It’s a takeoff from the old Brady show, “Marsha, Marsha, Marsha.” But in this case, there are more similarities than meets the eye. Our house – while not stuck in the 1970s – was stuck in the 1980s. Think wallpaper, baby blue countertops, more wallpaper and mismatched floors.
The house also has some anomalies. It’s got good bones, as they say, but the space was used oddly and very rarely efficiently. One big example is our L-shaped family room. Now, off the bat, you can start to understand the problem. Most people don’t have an L-shaped family room. Some folks have an open concept house that has an L-shape that connects the dining to the living or the living to the kitchen, etc. But one room being an L-shape on its own? Not that common, unsurprisingly.
So, why the L-shape? Two reasons, actually. One is structural. The “dog leg” or short leg of the L is actually a bump out. So, there are some structural supports as well as plumbing that goes up the middle of the room. The other reason is that the builder/homeowner plopped a laundry room and half-bath by the side door, which ate into the family room.
Add to that, on the long side of the L, the builder decided to put in a coat closet. Now, I’m not an expert in building houses, but I have to say, the location of this closet never made sense to me. Why on earth would you take up most of the usable space in the family room with the entry to a coat closet? Because while the opening is only four feet wide, you have to always leave space on either side and in front of it for folks to access the coat closet. I mean, wouldn’t you ever stand back and look at it? I can’t imagine not thinking, “Hmm… the dog leg itself isn’t going to be hard enough to work around. Perhaps I should put a coat closet right here and make it nearly impossible.”
As a result, when I first moved in, my husband didn’t really use that room. Even though we now do, it’s been difficult to appropriately size furniture. I ended up using a love seat and two small leather chairs but with a TV, coffee table, two end tables and one table lamp, the room felt hodge-podgy and I have to admit, never completely comfortable. It works fine enough for two people and one cat – though the loveseat gets small – but any more than that and it’s just plain awkward.
Enter the next renovation. Now, totally with my husband’s agreement, I bought a new couch. This one – to take advantage of the long room – is 10 feet long. It’s actually two sectionals put together and will have four seat cushions across. On each side, there will be an ottoman and in the middle, the coffee table. If we’re having a movie night, we can place both ottomans on one side and the coffee table on the other. If we’re having folks over, the two ottomans can be separated and along with the two leather chairs, we would have seating for eight. Problem solved. I have found a way to work around the awkward layout and make this space functional. But…
Well, we have to deal with the closet wall. My original thought was easy: just close in the closet and open it from the laundry room/half-bath. No, it couldn’t be a coat closet anymore but we didn’t need that. We have a coat closet in the main entryway as well. Instead, we could turn that space into a first floor recycling center.
But that’s when the project got derailed. Once we started thinking about possibilities, we lost our heads. Could we move the half-bath to near the stairs and have a laundry room-pantry-recycling center? Could we create a butler’s pantry by the stairs (and close to the dining room) as what we really need is serving dish and small appliance storage? Should we move the washer and dryer to the old closet space to give ourselves a flat wall to work against?
The possibilities, while not endless, became overwhelming. So, we called our favorite architect. She’s just amazing at space planning. She does a phenomenal job at getting us to see space more efficiently and it’s because of her that our kitchen turned out so well. If anyone hasn’t ever used an architect, I would encourage you to do it. The cost is relatively reasonable and what you get in the end is quality design and a home that actually works.
So, as usual, the architect did her amazing magic. She took a jumbled-up mess of ideas and came up with one simple plan: cut the room in half with one-third along the back wall becoming the half bath. In the front two-thirds, create a laundry room and a butler’s pantry using the leftover cabinets. It’s perfect and genuinely, nothing we could have ever thought of by ourselves. But, as you walk in the side door, you will now have access to the butler’s pantry for large, storage items from the grocery or warehouse store. When either of us comes in filthy from the outside and need a restroom break, the half-bath is right there and no one ever needs to fully enter the house. And finally, if we’re that dirty and need to engineer a change of clothes, the dirties can pop right into the washer.
Today, my husband is working on this little great idea which – in the end – did have a couple of drawbacks. First, we ended up moving three sets of plumbing. Secondly, we also had to move electrical. Third, we had to patch in porcelain tile where the old closet became part of the new room. We still have to finish the wall, install the new bathroom fixtures and the cabinets, but the room is taking shape.
And that’s how we roll out here in our little homestead in the middle of nowhere. Another project, another improvement and another set of new skills. We’ve learned to tile in this project and my husband has brushed up on his drywall skills.
But soon enough, this space will be done and my big house which was living pretty small, will feel like it uses space just a little bit better.
The Yuppie Homesteader 