A Change of Plans

Our home is a two bedroom house.
There are five of us now.
Auren and Fern share a bedroom, and Kira and I have our own room.
Meer sleeps with us for now.  She has been spending most of the night in her own bed next to ours.

This time last year, we were planning a new bedroom in the basement for me and Kira.
Nothing fancy.  Nothing big.  But something to call our own for the long term.
That would also free up another room to spread the kids around a bit.
That was last year.
The plans have changed.
Deciding to take a long leave from the workforce has changed our options for improving the house.
Regardless of how simple it may be, a  "from scratch" renovation is costly.

While planning our new bedroom, we allowed our current sleeping quarters to accumulate items and furniture that had no other place to go.
It became cluttered and dirty because we thought we would be renovating it for the kids soon.




It is now clear that we'll be staying put for a while longer.
That means that we had better fix it up a bit.
Meer can stay with us for a long time yet so there is no hard deadline to expand the sleeping arrangements.








Sprucing a room up a bit usually means a trip to the store for something or other.
We are going to do a little renovation with what we have on hand instead.
Here is how we are going to do it.

First of all, the room is small.  There is barely enough room to do anything more than sleep.
The obvious solution is to get rid of some furniture.  So we have.
No more bedroom set.


Floor space is at a premium.  There is, however, lots of space above the floor.
Our clothes will be going on shelves instead of into dresser drawers.
This adds space to the room as well as making the clothing visually accessible.
That means looking for something to wear instead of rummaging for it.
It will also add up to more room than the bedroom set could offer.
The shelves?  Maple flooring of course.
I'll post that project tomorrow if all goes well.  I shouldn't need to buy anything.  I'll just make up some basic shelving to hold and organize our clothing.

Secondly, there is painting.
From the store?  Nothing.  We have enough leftover paint from earlier projects to freshen up the walls and ceiling.  I just hope that it doesn't end up battleship grey.  It will likely be all white.  Nothing fancy, but fresh with a roomier feel.
To be honest, we did need a paint roller.  That was provided by my Dad next door.  Thanks Dad!

The third big change will be a re-tooling of the closet.
The new shelving should eliminate the need for clothes in the closet, so it can be used for other items that normally clutter the room.  It is the only closet in the house so it is vulnerable to "stuffing".  It could use some relief.

Even modest renovations can really mess the rest of the house up.  Everything must shift accordingly.
Items must either find a new spot in the house or leave it altogether.
We have become proficient at purging the house on a regular basis.  If we didn't, we would be buried.

The other trick to renovating is keeping the kids occupied.
Today we brought out the big guns;  Movies!
It was enough for us to tag team the work on the bedroom.






Once upon a time, we were quite good at improving the house without spending much money.
As our income grew, so did our desires for quality home improvements.
Now that we have acquired more skills, more experience, and more perspective, I hope to be able to improve our home with quality renovations without spending very much, if any, more money.