Good point, noddy. We're currently in a four bedroom house, but the fourth bedroom serves as my office and is much too small to handle any sort of double duty. There have been times when I'd wished we had a guest room and we'll probably refurbish K's room into one once she's in a dorm (I'll be thinking of her as a guest then, won't I?), I'm sure she'll have some issues with that. I better wait a few months before I overhaul her space.
I think two bedrooms or a finished basement space for office/guests is ideal. Probably a dual-purpose 2nd bedroom given that I spend up to 12 hours a day in the office. It would need to be bright and sunny. Long days in the basement in artificial light would drive me batty. I typically start work around 7:00 am. I don't think a young adult trying to live a second adolescence would want to stick around for long. I can adjust my hours, as necessary, for guests.
K was complaining of a backache the other morning. I told her I think it's time for a new mattress (hers is 13 years old). Then I told her that, as long as we're getting a new mattress, I thought we should put a double or queen bed in her room. She was surprised and asked why so I fessed up to the idea of eventually converting her room to a guest room and this would be a simple first step.
It took her a minute to recover and then she said, 'Ok, with one condition...', as if she was giving me permission. The condition is that she gets to keep the rest of her room as it is for now (think posters in lieu of wall paper and crap everywhere) and that she gets to do the interior decorating for the new room when she's gone. S'ok by me -- interior decorating is not my thing and it's something she's naturally good at. I think we have a plan.
Glad you consulted with her. My dad didn't consult me at all and I came home from college the first time to a non-room. Since I had only a dinky dorm room that I shared with two other people and since I'd left home with only a suitcase, that was really upsetting for me. (He threw some stuff away, other stuff was in the basement, but everything that made my room my ROOM -- posters, bed, stuffed animals, desk, everything -- was gone.) Even though parents own the house, a teenager's room is a haven and I think it's important to respect that.
The day I left for university, mrs. hamburger had a contractor come in and knock down the wall between my bedroom and the living room.
I'm still adjusting to how I felt when I saw my room was gone [size=7](30+ years later).[/size]
Soz, EhBeth--
I know. I know.
I came home from college at the end of my freshman year to find that my sister had appropriated my closet (as well as her own closet) for her clothes and my bureau (as well as her own bureau) for her own clothes and my bookcases as display shelves for her memorabilia.
My mother wasn't feeling well that year and had a summer-long job as a camp counsellor....
All the same, I never felt at home in my parents' house again.
Interesting feedback, thanks. I was the only one of the four of us who never moved back into my parents house once I left. I stayed local though for many, many years and by the time I'd moved away and was returning for visits they had moved into a much smaller place. I never thought of their home as my home once I left for college because I had an apartment in town to call my own.
Interesting...
I still have my last room in mother's house.
At first - from turn of the century until WWII - it was a house maiden's room. Than it was a guest room ... for an Hungarian colonel, afterwards occupied for some weeks by American soldiers, later for a couple of years by refugees, than became a guest room, than my sister's room.
When I became a conscript and went to university later, it was my room. For 38 years now (but I haven't used it for more than 25 years at all).
I didn't move back, but visited home fairly often at the beginning -- to see my parents, to keep up with high school friends, etc. I did go back for the summers for the first two years, which was typical among people I knew (and encouraged by my parents). It was only rich kids or kids who had decent jobs (neither of which applied to me) that stayed in town over the summer.
After the second year I did have a job and stayed there year-round. And started making my new places more home-ish. (It was really impossible in those first couple of dorm rooms. The first was not meant to be a dorm room, it was the rec room/ kitchen and was for overflow/ late applicants like us, waiting for real dorm rooms to open up. My second dorm room had been occupied solo for a couple of months by a person whose roommate had quit school and gone home. This person had the room decorated just how she wanted and wouldn't give an inch. [One exception -- I had the top bunk and was "allowed" the wallspace between my bunk and the ceiling.] Since she was so patently unwelcoming, I spent most of my time with my boyfriend, in HIS room. I HATE feeling homeless.)
I think making your daughter in charge of decoration is a great compromise. Sounds like it's win-win. (She gets to be in control of the process, you get a nice guest room.)
JPB, Congratulations! You think "empty nesters," but you will still have your children in you mind - constantly. Our older son lives in Austin, but he uses our address for many of his investments and military records.
BTW, we celebrated our 40th four years ago.
Thanks, ci, congrats right back at you! I know that I'm talking the talk about empty nesting... we'll see how well I walk the walk.
soz -- yeah, I think returning the first two summers is fairly typical. This will still be her room when she's here, so having her in charge of the conversion lets her feel like she's creating a space for her own use as well as ours. We'll make it a point to keep some of her stuff in there for when she's home. The other thing is that she plans on going downtown to Roosevelt or DePaul for college, wants to be in a dorm, but it's still a simple train ride home. I expect she'll be here quite a bit to begin with. We're approaching it more as having her design a guest room with herself in mind as the primary guest to begin with.
Walter, I'm sure you would still be welcomed back to your room.
