Changes to the House

When Mike and I originally designed this house we wanted a dog room.  It was to be an out of the way place for the dogs to sleep in their cages.  In our previous house, the dog slept in their cages in the master bedroom.  I did not want that again.  Plus we acquired two more dogs when we moved to the pond and I definitely was not sleeping with five dogs in my room.


However, over time, we found we did not use the dog room for sleeping dogs.  They had acquired more comfortable dog beds and were now sleeping in the basement or in the mud room upstairs.  It became an unused space.  At the same time, the number of overnight guests seemed to be increasing and I had taken over one of the guest rooms upstairs as a sewing room.  Obviously, we needed another guest room.   So, we turned the dog room into a guest room.  We put in a rollaway twin bed and Laura tested it out.

It was not a resounding success.  The bed fit but barely.  The dogs were continually walking in and out and disturbing Laura's sleep because the dog door is located in that area and besides Laura is a favorite of theirs and they wanted to be with her.  That's when we decided to call Larry our builder.

Larry and his crew came but are not yet done.  As noted in a previous blog, they have already moved the dog door to another place in the basement, put a window in its place and re-bricked the outside.  On the inside, the dog room has been made bigger by removing a partial wall, drywall has been added and the area painted.  The trim is not in yet and the new bedroom door is not yet installed.

Once the partial wall was removed.  We had to do something with the floor.  There were places that did not have any linoleum.  Heath helped us out there by patching those spots with some leftover flooring Mike had saved.  We were very pleased with the results.

Despite the fact that the builder is not yet finished, Mike and I (due to my impatience) have already put in the furniture and decorated.  We ordered a queen size bunk bed that Mike (with some help from Laura) built and stained.  We picked a queen size bunk bed because Laura wanted a bed with plenty of room for her and her dog to sleep and Emily, when told she would have to be in the top bunk, complained that she needed more room than a twin mattresses provided.  We think or we hope that this adult bunk bed addresses all of their complaints, I mean requests.  We even had a shelf installed on both headboards so they have a place to put their cell phones.  Of course, other guests should benefit from all these amenities too.

A new problem surfaced during the renovation.  The older dogs could not remember where the dog door was now located.  All they knew was that it was not where it used to be.  I improvised a dog barrier to the new room that also kept the dogs off my furniture.   Mike was not too impressed with my dog barrier so he ordered a dog gate to replace it.

The new gate prevented the dogs from going into the half of the basement that used to have the dog door and helped direct them to the new location.  We caught Blackie sneaking behind the furniture to get to the blocked off half of the basement so I had to rearranged some baskets to stop him.

So now we are waiting to see if our builders will be able to finish the room before the first guests arrive over Easter.  In case, the guests arrive before they do I have made the beds and Mike hung the pictures.  We rehung the basset hound wall hanging the Granny made Mike a long time ago.  We want to acknowledge the history of this room as a dog room.  Then Laura requested that we hang her letter L in there also to remind her sisters that she has dibs on the lower bunk.  All this has been done and now we are ready for whatever comes next.