One of my favorite things to do as a kid was rearrange my bedroom or better yet- move into another room of the house. I once turned a portion of the basement of my childhood house into my bedroom for an estimated short lived 5 days.
At the bottom of the basement steps you could turn to the left to enter a large room that my parents used as an office (hello Commodore 64) and my brother, sister and I shared as a play schoolroom, complete with a desk and chalkboard and a wardrobe full of books. The wall closest to the stairway had a wallpapered nature scene of a path surrounding a lake in Autumn. Our little schoolroom led into another much larger room with a wood burning stove and piano. My sister and I along with our friends would use this room as the in house set to our music videos of ourselves lip synching to Madonna. We also housed the occasional fashion show and one haunted house. The small bathroom off this large “production” room is where we played Bloody Mary in the dark freaking ourselves out into oblivion.
Lots of space in those two rooms to make a cool temporary bedroom. But no, for my bedroom I was lured to the laundry room off the right side of the basement. There was a freezer sometimes stocked with popsicles; pro…but the the washer and dryer made terrifying noises through the night. It also attracted spiders; con. The tie breaker for my 8ish year old design mind was the huge built in shelves with hinged doors along the far end wall. These doors were my focal point and are what I designed my room around.
I cleared off the bottom two shelves. The top I piled in blankets to soften the compressed wood surface and added a small lamp for a bit of night reading. (Doubled as a light source for keeping an eye out for spiders.) On the bottom shelf I put clothes, books and toys. I brought down a few posters and my rocking chair and moved in a rug to give it a homey feel. This was my dream bedroom….for a few nights until I could no longer suffer through the spiders and the hard wooden “bed” and moved into another area of the house.
That may seem like a long story to introduce you to the fact that I recently gave one of my family member’s a new bedroom while they were out of town, but that’s just how I do things. So, as my family were on vacation out at sea for 7 days I went to work turning a cluttered dark room into a clean fresh relaxing space to come home to. I love giving people little surprises like this and it was much appreciated by its receiver.
Total money spent was less than $100 and other than the hours put into this project, I had some great stuff to work with.
*I’ve purposefully left out the name of the bedroom’s owner as not to embarrass them with shots of there previous mangled hoarded mess of a room!
So much hard work, but really fun to do for someone. In one last related note, my son who will be 13 in December has been so inspired by the chefs on The Cooking Channel and Food Network that he’s been so into cooking lately, making breakfast, lunch and dinner for me. Even washing the dishes! I wonder if this new interest of his will carry on until he’s grown….
xo
