Richard currently has a workshop set up in the smallest room of our house. It is a very small room, and also upstairs. This limits the amount of Stuff he can put in it - not least of all, because there's issues with how much weight the floor can safely take. He has been angling for some time to move the workshop into the "little room" downstairs, which has a concrete floor. (Which is actually quite a lot bigger). I have been resistant, because that's a nice room, with a wrought-iron fireplace and a door into the garden - I wanted that to be our spare bedroom for guests.

Except we don't actually have many guests to stay, and most of the ones we do have are people from our relationship web - chosen family, in other words. Not people that we need a huge amount of privacy from. At least one of them has a preference for sleeping upstairs where possible. Also, having someone sleep downstairs is annoying for setting the burglar alarm - it means we have to remember to use a different Zone than we normally use at night, and it means the person in the spare room has to remember to unset the alarm before going into the kitchen, or we all get woken up by the alarm going off. This is not really ideal. Also also, the only bathroom in the house is upstairs, and some people for reasons of disability or general grogginess can't safely negotiate stairs when mostly asleep. (Like me).

I was talking to artremis on the phone yesterday, and I was walking round the house at the time. I went into the workshop room and realised it *is* big enough to use as the spare room. It's about 8' x 6', which means you can fit a double-bed futon in it. With some shelves or a single wardrobe, it will work as a spare room - it'll be small, but that probably doesn't matter, as the guest/s will just go in there to sleep, and maybe lie on the bed reading. All that you need for that is a bed and sufficient quality lighting. And with the doors shut and the bathroom between that room and our bedroom, there is enough privacy.

I believe in making efficient use of space. In the same way that we have our living room upstairs because that's where the biggest room is (and because that room is far too big to use as the master bedroom), it seems crazy for somewhere that Richard spends at least an hour a day to be the smallest room in the house. I do prefer it that he's upstairs when I'm also sitting upstairs as I get a bit lonely otherwise, but if he's doing actual machining he has the door shut anyway to cut down on the noise, as I can't stand metal grinding, drilling or banging noises. The room downstairs, in addition to having a concrete floor, also has more space so we could put in sound insulation (actual insulating material, or something like a run of wardrobes along a wall). The door to the garden will be useful for bringing heavy things into the house, as a car or van could drive right up to the garden gate. Everything says we should rearrange the house.

Except we'll have to get organised, and then get strong people in to move the equipment. And getting organised is going to take a few months. Oh well.

Meanwhile, Richard is going to post on his various mini-lathe & workshop groups "My partner is letting me move my workshop into a bigger room!". And he is certain he's going to get a ton of replies saying "It's a trap! Run away!" ;) Apparently, most women don't agree to this sort of thing unless they want something in return. Just as well I'm not "most women", really :)

Tags: house, wuzzie
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