Monday, September 13, 2010

Room Renovations a la IKEA

As a neighbor pointed out, once you choose to fix one room, automatically you are forced to fix four more. In our case the fixed room was the so-called "Children's Retreat" or den or erstwhile "TV room," now the "library." Many bookshelves, two desks, a mini-armchair and various lamps (and mucho$ dinero$, though not an unreasonable amount) later, the girls have their own work spaces, the computer desk is free to be just that and the room no longer hosts the TV, its gargantuan wardrobe or the mismatched shelves. The openness, the designedness of the room is a breath of fresh air.

While not boring you with the details, suffice it to say that, like a mystic square/Sam Loyd puzzle, our house undertook several "moves" as we slid various bits of furniture around to accommodate our new library. If you include the garage, beneficiary of at least one bookshelf and some unsympathetic "archival object" management,* we have condemned five rooms to varying degrees of freshness though in all honesty two of them are looking much improved. The other three are works in progress, but the end is surely nigh. What next? The dreaded garage sale, of course!

Oh, and the response? Small boy is fascinated with things new and things to be constructed/deconstructed. Younger daughter delights in having her own little workspace. Older daughter is a teenager now and grunts approval or disapproval depending on influences beyond our ken, though I think she likes the changes.

Perhaps photos forthcoming. 

*I trashed a bunch of old crap.