Playing House

Our house is slowly coming together.  As a part of the kitchen renovations in June, we had the flooring in three rooms replaced.  One of those rooms was the room ear-marked as Bear's playroom. It is a long, thin verandah room which connects to his bedroom.  I say his bedroom, but at the moment, he still sleeps in the verandah room off our bedroom, because his bedroom still needs painting etc too (it had a wall replaced during the renovations as well).

So, during the Christmas holidays, Mr finished painting Bear's playroom, and we have moved all his toys into that space.

We also took advantage of the post-Christmas sales to buy a new desk (for me), filing cabinet and bookcase.  In the loungeroom, we used to have a display cabinet from Mr's parents.  It was a hideous 70s style cabinet, made of wood-look laminated chipboard, and with glass doors and shelves in the upper half.  The glass isn't safety glass, and Bear has recently developed a very keen interest in climbing.  Which was an excellent excuse to move the cabinet downstairs, creating space for the new desk.

We also bought a dining table and chairs.  The current one (also a hand-me-down from Mr's parents) is too big for the space, and the chairs are too low and give me heaps of grieve with my back.  But getting the existing table out is going to be a nightmare.  It is solid wood, and doesn't come apart at all.  It took six of us to get it in five years ago.

These recent purchases have been a long time coming.  We've had the savings for these purchases put aside, but until Mr had his new job secured, we had put a hold on all spending.  So, this shopping spree was our delyed Christmas presents to each other.   For too long now, we have been living out of about one-quarter of our house, because the rest is just being taken over by crap and things that we don't have storage for.  It is one of the downsides of having a Queenslander, a hoarding husband and a toddler.  It seems so counterintuitive that the solution to our lack of space is to buy more furniture.  But the ability to store things vertically is giving us our floor space back, and we are gradually reclaiming our home one room at a time.

I am looking forward to getting the new table in as well, as the extra space it will give us will make the lounge/dining so much more livable.