We have made a new and exciting improvement to our house. There is a small room at the front of our house. It is not considered a bedroom, as it has no closet. When we first moved in, we thought it would be perfect as a playroom for the girls. We put their play kitchen, all of their toys, their little white table and chairs, and a bookshelf with their books in there. We also set up a couch and a small tv with their own solo DVR for their tv shows. We thought it was perfect. Unfortunately, it often became a source of frustration and stress in our house. The girls would go in there and make a horrible mess of things, then refuse to clean it up and even refuse to continue to play in there when it was messy, so then they would drag all of their toys into the living room and other parts of the house. Lena refused to watch tv in there claiming that the tv screen was too small. The fact that it was always a mess was made even more annoying because the way the house is laid out, it was the first thing anyone saw whether coming in the front door or the back door.
One afternoon in March we came home from somewhere and I was really looking forward to doing some reading. I walked into the living room to find out that Jim had put a movie on for the girls in there. It was frustrating to me that I had nowhere in my house where I could quietly read. The tv was often on in the living room, and I can't read in bed or I will fall asleep. Out of frustration that day, I declared that I was going to take all of the girls' toys out of the playroom and turn it into a place where I could read. Jim kind of rolled his eyes and said, "Yeah right!"
I couldn't let the idea go. I had to wait, as we were in the middle of Lent and were too busy to undertake such a project. But I started doing some planning and brainstorming of ideas. The week after Easter was our Spring Break, and Mom was here visiting. The timing was perfect! The day after Easter, we cleaned up the basement really well and made room for the girls to have their playroom down there. We moved everything down there. They loved it! We were also able to move their Dish hook-up to the very large tv down there that Jim uses for video games. The basement was officially "cool"! I decided that it is our new family room.
I wish I had a "before" picture of the playroom upstairs, but I don't really because since it was always such a mess, I made sure it didn't end up in any pictures!
So now the upstairs room was empty. It kind of stayed like that for a while because we didn't have furniture for it. But a few weeks ago we saw a recliner for sale in the classifieds and bought it. We moved the comfy old half-broken recliner to the new room and put the nicer one in the living room. Then Jim brought home a nice chair and ottoman he had in his office at church that he never really used. Then we moved some bookshelves in there and acquired a small table and some lamps from our school's rummage sale. It was coming together! Last week Tammy and Amy came up for a couple of days and took the girls off our hands for a day and a half and two whole nights. Jim and I used our kid-free day to go shopping for the remainder of what we needed and we spent the afternoon and evening assembling furniture, moving books, and arranging things. While we still have some minor decor-type stuff to do still, but it is pretty much finished. Jim asked me what were going to call this new room of ours, and I said, "The library, of course!" He thought that was kind of funny, but it fit and it stuck. So now I present to you, The Roemke Library!
View from the front door area.
View from the kitchen. If you've never been in our house, this room has two pocket doors: one that leads to the stairs and the front door and living room (on the left in this picture) and one that leads to the kitchen and back door (on the right in the picture above). It's really nice having doors on this room, because we can keep the quiet ambiance even if the girls are watching tv in the living room. Jim hung a bunch of different bird feeders right outside the large window and we have been attracting lots of house finches and goldfinches (there are two on our thistle feeders as I type this!).
The other neat thing about this room is that we inadvertently arranged it so that we kind of have our own "corners". This is Jim's corner.
My corner. The cords near the bottom of the chair are for my electric throw. How sad is it that I am still using that in late June!
Our new big bookshelf.
This and the clock are the only things on the wall right now, but we are planning on adding more.
This bookshelf had been in the living room previously. We still need to fill the big empty space it left in there, but haven't found the right piece of furniture yet.
I really wanted a mantel clock for this room, but had a hard time finding one. I saw this wall clock and loved it. We also inadvertently created kind of a bird theme in this room when we bought this, a trash can with a bird motif, and that framed print above. It works really well since the window with bird feeders are the center of attention in the room.
We even bought Peatie a little pet bed so she could have a comfy place to hang out with us. But in true cat fashion, she has yet to use it. :(
Jim has said multiple times that this was the best idea I ever had. I think he's right! This room has become our favorite room in the house. It is so nice to come in here and read quietly, or even just look out the large window at the beautiful view we have. We absolutely love our new library and feel so blessed to live in a house that could physically allow for such a thing!
