Our house has 3 bedrooms on the second floor: a large master bedroom with a bathroom en suite (although it can be accessed from the hallway as well) and two smaller bedrooms with a "Jack and Jill" bathroom connecting them (and thus not accessible from the hallway). The house was built by an architect for his own family, and he had a girl and a boy, so we thought it was perfect when we moved in. At that time Steph was in a bed and Pete was still in a crib. And it really was perfect. Then we had Julie, and the only option was to put her up on the third floor, where there are two more small bedrooms and yet another bathroom, in the hallway up there. That too was ideal, because her middle-of-the-night crying didn't wake the other two kids (we had a monitor in our room so we'd hear her, and we really wouldn't have been able to otherwise—the house is very solid and soundproof), and their middle-of-the-day playing didn't wake her during naptime.
A couple of years ago, it became clear that it soon wouldn't be so ideal to have Steph and Pete sharing a bathroom, particularly one in which either party could walk in on the other from their own doors. (For some reason this wasn't considered a problem in the 1920s when the house was built, and the only other family that ever lived here had 4 sons, so no issues there either.) We decided that Pete and Julie should trade rooms so that the girls could share a bathroom and Pete could have the whole third floor to himself. At first he wasn't sure he liked the idea, but the more his friends and older cousins told him how great it would be (all kids think that rooms with dormered roofs are way cool), the more it appealed to him. The plan was to do it this summer while Steph was away at camp, but we never got around to choosing new wallpaper (and scraping together enough money for it) until September. (The walls are so old that there would probably be more work involved in prepping and painting than in papering; plus, I like nice wallpaper!) Then we had to wait for the paper to come in and for the paperhanger to be available. Finally, yesterday, he arrived!
While there were dropcloths all over the place, we decided to have him repair and paint the water-damaged ceilings in the hallway, Pete's room, and my office. That meant that I had to clear out everything from my office, which you may recall looked like a tornado had hit it was a bit untidy. I managed to throw out or recycle a lot of stuff yesterday, and there will be more of that to come today. It was not exactly something I'd planned to tackle this year week, but now I'm glad I was forced to do it.
Anyhow, photos of the new rooms to come, along with reports on the new sleeping arrangements!
I laughed so hard when you first posted pictures of your office - I totally didn't feel bad anymore about ours!
Sometimes it is REALLY good to be forced to deal with stuff. I am trying to figure out what event might "force" SO to do something about the tiop of his dresser. It drives me CRAZY, as does his office, BUT it is in the basement so I don't have to look at it every day like I do his dresser. Grrrr. And trust me I ano paragon of tidyness so you know it has to be really bad to bug me.
Posted by: Risottogirl | October 23, 2007 at 11:19 AM
Will we get pics of the pretty new office? Just to compare?
And yay! everything looks normal again in Google Reader!
Posted by: Deborah | October 23, 2007 at 06:24 PM
I really try to encourage my friends with kids who are 4 and 5, boy and girl, that the house they are building with the Jack & Jill bathroom is really only going to work for them for about 3 years. If you have the funds and want to avoid long hours of bickering over the bathroom, get separate bathrooms for your boy and your girl. Or get really accustomed to having NO privacy in your own bathroom when someone (OK, the girl) decides that the only solution is to plant herself in your bathroom to get ready.
Our "must" list for the house we are building was:
downstairs master
downstairs guest suite
upstairs kids' rooms WITH separate bathrooms
separate, free-standing garage with office attached for hubby (I DO NOT want him working in MY space...which is, of course, the rest of the house)
I am so excited for the day when the only time I have to see my kids' rooms is when I choose to walk up the stairs.
Posted by: Diane Neer | October 24, 2007 at 06:34 AM
I think it's OK for kids to have to share a bathroom; the problem with the Jack & Jill arrangement is that there's a door on each side
leading to each of the two bedrooms. So you either get one kid barging in on the other OR (if we allowed them to use the locks) one kid getting locked out if the other person doesn't remember to unlock BOTH.
Posted by: Karen | October 24, 2007 at 07:28 AM