NOT the door into summer!

A Change is as Good as...

So, like many people, I'm sure, we've always found that we expand to fill any given space, and that there's never enough of it, or we're never using it as well as we're sure we must be able.When we first moved to Wareham, the place seemed huge. Well...large, anyway. And since that first moment, there has never been enough space, ever again! We're always highly envious of people who seem to have room when they need it.

 In Not-Winter we manage better, and are able to spill outwards when we have people by. It's much trickier in poor weather. And often requires some upheavalling. (new word?)

 So, because it was Boat Burning time again, and we had invited a dozen or so friends, we tried to maximize our space by shifting things around. And then sitting there a day later, in weary contemplation of putting things back, we got to musing. Again.

Over the years Darrell, like the camel in the tent, has gradually been moving bits of his office upstairs.The attractive-in-summer back room on the ground floor, is not so attractive in winter. Unless you're a joint of meat! There might have also been a social component; he spends a lot of time at his desk. There's research, communications, business, and computer games. I think back then we wondered if we'd ever see each other!
 But as there has been more and more research and writing, and design and program coordination sneaking into his day, he's also needed more and more books and papers. So there has been much running up and down of stairs after one thing or another. And then small libraries of materials just started to accumulate around him. And when changes in the world of technology demanded he get a faster computer, but wouldn't allow him to keep everything he needed on one computer, or programs he needed to use weren't compatible well, then there was another machine in the space. And extra hard drives to hold vast research info. And when no-one printed slides anymore, a gadget to allow him to transfer all his existing body of photographic work to digital, and so on and so on...

 For a while he has cast covetous eyes on the space off our kitchen, that was once my office, and since then has been our pantry and occasional guest room. Once again I bleated 'but I'd need a pantry space!' (since otherwise there's a heck of a lot of kitchen overflow and a sizable library of historic cookery books, with nowhere to go.)
 And this time we actually decided to see what that might require, and how we could make it happen.

So, this is the view towards Darrell's office corner, after moving much furniture around for Boat. Originally, the couch had run across behind Darrell's desk, and the room had been casually subdivided into a living area, and a dining area, with the wood stove in the middle. We confess to being slaves to watching some TV during dinner, so the idea of moving the audio visual equipment to the far wall has crossed our minds already. The couch got moved into a position that would work with that, to see if we'd still end up with a room we could live with. (And move around in without crashing into things!)

To begin creating a pantry space, the antique plate dresser was moved away from the wall and rotated to form a boundary of the new butler's pantry. The loom has been taken down, and will move out to the new weaving shed, where it will have the company of my 45" counterbalance, and a table loom and an inkle loom. Shelves have been created on the walls, as well as on the back of the plate dresser.

This is the plate dresser in its new position, and emptied and refilled.With even a bit of organization! (Note, my laptop isn't normally taking up dining room space. It wasn't till this winter that I suddenly decided it was more comfortable working on it, rather than at my desk in the mostly unheated studio!)

Here's the pantry space, mostly finished. There's still some sorting and organizing to happen, but I'm getting the hang of it.

And while there's still a ways to go, one of the most recent steps has been to move the antique buffet to where Darrell's desk had been. Now we have to go through all those boxes of tapes and decide if there's any there we want to keep, do some repair on wall and floor in that corner, and contemplate the next moves of the puzzle. It's not quick, but it's certainly been interesting!

A Place For Everything

                                                                And everything in its place...