Last week, I started the tour of the inside of the new/old house that we're going to have undergo "PrairieMod-ification." We'll continue that tour today, with the remainder of the house's living spaces and see what we're dealing with in the "before" stage.
In attempting to make any home "uniquely yours," you have to start by understanding first what isn't working and why that is. Often times, home renovations revolve around coming into a space and rapidly tearing out walls or fixtures or painting over everything in sight without stopping to live with and experience the space fully first. Giving yourself the time to internalize and experience what is and isn't right about a house will help inform the plan needed to change it for the better.
This is especially true in our little red house. The first couple rooms we explored last week had really nice features that drew us in. However, upon closer examination, there were poorly executed designs and functionality to many aspects of it.
When moving towards the bedroom wing of the house, we find some of the most troubling and deficient aspects of the house. This 1957 ranch has three bedrooms and one bath. The bathroom was remodeled by former owners, where only the details of the form were considered with little to no regard for the function. Sadly, both aspects failed miserably. The room is poorly laid out, all the home-owner's effort spent on custom-laid tile in the tub area is a functional disaster (allowing water to redirect on the walls and floor), the toilet is a water-wasting dinosaur and there's no venting for the room other than a window--in the shower--at about chest height visibility from the neighbor's house (yes, there is a female occupant in the home--you can figure out the problem now.)
The three bedrooms of the house are moderately sized, which isn't the problem. I've long contended that bedrooms are largely there for the purposes of sleeping. Therefore, it seems silly to have expansive, living room sized areas for a place you spend the majority of your time passed-out in. A proportional, yet cozy sized bedroom is akin to a nest or a cave--it harbors you and emphasizes the feeling of security as you drift off to sleep. What the main problem is with the three bedrooms in our red house (beyond poor paint color and paneling choices) is their closet space.
The closets in each of the 3 rooms is poorly laid out in a way that produces a small, deep closet--not well designed for clothes or accessibility. The configuration also produces a large, dead-space area in 2 of the 3 rooms near the vaulted ceiling. We'll need to figure out a plan which doesn't enlarge the closets into entirely new rooms unto themselves.
Instead we want to figure out how to better design them so that a more maximized, organized and accessible layout is employed. This will probably require an altered room configuration, but considering the costs and employing the other PrairieMod Principles in building a plan will yield all possible options for us to consider. It's definitely a journey of 1000 steps, but one we're looking forward to. Until next week!
Photos copyright PrairieMod
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