Another DIY Project

For some time, I have been talking about moving my office into the smallest bedroom of the house.

When I moved here, I made the largest bedroom my office, with the plan that it would be a joint office and music room. This eventually failed on a number of issues:

1) Buying a decent keyboard, which found a home downstairs, which meant I did as much music down there as up here.

2) Buying a drum kit which, by necessity, moved all my music downstairs, lest I bring down the ceiling!

3) Not doing nearly as much music with computers as I used to.

4) My office trash (and games collection) naturally spreading to take up the whole room.

So I thought moving the office into the smallest room would mean that the current office could become a very nice twin guest room (I am already very comfortable in a small double room at the back of the house).

However, it is a job that I have kept putting off, partly because I had other jobs going on around the house, but also because the small bedroom was used by mum when she visited. This meant that any work would have to be planned around her visits, although she did say she wouldn’t mind sleeping on the sofa, if necessary.

Anyway, having cleared the room of her clothes and things the other week, this weekend I thought I would take a quick look at the bed that was literally built into the room, over the stairs. To my surprise, it was very easy to take apart, and having done that, I can see that the room isn’t quite as small as I thought.

My next decision was whether to simply clear and clean the room and move a desk in, or whether to decorate. This is something I have been pondering for about a year – the walls are amateurishly painted (by the previous owner) with a speckle effect, but decent enough. But removing the bed exposes that they only painted the bits you could see, and below the line of the bed is a load of flapping unglued liner paper. So it is going to be a strip and paint or repaper job. I am actually quite glad of this, given the sad circumstances, as once decorated with a different colour scheme, it will no longer be “mum’s room”. In addition, it will allow me to lift (and change) the carpet, and run cables under the floorboards to some new power sockets, rather than having the usual daisy-chain of extension leads.

In doing all this, I have rediscovered the joys of Freecyle. I was looking for a good home for some computer equipment, which was snapped up instantly. While doing that, I came across a Want request for a single mattress – which I was happy to wave goodbye to the next day. I am now offering a wardrobe and chest of drawers, and hope to see them go in the next few days. What I find most useful is the enthusiasm of the recipients, which means you don’t have to wait too long to get rid of what you are offering.

Looking around my (old) office, I am wondering just how much of this junk I really need, and how much someone else may want to fill up their own junk room.

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