Talk about Tuesday

Welcome to Talk About Tuesday. For more information or to see what others are talking about, visit Lara at The Lazy Organizer.

So maybe it is actually Wednesday. I am just catching up on some important blogging I wanted to get done but couldn't find the time to squeeze out of the day. Today, I am going to talk about my house. Specifically the glorious space on the main floor that I've longed for but until now haven't gotten to use much. WARNING: There are a lot of clickable links in this post to pictures plus the pictures of the office at the end of the post.

In October of 05 we moved to our current location. Our main living area is on the 2nd floor. The only thing finished on the main level was what we called "the office" and a hallway from the entry to the stairs to go up to our main living area. The rest looked like this. It became a big storage space for us. It was home to all my school stuff, our Christmas stuff, some of Brad's tools, his car audio stuff, stuff from grandma, stuff from his dad and stuff that we hadn't yet found a home for in our new house.

With only 2 completed bedrooms, I joked with our realtor (my father in law) that buying a house with only two bedrooms was a sure fire way to take us from a family of two to a family of more than two. And surprise, surprise the end of the next month we found out we were expecting our first little man. So in the spring of 06, Brad began the main floor renovations. That big open, unfinished space would be come 2 bedrooms, a bathroom, a linen closet and a laundry room. He pretty much got all of it done before the guests started arriving to visit the little man that had joined our family. What happened to all the items in that big, open unfinished space? It all ended up in our "office". We could barely get the door open, the space was so cramped. The blinds were pulled closed, the door was closed and we sort of forgot this space ever existed.

Over the last 2 years there have been many times when we have wanted to use this space, to reclaim this space as an office. But since one of the projects that didn't get finished with the renovations was hooking up the under slab heating, for 8+ months of the year, it is just too cold to do anything productive on this main level anyway. (A reason why most people only come to visit during the summer.) But before littlest man arrived we started working on this room a little. We were able to push our way in a bit. We finally found someone who was able to hook up our under slab heating without putting us on a waiting list longer than the drive to Edmonton. It wasn't in our budget but we knew it had to be done. (And this new water system may actually help us save $$ on our natural gas heating bill!) So now, people can visit any time of the year.

And they are coming. Right now, we are about a week away from the arrival of the Ukraine Melanchuks. And there is talk about a possible visit from some on my side of the family later this summer. So, when we decided to host a good bye party for a co- worker of Brad's we thought it was a great incentive to get the main floor all ready to go. Turn that office into an office again, get the two bedrooms and bathroom ready for our guests and just reorganize and get rid of some of the clutter.

So now, our office looks like this.







It is far from perfect, but it is live able, and use able and it just feels so good!