T w e n t y S i d e d

Logan, Kelly, and Michael all come back from their week long trip with much clearer heads. The drive from their house to the Grand Canyon clocked in at about sixty hours of driving total. Kelly and Michael took turns driving, with Logan subbing in as a backup, so luckily they didn’t waste time with hotels along the way. All in all, they spent three whole days in the car, broken up with four days at the Grand Canyon. During the drive and some of their many hikes, they planned what to do with the house.

All three of our family members are sick to death of holidays including carrying plates of food up and down the stairs. The year they lost the whole dish of mashed potatoes to a fumble is still a sore spot for them. A kitchen upstairs would be much smaller, but gone would be the days of joking about installing a dumbwaiter. The new laundry room would be hilariously in the way of their ideas, but that could be fixed. The beautiful double door they got cheap would need to come out for something slimmer, but if they did that they’d have room for a galley kitchen. Doing that already, they could arguably make room for the kitchen by slimming down the laundry room…

The decision is made to work with the space they have, see if everything they need fits during the planning phase, and work from there.

In the car they all laugh that they’re going to get home and not be able to sleep, and instead work on blueprints for the new kitchen. The joke stems from the fact they are all tired and wired, but could not be further from the truth.

Returning home from the Grand Canyon, each and every member of our family crashes like an airplane driven by a toddler. Logan makes it to his room but not his bed, and falls asleep face down on his desk in the middle of trying to check his email. Kelly falls asleep on the couch, where she accidently settled in and got comfortable while trying to talk to her husband.

Michael is the only one who realizes what’s about to happen and gets to prepare for the crash. He gets his wife a blanket, and checks on his son in hopes to warn him. Finding Logan drooling on his desk, Michael takes a risk on his bad back and gets Logan into bed, luckily not far from his desk. Logan will get the magical experience of falling asleep in one place, and waking up in another, something usually reserved for children and people who got a surprise ride in an ambulance.

Once his family is comfortable, Michael tucks himself into bed. Despite the sun still sitting high in the sky, all three members of our family are out for the count. The only movement the house sees for almost fifteen hours is some trips to the bathroom, and a delirious bowl of dry cereal made with a heartbreaking discovery of there being no milk in the house.

When they begin to roll out of bed it’s roughly six in the morning the next day, and the planning can finally start. Logan runs to the grocery store to get milk, breakfast sausage, and a pack of college-ruled notebooks.

No sledgehammers will be coming out today, but they will be sketching out a plan. Luckily for us, we’ve got the ability to model the space to see the plan before they start.

The space they are working with is tiny, but anything is better than their current situation.

Yeah, those French doors aren’t going to survive the process.

Maybe instead of throwing them out, they could just use half?

The addition of the wall between the stairs and the kitchen would keep things more grounded. Also, the extra space in the laundry room would make a fantastic pantry.

And the plan is made! Our little family only has it in sketchbooks and notes right now, but it seems entirely functional. Next week we can begin actually implementing the plan instead of just all white blueprint-mode.

Bay Jubilee Oldest child of Shamus Young. They/Them