been kicking around the idea of actually creating a closet in the entry room. My only issue is that I would have to make it look not stupid; it would have to be something like a built-in or something. There's even a nice rectangle in the floor where something once sat and they didn't put linoleum down. I could put it there, and it could reach all the way up to the ceiling.
Only, that still doesn't address the fact that I don't know what to do with the room itself. Any ideas?
The Green Room is accessible by the living room (via the pocket doors), the hallway (via a door) and it has the door to the bathroom as well. It is also a long room; one of the longer rooms in the house. It is called the Green Room because it is painted a *cough* lovely shade of mint green. Not by me, I swear! Coupled with the beautiful carpet my PO wishes she had taken with her, it was breathtaking, and not in a good way.
At the moment, it is Ethan's toyroom. The cats have their feeding station and two litterboxes in this room as well. The air conditioner is in this room.
When my sister moves out, and with her, all of Ethan's toys, I will have to figure out what to do with this room as well. This is where I'm leaning towards putting the free piano, if it ever gets here. And my Dad suggested that I could move my papasan chair and my mamasan couch to this room, and put something a bit more formal in the living room.
The only problem with that is I need two living rooms less than I need a formal dining room. So I don't think so.
However, I don't want it to be an empty room forever, because I will invariably fill it up with stuff. And I don't want to end up like my PO, really. Honest!
I have toyed with the idea of making the current living room into a library, and moving the TV and couch and stuff into the Green Room, which would make the Green Room the living room, per se. However, since I purged a lot of books, I would really have to buy a lot more books to make a library a viable idea.
I have thought about making some floor-to-ceiling cat trees and giving the Green Room over to the cats and letting that be their room. But then, what do I do about the piano?
I have also thought about buying Mabel a loveseat at Goodwill for the Entry Room, so she can have her own 'couch', since she's not allowed on the furniture otherwise. :)
Other than that, I have no wonderful ideas.
Upstairs is a little easier; one of the free bedrooms will be the spare bedroom. That will probably be Bekah's bedroom. Ethan's bedroom is destined to hold overflow from my office, which will probably end up being fabric. Or, I move all the fabric and sewing machines to Ethan's room and keep everything else in here. I'm not sure about that, though. I'm planning to do the same as downstairs with the upstairs bedrooms--keep one empty and move everything into the empty bedroom while I paint/remove fake dropped ceiling/etc.
I will definitely never run out of space here. Not with all these extra rooms!
There are actually two extra rooms in my house that serve no real purpose, other than to add onto the square footage. And my quandary (dry?) is that I'm not quite sure what to do with them once she moves out.
Initially, it will be easy. I'm planning to use the Green Room (which is currently my nephew's toyroom) as a staging room for moving everything from the living room so I can tear down the fake dropped ceiling and paint. Then I will do the same with the dining room stuff, and the same with the entry room stuff, etc, until the downstairs is done.
However, what should I do with it afterwards? And in that same vein, what should I do with the Entry Room as well?
Let's go there first.
You walk through my side door into the Entry Room, which was called the 'breakfast room' when the house was for sale. It is the former kitchen, before the kitchen was added on in the 50s or so. This is the room where I tore up the fake plastic floor and found lovely linoleum underneath. (Its loveliness is debatable, I realize. But I digress.)
Anyway, so I have this rather large room that is too large to be a real mudroom. There is a five foot wide opening on one side that is the entry to the kitchen, a door that leads into the dining room and another door that leads to the basement on the same wall, and then the door that leads into the Green Room after that.
I had intended to stick my free piano in the Entry Room, but now I'm not so sure. Since the kitchen is large enough to be an eat-in kitchen, there's no real reason to put a table in the middle of it and call it a 'breakfast room', and I have a formal dining room already, so I don't need one of those.
This is Mabel's room, too, so it houses her crate and toys. It also houses everything that doesn't quite have a home yet, like my typewriter desk, my hopefully soon-to-be new to me bathroom sink, and other stuff I haven't gotten around to putting away yet.
This is not a great thing to see when you first walk in the door.
I should probably mention that there are no closets at all downstairs. I hide my vacuum cleaner behind my quilt rack. The closest thing to a closet is the laundry room, where we stick all the kitchen stuff that doesn't have a place. Our pantry is stuck in kitchen cabinets and jars displayed on the shelves.
I have been kicking around the idea of actually creating a closet in the entry room. My only issue is that I would have to make it look not stupid; it would have to be something like a built-in or something. There's even a nice rectangle in the floor where something once sat and they didn't put linoleum down. I could put it there, and it could reach all the way up to the ceiling.
Only, that still doesn't address the fact that I don't know what to do with the room itself. Any ideas?
The Green Room is accessible by the living room (via the pocket doors), the hallway (via a door) and it has the door to the bathroom as well. It is also a long room; one of the longer rooms in the house. It is called the Green Room because it is painted a *cough* lovely shade of mint green. Not by me, I swear! Coupled with the beautiful carpet my PO wishes she had taken with her, it was breathtaking, and not in a good way.
At the moment, it is Ethan's toyroom. The cats have their feeding station and two litterboxes in this room as well. The air conditioner is in this room.
When my sister moves out, and with her, all of Ethan's toys, I will have to figure out what to do with this room as well. This is where I'm leaning towards putting the free piano, if it ever gets here. And my Dad suggested that I could move my papasan chair and my mamasan couch to this room, and put something a bit more formal in the living room.
The only problem with that is I need two living rooms less than I need a formal dining room. So I don't think so.
However, I don't want it to be an empty room forever, because I will invariably fill it up with stuff. And I don't want to end up like my PO, really. Honest!
I have toyed with the idea of making the current living room into a library, and moving the TV and couch and stuff into the Green Room, which would make the Green Room the living room, per se. However, since I purged a lot of books, I would really have to buy a lot more books to make a library a viable idea.
I have thought about making some floor-to-ceiling cat trees and giving the Green Room over to the cats and letting that be their room. But then, what do I do about the piano?
I have also thought about buying Mabel a loveseat at Goodwill for the Entry Room, so she can have her own 'couch', since she's not allowed on the furniture otherwise. :)
Other than that, I have no wonderful ideas.
Upstairs is a little easier; one of the free bedrooms will be the spare bedroom. That will probably be Bekah's bedroom. Ethan's bedroom is destined to hold overflow from my office, which will probably end up being fabric. Or, I move all the fabric and sewing machines to Ethan's room and keep everything else in here. I'm not sure about that, though. I'm planning to do the same as downstairs with the upstairs bedrooms--keep one empty and move everything into the empty bedroom while I paint/remove fake dropped ceiling/etc.
I will definitely never run out of space here. Not with all these extra rooms!
posted by Jennifer at 4:40 PM
2 Comments:
I would definitely have a built-in closet put into the entry area since you are so short on closets. Have a carpenter/builder put one in and make it look nice to match the rest of the area including woodwork. I have a nice entry, but not enough room for one of those really nice big hall seats/trees. There are some beauties out there and one could make an impressive 'hello' at this entrance and also be functional.
I like the library idea because I'm a bookworm. I, too, have a ton of rooms and there are only two of us. So we ended up with a library/study and two living rooms. The idea of a formal living room has never pleased me much but when you have a bunch of space it just seems to happen and if you own or are into those antique parlor sets this would be a good place for one because those things aren't too comfortable. A formal living room may also be a good place for the piano. Also, it does make it easy if you have random company (that doesn't know your housekeeping habits) because it can be the one room you always keep looking perfect. Upstairs (in what used to be an old kitchen which has now been redone and the cupboards/sink replaced) we have created a crafts room since we do plenty of that type of thing. Have you considered a room for this type of thing? Will you have more than the piano? Maybe a music room? Do you workout and have a bunch of gym equipment? (I sure as heck don't) But many people have their own home gyms. Do you meditate and do yoga? Are you a dancer and want a bunch of mirrors and a barre? Others have what they now refer to as 'media rooms' with large screen plasma TVs, surround sound, etc. That's another option. Are you into model trains or those whimsy Hallowe'en or Christmas villages? You could stage one heck of an area. It's nice to have too many as opposed to too few! Good luck!
Thanks, Patricia! I have been thinking about your suggestions and thoughts. I am working on the entry room now--at least what I *can* do vs. what I *want* to do. So far so good.
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