Sleeping Nine

This goes hand in hand with a goal I didn’t list earlier but has always been part of the idea behind the project, that the house ought to offer a graciousness of living, a vague statement for sure, but one that encompasses, welcoming guests, entertaining friends, affording privacy when needed, those things beyond shelter that a house can offer. You don’t only use a house daily, but you also use one monthly and yearly. Meaning, we don’t just need a place to do the things we do every day, cook and bathe, sleep, eat, or watch some sort of screen, but also the things that happen less frequently, friends come for dinner or for the weekend, I occasionally make beer, Mary cans, sews, sometimes makes giant banners. All of those activities and others need to be able to have space for us enjoy richness in our lives. So although we can pare down much superfluous stuff, and we have, there are still going to be some things that need storage and activities that need a place to happen. I am mainly talking about this because in balancing all of these different needs for the house, I often looked at the nine sleeping spaces as lost storage that we could use. In the end we have kept them, because of all the things we want to keep in our lives when we shrink the size of our living space, relationships with the people who are important to us has remained the highest priority. So we needed space to welcome them and make them feel comfortable.

No mattresses on the floor

The number nine comes from the meeting of two families, ours with four people, and good friends of ours who visit and stay frequently. There are five in their family. Part of the graciousness I was speaking of before includes not putting a bunch of air beds on the floor for our guests to sleep. Also we didn’t want to put our own bed away during the day. I felt like there was sufficient space in the design to have an actual bedroom, even if it’s small. This isn’t 300 sq. ft. after all. The space is small enough though that putting a bunch of air beds out would be awkward, so we wanted a better more built-in solution. Additionally, at least for the next several years, our girls will come home for more extended stays, between semesters or during school breaks and they will need something that will act more like a bedroom space and provide them some privacy. But they will have to put their beds away during the day.

The count stands at two, our bedroom, one queen sized bed. Excluding the bathroom and the 1/4 bath (we will talk about that eventually) the house only has four “rooms” and 1 interior door, the one to our bedroom, but it does have spots that are separated somewhat from adjacent areas that serve as natural locations to convert into sleeping areas. The office area, it really should have a different name but it would have to be very long to accommodate all of the things that will go on in there, so we will call it the office, is the other room on the lowest level. Mostly it will hold our desk and computer, a drafting table and storage for officey things. A set of storage shelves will be located along the wall the office shares with the entrance door, this will also house the drafting table, which will be hinged so that it can be stowed. Once the drafting table has been put away a full size murphy bed will fold down out of the shelf unit. This space will offer a good bit of privacy, even if it doesn’t have the separation of a door, but will also be a location that will see a lot of daily activity.

Now we are at four. There is a loft above the kitchen. It will serve as a landing midway to the roof access door and as a sitting area separate for the main living room. The TV will go here. We haven’t had a TV for years, we watch plenty of stuff, but mainly on the computer. I have to admit I feel a little lame saying this, but I am looking forward to sitting on a couch to watch a movie. That couch will be in the loft and it will be a full size sleeper. I think there may end up being a curtain to separate the loft from the rest of the second level space which will provide some privacy for sleepers, or TV watchers.

That gets us to six. This is the hardest one. In the living room area above the office there will be more storage on the wall beside the stairs. This will end up being deep storage, 2 feet or so to house a variety of things. The entire storage unit will pull off the wall and slide 7 feet away from the wall exposing a full size murphy bed hinged horizontally on the wall. If you are reading this blog about a small house, it is likely you have seen the videos online of the convertible apartments where partitions slide around in various configurations to reveal ever more spaces and functions. It will be like that but just one partition. Here again a curtain can be pulled across the open end and with the shelf unit on one side will complete a very small room. This will unfortunately block access to the screened porch, but it should be easy enough to move that it won’t prove to be to a problem. I figure the sliding storage may end up being the hardest carpentry project in the house; I am sure it will be the subject of later posts when it is underway. I hope they are not frustrated and angry posts, lamenting my decision to try this. We will see.

Eight down. The last spot would be one for a small young person. In the loft above the sleeper sofa we will hang a ship’s bunk. Narrow and high this would be a bed of last resort, but available.

One good thing about tucking the sleeping spots throughout the house is it has naturally allowed for privacy by separation. I can imagine when the girls are home, the loft and living room partition would be their choices for crashing, but I am sure that we will learn lot about how the space will work when we are there.