We need to plan a spring date for a Mudcat Gathering.
With the help of a few days' well-paid teen muscle, the junky room below the Mudcat Dorm Attic is now a nearly-classy sitting room and pickers' paradise. There are built-in ceiling-height cabinets. The upper section will soon be a well-lit, eye-level place for our scads of music books, church-music songbook originals, and misc musicans' crap. Toys and baby equipment for the emergency-childcare facility are stored below at kid-level. I never know when someone is going to call "that nice pastor's wife" for an emergnecy overnight or several days' childcare-- it happens about 3 times a year, never with any warning, so since we have so much unused space around here I try to be ready for any age, with instant, add-water-and-stir accommodations. (The counter in the laundry area beyond is already the changing table and spare kid-clothes zone.)
It will be handy to jam in that space, with music books and toys for pickers' kids readily available.
I think I'm going to take the feckin' doors off the cabinets too!!!!!!!!!!!
The 6' long living room couch is in there under the window, in place of the piles of storage crap we tend to dump in there, and it is as comfortable to sleep on as ever, maybe more so since the tilt of the floor makes the sitting/lying surface actually level. Almost a twin bed. One lamp is already out there and more are on the way. The dogs love wrestling in there when it's too cold to play outside, where there is nothing to knock over.
The sitting room holds the heat well when the laundry room's gas heater is going, a workable 68 degrees on low.
So this whole addition on the back of our house-- ruined in the December 2000 fire and just now reaching full recovery mode-- is Mudcat gathering space, play space, fiddling space for Hardi, dude space if he wants to have a friend over for beer and chat, napping space without having to climb upstairs.....