Yet Another Side Project

I think it is becoming glaringly apparent that I’m am utterly incapable of doing a project from start to finish without getting pulled off on a side project, because here I am, starting yet another project instead of finishing off my room.

This latest side project is a huge office swap that also includes getting the carpet shampooed in one room and the walls in both rooms painted.

These rooms have been tossed around between Hubby and I over the years. One room was originally just a general “the office” but was mostly Hubby’s. The other was our dining room that is too poorly designed to actually function as a dining room. After a while, the dining room became my craft room, but I hated that the mess and disorganization of that space was always front and center when you walked through the front door. Hubby felt a little crammed in the office as it is on the small side and is the worst place in the house for being cold in the winter and hot in the summer. So, we swapped rooms.

The smaller room didn’t end up working for me as a craft room, so that’s when we moved the craft space (mostly my jewelry bench and supplies) to the unfinished basement, but left the room as my office. It is the room I wrote my book in and was such a perfect space for me, at least for an office kind of room and felt absolutely cozy, but I still had to go to the dank basement to do anything not on my computer.

New Office Space

New Office Space

New Office Space

Above photos are from when the office space was first mine.

Then Covid hit and Hubby needed to work from home.

Because the dining room space he took over was never intended as an office, there is no door. There was no way he’d be able to do any of his meetings in there and have any kind of privacy or quiet, so he shifted his work stuff into my office (he stole it back, so this is really ALL his fault! lol!) and kept his personal computer and office things in the dining room.

Of course, him taking over my room is a huge part of what prompted me to build my craft room in the basement. Especially after we found out that the work from home part was going to be a semi-permanent hybrid kind of thing.

When I got about half way through working on my room, we started talking about rearranging things between the two rooms. There were still all kinds of things in the office he took over that were still mine and I needed in there often and had to wait if he was in a meeting. He is often between the two rooms for various reasons, so we just decided to move him back in and rearrange things in a way that will work better all the way around.

Part of why that room was so crowded before was because it was still considered something of a joint office space and I had some of my bookcases in there. The dog’s crate was kept in there as well, which wasn’t small. Between those, Hubby’s computer cabinet, a big roll top desk, and a good size file cabinet, there wasn’t much space to move.

Now, we are moving all my bookcases into the “dining” room and turning it into a library/den/sitting room (we can’t agree what to call it, though media library is the most accurate as it will have books, movies, music and all the kids video games store in there). Taking those out of the equation of what has to go into Hubby’s office makes it so much easier to give him some room. That and he won’t have my bookcases and all my junk as his meeting background anymore.

His room is going to get painted as I never wanted to deal with that in all the other moves and those walls desperately need it. That carpet is also going to get shampooed because that was the dog’s favorite room and she loved to come crawl under the roll top after she’d be outside and had dirty wet feet, so I have a seriously ugly stain that needs to get cleaned (though I’m pretty sure I attempted that before and it didn’t even lighten, but I’m going to try).

I’m also going to repaint the other room as those walls are in just as bad a shape after having been my craft room. Doing the jewelry and silver work is shockingly messy and the walls are evidence of that.

A huge reason why I’m doing this now is that my Hubby is on a hybrid work from home schedule where he has to be in the office for 4 days every so many weeks or so. This coming week will be when he isn’t home, so I need to get this done now or wait for an extended period again. Considering I’ve started pulling things out of that room already that need to go in my new room, I figured I might as well just get it all the way done so he doesn’t feel like he is living in limbo.

Doing all of that means that I have to completely empty out each room, one at a time. My house is now completely upended. Again. Everything from the office is now spread out in every open space in my kitchen, living room and dining room. Talk about crowded!

It will take a couple of days to get the first room done and then my hands are tied until Hubby can help me move things back in before I can start on the next. By the time these two rooms are done, it’s going to feel like my entire house has gotten a makeover.