A Space to Call My Own

I've been living in Donovan's house (now OUR house) since March 2010.  Before that, I had been living by myself in my own 1400 square foot house for three years.  For the past year and a half, I've been living here and feeling very unsettled because it felt like there was no space for me.  Donovan had a lot of stuff, and the house wasn't organized in the best way.  He kept telling me to make space for myself and change whatever I needed to in order to feel more comfortable.  The problem was, I didn't know where to even begin.  There was so much stuff everywhere...it felt hopeless to me.  To the point where I would go downstairs, look at all the stuff, and cry.  And since there was no real space for me to use as a desk, I spread out over half of our dining room table with piles of papers on the chairs around me.

The office "before"

A few months ago I decided that I would take the path of least resistance and...RUN AWAY.  I decided that we should buy an "our" house and rent out his house (mine is already rented).  That would solve all our problems!  Donovan was on board...I think he's willing to do just about anything to keep me happy.  My best friend Sheri stepped in as the voice of reason and suggested that there were still steps we could take here to try and make this house "livable" for me.  She said most of it was stuff we'd want to do anyway to make the place rentable, too, so we might as well see if it would work and possibly get some benefit out of it.

Donovan got on board with the new plan, and the idea was that when we got back from our honeymoon, we would start moving all his stuff from downstairs into storage, and find a contractor and finally create an office area for us.  My amazing husband decided to speed things along as a surprise for me.  While we were on our honeymoon, he hired movers to come and move almost everything from downstairs and the garage into a storage unit nearby, with Sheri supervising.  So when we came home from the honeymoon, the downstairs was ready to go! 

I got in touch with my old contractor, Bob the Builder, a couple days after we got home and a few days later, the project began!  Four weeks after they started, the downstairs is done!!!  Recessed lighting, new paint, new baseboards, new carpet, new ceiling fan, new outlets and switches...it's like a whole new house in our downstairs!  We bought new office furniture...two giant L-shaped desks with drawers put back-to-back to create a T-shape, a lateral filing cabinet, and a bookcase, all in a dark chocolate color.

So here I sit, in our new office, finally feeling like I have a space to call my own.  Ahhhhhhh........

The office "after" - still moving in