I Found The Much-Needed Storage Area For Our Bedroom Suite!

Here’s the latest floor plan that I shared, and the one that I’ve been working towards since I shared it

Back in December (or it may have even been November), I met with an architect who I know from church because I wanted him to draw up the official documents that we need to submit to the city for our addition. I told him that I have the basic floor plan of our house, along with all of the measurements, so he doesn’t need to start from scratch. So when he left, I told him that I’d send him that info and he could go from there.

Well, it’s February, and I still haven’t sent him anything because something about our plan just wasn’t sitting right with me. So when I saw him at church a few weeks ago, I said, “I haven’t forgotten! I’m just trying to work out some details.” He assured me that he wasn’t in any hurry and would be ready when I am. So I kind of put it out of my mind for a few weeks.

And the part that wasn’t sitting with me was trying to squeeze two bedrooms and a living room into a smaller addition, plus winding up with no dedicated storage space for Matt’s items. I love my husband dearly, but I don’t like having his stuff (shower wheelchair and regular wheelchair when he’s not using it) out and in the way where I’m constantly having to walk around it or bump into it when I’m half asleep at night trying to make my way to the bathroom.

In my mind, I was thinking I could carve out some space in our future home gym for those items. It wasn’t an ideal plan, but it was the only plan I could come up with without adding even more room to the future addition. And while it would be nice to just build a huge addition with room for everything my little heart desires, it’s just not practical. I really want to keep that addition to 16 feet (as opposed to the 27 feet our original plan would have required). That’s a difference of almost 500 square feet, which makes a huge difference in the final cost.

Even on the floor plan at the top of this post, you can see that I compromised on that 16-foot limit that I had set by bumping out the guest bedroom. But again, I just couldn’t see another way. So these are the things that were keeping me from moving forward and sending the info to the architect. I didn’t want to pay him for drawing up plans if I was still unsure about the plan. I didn’t want to add to the cost by paying him now for something I’m unsure about, only to change my mind at a later date and then have to have him draw up more plans that would cost more money.

So I’ve been sitting on this for a while now (since November or December), just hoping that a solution would present itself. And I think that finally happened this last weekend.

As y’all know, I’ve been talking a lot about how the doors to the hallway bathroom will eventually be closed up and I’ll have a solid wall there in the bedroom foyer. And then the access to that bathroom would be moved to the new hallway once we build the addition.

But every time I’d go into that bathroom, I’d think to myself how perfectly situated that room is for the much-needed storage room I’ve been wanting for Matt’s items. It’s the perfect size for it. It’s the perfect location right there inside the bedroom suite. It already has doors on it that open up to the size needed to move those items in and out very easily. It’s just perfect.

The problem with that plan is obvious, though. If I keep that room accessible to the bedroom suite and turn it into a storage closet, that means we have no guest bathroom. And I’ve been down this road before, trying to fit a bathroom into the addition. I couldn’t fit two bedrooms, a living room, and a bathroom into a 16-foot addition. The space just isn’t there for all of that.

But it had been a while since I really studied that floor plan, so this last weekend, I decided to take a look at it with fresh eyes and a clear head to see if there was any way to add a bathroom to that addition while keeping it to 16 feet. And what struck me immediately was the question, “Why am I trying to add two bedrooms (one of which would be used as a home gym) to the addition? Do we really need two bedrooms?”

So I got really honest with myself. Why am I trying to add two bedrooms? Why do I need a guest bedroom that will sit there, completely unused, just for the purpose of having a guest bedroom? I can’t even remember the last time we needed a guest bedroom. Matt’s dad doesn’t travel anymore, and he’s the only guest we’ve ever had. And if the very rare occasion did arise when we needed to house a guest overnight, my studio has plenty of room to set up a bed. So having a dedicated guest bedroom seems like a complete waste of space (and money) to me.

The only reason I was adding a second bedroom in the addition is because in my mind, I’m still stuck on the idea that I need to turn this house back into a three-bedroom house. Why? For future owners. My goodness, how often have I preached that people need to make their homes their own without thinking about what some possible future owners may want? And yet, I kept going back to that. I’m not even practicing what I preach.

So after giving it a lot of thought, I realized that the only person I want to make sure we have room for is my mom. My mom is 86 years old. She is in phenomenal health and lives by herself in the home I grew up in. She’s a lot like her own mother, who lived by herself until she was 99. My grandmother was in amazing health at that age. She was still driving, still living alone in her home in east Texas, still taking care of her house by herself, still taking care of her property, and thriving. But she had made an agreement with her daughters (my mom and my aunt) that when she turned 100, she would sell her house and move to Waco. So when she turned 100, she sold her house, moved to Waco, and moved into a retirement home where she lived in her own apartment. She lived to be 108 years old, and she did just fine living by herself until about those last two years of her life.

My mom seems to be on that same track. She’s 86 years old and thriving. When she tells people her age, there’s always an audible gasp. People think they misheard her, and there’s no possible way she could be 86 years old. She’s in better health than most people 20 years her junior. And she loves living by herself in her own home.

So while I don’t see her needing to come live with us anytime in the near future, I just have it in my mind that if she ever wants or needs to live somewhere else, she won’t go to a retirement home. She’ll come live with us. She is literally the only person I want to be sure we have room ready and available for if she ever wants or needs to live somewhere other than her own home. But again, as she seems to be on the same track as her own mother, we’re looking at that being over a decade away.

With that goal in mind of making sure we have space for my mom, I gave our floor plan another look. And what I decided is that I can eliminate the wasted space of an actual guest bedroom that will sit there unused. I do want one bedroom in the addition because I want a room that we can use as a home gym for now, but that room can easily be converted into a bedroom if we ever have need of that. And eliminating that second bedroom leaves plenty of room for a guest bathroom. A 16-foot addition is plenty of room for one bedroom with a large closet, one bathroom, and a family room. And if the day comes that we need the home gym as a bedroom, we can easily close up the door between our bathroom and that bedroom.

So with all of that in mind, this is what I’m now planning. And it all fits within the 16-foot limit that I wanted to keep.

I feel so peaceful about this plan. I’m going to sit with it a couple more weeks and make sure I don’t see any problems with it, but I can almost guarantee that this is the plan I’ll be sending to the architect. It gives us everything we need, including that much-needed storage space for Matt’s items.