Nearly every room in this house is a redux of our last house. I am using nearly all of the same furniture and decor in just about every room, although of course not everything fits or works the same way it did in the old house. The boys' room will look fairly familiar.
When we first moved in, I put Princess in the front room and the boys in the side room. Their rooms are the same amount of square footage, and the side room has a bigger closet, so I thought that would be the best room for the boys. I didn't take any pictures of this. A few days after I got the upstairs unpacked, I knew this was a mistake.
Neither room is very big--they are both about 10x11. In the front room, Princess's room was shaping up to be a lovely, light-filled, spacious nursery. The boys in the side room, however, were cramped, even with a minimum of furniture, and the room just did not have a good layout.The front room had a smaller closet but a better wall layout. So after two weeks of that, we switched the rooms around, putting Princess in the side room and the boys in the front room.
Yes--I moved my children from our old house to Grandma's house then into a new house 3000 miles away, and juuuuust when they were settling into their new rooms I changed them all around again. When we finally got a bedframe for Greg last week and started to build the bed, Princess wandered in and said "ah we changing dis back to my woom again? Da brudders are moving back to da udder woom again?" Keep them on their toes, I say.
I will admit space planning is not one of my strengths. I sometimes have to live with a layout for a while before deciding why it doesn't work (like...three years in our Haddon Township house before I figured out a good layout for the living room). When we switched the rooms around, I arranged the boys room nearly identically to how it was in our last house, with the two beds at the head of the room and the dressers at the foot of the bed. I kept the white Expedit in the room in the bumpout under the window, because we don't have another place for it, and it won't fit in the side room.
This still looked and felt cramped (all the mess in there notwithstanding; I am forever going "oh crap, I forgot to take a before picture").
I wasn't terribly happy with it, but I left it for a while, because it was functional (the mattress was not standing on end, I swear), and I had other areas of the house to concentrate on. Plus the second bed still did not have hardware, so Greg's mattress was on the floor.
This weekend we finally gave up on attempting to find or replicate the old bed hardware, and ordered a freestanding metal bedframe for Greg's bed. We screwed the headboard and footboard to the new metal frame (not without difficulty, but we are hoping it will hold).
While I was sitting in the room watching the Mister be handy, I started thinking about how we could improve the layout.
The most obvious solution was to remove the doors to the closet and put the dressers inside the closet, along with the filing cabinet, since the boys have no real need for a place to hang clothes. However, if we are to keep the filing cabinet in the closet, the sliding doors need to come off, because one cannot access anything in the middle of the closet with the doors on. Unfortunately, I have nowhere to put the closet doors; the garage is full.
After much deliberation, we moved the filing cabinet out of the closet and into the hallway at the top of the stairs. This is heinously ugly but for now it will have to do. This meant that the two dressers could live on either end of the closet, the doors can stay on the closet, and we now have much more floor space for the beds. Voila.
I moved the Expedit out of the bumpout and stood it up at the foot of Greg's bed. The two beds are now centered on the opposite wall. The dressers are in the closet. This also allowed us to bring in the blue bookshelf to act as a nightstand between the beds.
So that is the mostly blank slate I am working with. What remains to be done in this room is to repaint the blue bookshelf white, get some baskets for toys, and hang some art. I will talk about my ideas for art in another post.
When we first moved in, I put Princess in the front room and the boys in the side room. Their rooms are the same amount of square footage, and the side room has a bigger closet, so I thought that would be the best room for the boys. I didn't take any pictures of this. A few days after I got the upstairs unpacked, I knew this was a mistake.
Neither room is very big--they are both about 10x11. In the front room, Princess's room was shaping up to be a lovely, light-filled, spacious nursery. The boys in the side room, however, were cramped, even with a minimum of furniture, and the room just did not have a good layout.The front room had a smaller closet but a better wall layout. So after two weeks of that, we switched the rooms around, putting Princess in the side room and the boys in the front room.
Yes--I moved my children from our old house to Grandma's house then into a new house 3000 miles away, and juuuuust when they were settling into their new rooms I changed them all around again. When we finally got a bedframe for Greg last week and started to build the bed, Princess wandered in and said "ah we changing dis back to my woom again? Da brudders are moving back to da udder woom again?" Keep them on their toes, I say.
I will admit space planning is not one of my strengths. I sometimes have to live with a layout for a while before deciding why it doesn't work (like...three years in our Haddon Township house before I figured out a good layout for the living room). When we switched the rooms around, I arranged the boys room nearly identically to how it was in our last house, with the two beds at the head of the room and the dressers at the foot of the bed. I kept the white Expedit in the room in the bumpout under the window, because we don't have another place for it, and it won't fit in the side room.
This still looked and felt cramped (all the mess in there notwithstanding; I am forever going "oh crap, I forgot to take a before picture").
I wasn't terribly happy with it, but I left it for a while, because it was functional (the mattress was not standing on end, I swear), and I had other areas of the house to concentrate on. Plus the second bed still did not have hardware, so Greg's mattress was on the floor.
This weekend we finally gave up on attempting to find or replicate the old bed hardware, and ordered a freestanding metal bedframe for Greg's bed. We screwed the headboard and footboard to the new metal frame (not without difficulty, but we are hoping it will hold).
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| I have no idea why I took this with such an artistic angle. |
While I was sitting in the room watching the Mister be handy, I started thinking about how we could improve the layout.
The most obvious solution was to remove the doors to the closet and put the dressers inside the closet, along with the filing cabinet, since the boys have no real need for a place to hang clothes. However, if we are to keep the filing cabinet in the closet, the sliding doors need to come off, because one cannot access anything in the middle of the closet with the doors on. Unfortunately, I have nowhere to put the closet doors; the garage is full.
After much deliberation, we moved the filing cabinet out of the closet and into the hallway at the top of the stairs. This is heinously ugly but for now it will have to do. This meant that the two dressers could live on either end of the closet, the doors can stay on the closet, and we now have much more floor space for the beds. Voila.
I moved the Expedit out of the bumpout and stood it up at the foot of Greg's bed. The two beds are now centered on the opposite wall. The dressers are in the closet. This also allowed us to bring in the blue bookshelf to act as a nightstand between the beds.
So that is the mostly blank slate I am working with. What remains to be done in this room is to repaint the blue bookshelf white, get some baskets for toys, and hang some art. I will talk about my ideas for art in another post.
You did an awesome job with the small space! Love the curtains and the twin beds. I have a full size jenny lind bed I found for when my little girl graduates to a big girl bed!
ReplyDeleteSo glad you could make the old bed work!
ReplyDeleteSpace issues can be a hassle. It's hy I used to have little cardboard cut outs of all my furniture drawn to 1" equals 1 foot scale. I'd measure rooms and play with the cutouts before hauling the heavy stuff around.
Of course that was before kids.
Your house is really coming together. Love your daughter's comment!
ReplyDelete