When we bought our house in Texas over five years ago, I knew that the upstairs had some potential. As it was, it was one big, long room, with sloped ceilings and two dormer windows on the front side of the house. I wanted to divide the bonus room into a bedroom with closet, and a TV room with built in cabinetry on the other side. Because we already had enough bedrooms downstairs for everyone, I could not talk my husband into it.
As one big room, the space was just a catch all. It was my sewing room, guest room and basically a storage room for all the things we didn’t know what to do with. It didn’t really have a designated use. The boys loved to go upstairs and get into everything, making a huge mess. Because of that, they were forbidden from going upstairs without one of us present.
That is until I got the approval from my husband to get someone in to work on my plan, when we found out we were having another baby!
I couldn’t bring myself to contact someone till closer to my due date, though, because we had lost our third son Stephen at 21 weeks, just the year prior. So, I was having a hard time working/planning baby girl’s room, until she was here with us.
So, the week before I was scheduled for an induction, I contacted a contractor to finish the plan I created for the bonus room…we were going to divide the bonus room! While I was in the hospital, he called to schedule the framing. The room was on it’s way and it was time to start the decorating, once I was home from the hospital!
Originally, this was one big room. We divided the bonus room to create a bedroom and a TV room. (Photo taken from the TV room looking to baby girl’s room.)
I came up with a plan for the TV room to provide a hidden built in desk for my sewing machine. See the little feet from my chair sticking out from underneath the cabinet doors? I was able to hide the mess of my sewing behind the doors, which worked really well for me. In the other cabinets, I had art supplies, sewing supplies, fabric-lots of it, and games, I even had some empty space! I was amazed how much we could fit in those cabinets. It really encouraged everyone to be neat and tidy. Remember I mentioned how the boys like to destroy this room? They could actually be left upstairs alone, because everything had a place.
Because the walls were sloped and we wanted the bookcases to be functional for us, we mounted the TV in the dormer on an articulating arm. When we wanted to watch TV we just swung it out.
You get a little glimpse of the TV. It could fully articulate out, so we could see it from the sofa.
In baby Girl’s room we added a closet which took up one side of the dividing wall. It wasn’t a huge closet, but fortunately I could pack a lot of baby clothes in there! It was adequate for guests or boys as well.
We really enjoyed the house after these things were installed. They helped us stay better organized as a family and it looked nice too!
What kinds of things have you done to help your space work for you?
Curious if you had a rough estimate of the size of the room(s) or bonus before you put the wall in. Thinking this may solve our “need another bedroom” issue.
Thanks,
Jessica
Yes, the room was approximately 13′ x 25′. I divided it pretty much in half. It solved our problem of needing another bedroom and created a really cozy tv room with a lot of great built in storage. It turned out really cute.