Plans for better living at home

This is a scheduled post ... I will probably not yet have internet when it goes up :-(

Moving back home after a year away is a good time to rethink the way one's house is arranged. I will begin by saying that I live in an apartment block that was built in the early 1950s, a time when Israel was at its poorest and desperately in need of housing for the mass immigration of the early years of the State. By the present day, some sixty years later, the entire building is in need of an upgrade, and there are in fact plans to do just that, in the form of National Plan 38, intended to retrofit old buildings for earthquake protection, while at the same time adding new storeys. The idea is that the contractor would cover all the costs of retrofitting and enlarging the existing apartments and recoup his expenses by selling the new flats. Our building had begun that excruciating process, which has been dragging on for about three years now, and we haven't even signed a contract yet. We seem to be very close, though, so it is not worth our while to invest too much money in the apartment as it now is - but we still want to make some changes so that it feels airier and less full of stuff (we are incurable optimists). The main idea is to free up floor space by utilising walls better. 

Our current apartment is a three-bedroom, with a bathroom, a separate toilet, and another en suite toilet (but no extra shower) off the master bedroom. Due to a miscalculation, our bed, while extremely comfortable, is a little too large for the room, and there is barely space to open the closet doors, and no way for me to have a bedside table. I will, however, be getting a corner shelf, thus enabling us to remove a small triangular etagere from next to the chest of drawers. We use one of the bedrooms as a study, the place where we watch TV together, and a guest room. It will now also have to be my sewing room (although I'll be cutting out patterns and fabric on the dining room table, which is better than the floor I used in Takoma Park). In short, there is no way we are going to give up this room at the moment to allow each boy to have his own one. The boys currently sleep in a bunk bed, which is a bit narrow, but still long enough for A to fit there. They are in great need of extra bookshelves and storage for comics, so we plan to have all games and puzzles move into storage units underneath the window of the closed-off balcony, thus freeing up space in the current bookcase, as well as adding shelves on the wall between their bed and the clothes closet. We have got rid of an elderly and decrepit fibreboard cupboard that stood in the study, and will somehow find space for everything that used to live there in other shelves on other bookcases. The area behind the door where that cupboard stood will become the hobby space: where the guitar, basses, ukelele and sewing machine will stand.

The major changes will be in the living room and the kitchen. In the living room, we have rearranged the inside of the storage/entertainment unit along one wall for efficiency. We intend to get rid of the big coffee table, and have already got rid of the big carpet we used to have there, allowing us to be much more flexible with the placing of the two armchairs. The long sofa remains along the other wall, and the triangular etagere that used to be in our bedroom is now functioning as a side-table. I would like to buy another side table of Damascus-work, inlaid with mother of pearl, preferably with some kind of storage space. There is a shop in the Christian Quarter in the Old City that sells Damascus-work furniture, but I have no idea how much something like that would cost. I think it would go really well with the Turkish rug that will now be the main carpet in the living room. As for the enclosed balcony, formerly the children's play area, that will now be only one of its functions. We bought Nordli units at Ikea, which will replace the plastic sets of drawers in which the remaining toys are now, AND have space left over for tablecloths, fabric for sewing, and more. The old clothes-drying rack is now broken, and instead of it taking up space on the floor, I intend to get something along the lines of this: an extendable clothesline that folds up onto the wall when not in use. Because I am on the ground floor, on a slope, I don't have an external clothesline, as clothes hung from the outside wall would drag in the dirt. I use a dryer most of the time, but sometimes you need a clothesline, too. 

The major change will be in the kitchen. For this, we are going to get a carpemter and have things made to our specifications. About the only thing that ADC liked in the kitchen in Takoma Park was the pots and pans hanging from hooks rather than in drawers. Our kitchen is L-shaped, and currently the short leg is partly blocked by an ugly white plastic cupboard, which we will get rid of. On the wall against which it stands, we will have a set of rods and hooks from which to hang pots and pans, thus freeing up space in the deep kitchen drawers for the current contents of that cupboard. Additionally, in the pantry area beyond it, currently filled by a rolling unit we got from a credit card catalogue, we will have a set of drawers (for cleaning materials and plastic wrap/silver foil/etc.), open shelves (for a microwave, toaster oven, and all the cookbooks), and closed shelves (for a pantry). The whole will be on legs, so as to retain access to the drainhole beneath the rolling unit at the moment. The dryer will be turner 90 degrees so it is next to the new pantry unit, and brooms, mops, vacuum cleaner will be opposite it, out of sight from the main kitchen but still easily accessible. The only question is where to put the recycling bins, but I imagine we'll find a solution for that ...

These changes are much less drastic than ones involving separating the boys and moving the study into the lounge (how claustrophobic would that be?) or onto the balcony (freezing and with a tendency to leak in the winter; even though the last problem will be solved before this winter, I do not intend to put a computer there), but I think they will make a big difference to the way our house feels. If I were a better photographer I would be putting up before and after photos; I'll see if I can get ADC to cooperate.