So there’s going to be some upheaval in the Vernon-Sonney household this month, as we play musical rooms upstairs. Kevin’s house is a three bedroom with a FROG–finished room over garage–and it is in the large FROG that the kids have been living, lo this past decade.
However, times they are a-changin’, and puberty waits for no man, so the kids are hitting the point where they really want separate rooms. And so Kevin and I, who have our studio and office in the two smaller bedrooms, are moving into the big room over the garage, and the kids are moving into our studio and office. They get privacy to do whatever soon-to-be-teenage-boys do in private, we get a good deal more space in our combined quarters.
We have been calling this hypothetical space “the stoffice” (studio + office) or occasionally The Adult Cave. We have such glorious plans….*
However, before we get our stoffice, there is the matter of moving the accumulated kid junk of ten years out. There have been multiple trips to Goodwill, and once we exhausted that, we rented a dumpster and have hauled out a great deal MORE junk (as well as the remains of the old playground set and the dead water heater that were lurking by the side of the house.) Since his ex-wife was a bit of a hoarder and it is not in the nature of children to allow any object to leave their orbit without thorough deliberation, the room hadn’t had a thorough purge in a decade, so it’s been quite an adventure.
Once that’s out, though, the big expense comes–the carpet is a decade old, and it was a decade of dogs, cats, and small children. It is trashed beyond all hope of salvage. So, knuckling down and spending what’s left of the last book advance–it’s a business expense, since it’s my studio space!–we’re getting the floor re-done in the laminate which worked so well in Kevin’s office, hopefully later this month, which requires that we get EVERYTHING out of there and take up the carpet, which means the kids are sleeping in the living room and it’ll be an experiment in controlled chaos.
And also I have to paint at some point, preferably before we pull the carpet. This will take awhile, since it’s a BIG room, and has weirdly angled walls on one side that increase the painting surface required. That’s cool, though. I am a painting MACHINE.
Once THAT is done, we get to do the fun bit where we lay out the stoffice. Since there are no closets in this room, and cats will have access, I’ll probably have to lay out for some of the big Rubbermaid garage-storage units with the doors to keep my art and art supplies safe from feline depradations. And I will probably also lay out for a couple more book cases to enclose my studio area–I can work around other people fairly well, probably a legacy of two people working at home in a 460 sq ft apartment, but a degree of privacy makes everybody a lot happier, for those vital days when you want to surf the shameful bits of the internet while picking your nose.
We each get a big double window. This is great, but I am a little sad, because for two years, I’ve been staring out my window at the garden in the front yard. So now I’ll have a much better view…but it’ll be of the backyard.
Which clearly means that come spring, I have to start renovating the backyard.
I’ll probably move at least one bird feeder to start, and the more easily moved birdbath, but I’m going to miss the aerial view of my first really established garden.
*Okay, fine, our glorious plans involve a TV and an exercise bike. And maybe a small dorm-fridge. Our fantasies tend to be small-scale.
