Rearranging Rooms all the way Back to 2017

So last month I shared a lengthy blog post with you guys about making the room that shares the big stained glass window with my living room into my guest bedroom again. Lodi had emptied the room in anticipation of making it into his studio /den. So the room was empty and I still needed a guest bedroom. We’re going to rewind now all the way back to 2015 when I renovated this home and created that room by enclosing the last of the screened in porch. At the time I designed it specifically to be an office.

Considering the lack of privacy, smaller closet and smaller overall square footage that room made a lot more sense as an office while the other, much larger (and far more private) room made a lot more sense as a guest bedroom.

A lot happened and I converted the bigger room into my workshop in anticipation of finishing the basement (where my workshop had been) into a rental suite. That was all around 2017-2018. I certainly wasn’t going to use the room with a 100 year old stained glass window for storing hammers and refinishing furniture!

So in 2018, this room, that I designed to be an office, was my only option for a guest bedroom. Somewhere along the way (and Lodi’s influence) we swapped the back door from the hall with the window in my then workshop /the bigger bedroom and converted the hall and closet into a room by adding a wall and a door. The room was so he could have a gun room.

It makes very little sense from a layout stand point.

Now that he’s gone I’m rather pissed about it lol and I plan on eventually swapping the exterior door back to where it used to be and putting the window back into the larger bedroom like it was supposed to be! Meanwhile the light bulb moment for me was when I was putting masking tape on the floor in bed sizes still desperately trying to make the smaller room work as a guest bedroom.

IT DAWNED ON ME.

I could never get that room to work in any layout with a bed because it was never meant to be a bedroom. I looked down the hall at my office and everything clicked. Ladies and gents, I moved my office into the room that was always supposed to be my office!

AND I ABSOLUTELY ADORE IT!

I joked in my living room post that it only took me ten years to finally figure out a layout that I loved. And I mentioned it in my last post about that room wondering if, after ten years, I would finally manage it there too. And I did. It was just never supposed to be a guest bedroom.

In 2019 I showed you guys the first time I “finished” my workshop in the larger room. In 2023 I desperately needed a real office so I changed the room enough to include a desk. I wasn’t happy with it though so a few months later I worked on it yet AGAIN…

And then yet another few months later I was STILL unhappy with the space so I went nuclear. I took everything out of it, purged, stored a bunch of tools out in the garage and finally created a real office for me that just kept the closet for my tools and work bench. Finally that room went from a workshop into an office that I could live with. There was a total of over forty blog posts, over three years of projects and changes, of me working on that room. You guys following along must’ve been like, “Girl, how are you really working on that poor room again!?”

It all makes sense now.

I was never happy with that room because it was never designed to be an office or a workshop or a den or a game room. It was always the most ideal room for an actual bedroom on the main floor. Unfortunately it now has a back door (and thus a doggie door) in it. But that’s just going to have be what it is for awhile. I don’t plan on getting more dogs once little Link goes (he’s 13) so maybe I’ll just nix the door and put a window in there later. I already have FIVE exterior doors, do I really need another one?

Its almost tempting to swap it out for a window right now and just put Link’s doggie door somewhere else… Besides that there is my workshop bench and tools that takes up the entirety of the closet in what is going to be my guest bedroom that I really don’t want in there.

What to do? Oh right!

I have a whole little room designed specifically with shelves, a work bench and a wall of pegboard for hanging! Turns out a gun room really isn’t much different than a tool room… Looking for the silver lining with all of this and that is certainly a big one… That little room that makes no sense created entirely for my abusive soon to be ex husband is now going to give me the perfect tool room.

I struggled so hard with the layout trying to fit even a full size bed in the other room but, even though its smaller, my office furniture fit better there than in the larger room and the larger room can comfortably fit a queen bed. Pretty obvious what these rooms were destined to be lol… You can see in the pictures I have two tape measures on the floor showing the dimensions of a queen size bed in there.

Its been a rough couple of months. Maybe its strange but this is really helping me move on and feel a lot better about life.

I’m really looking forward to spending some quality time in my new office and designing it but it works fine for now and I really need a guest bedroom. So next step I need to get working on my new tool room so I can get my tools out of the guest bedroom’s closet. Then I’ll have some serious patching, fixing and painting to do in there before I can do anything else. Then I’ll be building a queen sized bed frame, buying a bed and I need a couple of lamps and a mirror for that room as well.

I love thrifting so you know exactly where I’ll be going to find a lot of that… Something to look forward to!