T w e n t y S i d e d
The laundry room and kitchen are both done, leaving the upstairs as its own apartment.
They’re on a roll now, with the kitchen and laundry room both tackled successfully (ignoring the newly leaky dishwasher) they’re ready for more. The living space needs some color desperately, and the old kitchen sits downstairs, dismantled and in limbo. They’ve been brainstorming what to do with the downstairs, and Logan has an idea, although he brings it to his parents carefully.
He thinks the space could be made into a very small studio apartment, which he could use, even rent from his parents, until he’s ready to move out. The idea isn’t entirely self-serving, he is thinking ahead for his parents as well. He points out that a renting income could help them out when they get closer to retirement, and with them living downtown, someone without reliable transportation could use the space as somewhere to live where they might not need a car to get to work.
Living in the US, the issue of people needing to own a car to have a livelihood is often a problem for people who can’t drive. Someone with vision issues, epilepsy, or even just a suspended license risks homelessness because they can’t get to work. Logan is going to school for social work, and has seen these cases over and over. Having a living space in a walkable area could be a huge deal for someone who needs it.
Kelly and Michael are so proud that their son thinks about things so thoroughly, and even more proud that he uses that skill to think about how to help people, over and over. Privately they joke between the two of them that they should have had more kids, if this is what just one can do, imagine if they’d made a whole little commune of them. This is obviously in jest, but a nice moment to pat themselves on the back for raising a good kid.
The idea Logan has put forward is an obvious winner, but has downfalls. Mostly, it would require replacing the stairs up into the apartment to create a suitable entry area. Also, a whole apartment is going to cost time and money. This week they’re going to focus on painting the upstairs, while they work on a game plan.
The all-white stand in furniture doesn’t help make the space more interesting, but even without it, the space is bare in comparison to the lively kitchen space.
The dining room is our first victim. Kelly is sick of buying stain remover for the carpet under the table. It’s time for something more easily cleaned to go down.
First, a transition line to outline the new space.
Then…why is that window white?
Okay, we’ve ‘painted’ that. The window doesn’t actually have alternative swatches, so we traded it out completely, but it’s not our family’s fault that their universe is stupid, so they’ve just painted it.
And a new floor is in. Easier to clean, and classy.
This place has begun leaning heavily Art Deco, which, funnily enough, I actually hate as a style, but seems to be working for our family.
And for the last job of the week, putting up a warm white paint in the rest of the space to tie it together. Next week we tackle the plan for the downstairs.
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Glad to see you back, Bay!
As a french person, the sprawling suburban architecture was what shocked me the most during my trip to Berkeley.
There’s so much space between houses! Often dirty, barely maintained space too! And the streets are so wide! And the nearest pharmacy is ten minutes away! No wonder people need a car to go anywhere.
Ten minutes drive?! Not sure I’ve ever lived even a 10 minute walk away from a pharmacy.
I’ve lived a 30 minute drive away from the nearest pharmacy. In the place we are now the nearest one is a twenty minute walk, if you were willing to cross highways, climb through ditches, and cross at least two ‘no pedestrian’ zones to get there, we have a horrible infrastructure problem for walkling.
Two pharmacies within a 10 minute walk of where I live. I can think of five within 10-15 minutes of where I work and there’s probably more but that’s in a major city center.
Gosh. I think I’ve only experienced that sort of thing in Milton Keynes, which is designed after US cities (except it has a roundabout at every intersection). Or out-of-town business parks (which is essentially what MK feels like, to an uninitiated Brit). Got off the bus in the wrong place and had to trek along a thick grass verge for some way. And expected to walk through the ‘city centre’ by the shortest path by walking across roads like in a normal UK city, and ended up confused. Once I knew the way things worked it was a bit easier though – many many cycle/pedestrian paths and underpasses totally avoiding having to interface with a road as a pedestrian… sort of – to get to my work entrance I had to cross a 60 mph road into a vehicle/lorry entrance, which wasn’t the best fun. When I arrived the first time, I mentioned to the taxi driver that I’d be visiting the city centre afterwards. And he said something about the shopping centre being good. And then when I asked the next taxi driver on the way back from my interview, to go to the city centre, he said you mean the shopping centre? Because it turns out there isn’t a ‘city centre’, rather a shopping centre (i.e. indoor mall) next to what looks like a retail park / business park with some restaurants, none of it particularly walkable at all unless perhaps you know the specific alleyways, should they exist. Ended up seeing most of the place through a bus window. Train station bus stop –> nearest bust stop to work –> walk along pedestrian/cycle walkways, past some offices and car showrooms –> work –> back to bus stop –> train station.
Now that we have e-bikes and e-scoots, I’ll be interested to see how much of the younger generations buy into zomg car=mandatory culture. Naturally one of the biggest barriers to a conversion will be the fact that most places of employment don’t have secure places to store such a vehicle, because up until now it’s been cars or bust, and going forward it will be “hey why should we bother paying to build such a space when they should just get cars like normal people instead.”
Man, I love those two little rooms. I have a kitchen remodel in my distant future and seeing different ways to spruce things up has helped to get the juices flowing for what we can do with our own space.