As I mentioned yesterday, I’m almost finished with our bedroom. Once I complete these final few projects, the majority of our bedroom suite will be finished – the foyer, my walk-in closet and laundry area, the bedroom, and our bathroom. However, that still leaves one more area that needs to be completed before our entire bedroom suite is actually finished. I still have to finish the storage room.
The area marked “storage room” in the floor plan above is the hallway bathroom. Since we moved into this house, this room has been our guest bathroom. But now that it’s in our bedroom, this is a very strange place for a guest bathroom. So the plan is to convert this space into a much-needed storage space. For most of the time we spent here, this room looked like this…
And then I had plans for a little redesign of this room. We had the rest of the quartz that was left over from our master bathroom cut out and installed here. And then I wanted to put up wallpaper and make a new shower curtain. I never got around to the last two projects (and I’m thankful for that now) before we decided to convert this entire area of our house into a master bedroom suite. So this bathroom has been in this in-between state for about a year and a half. It has the new quartz countertop in the sink area, but still has the wood countertop (not visible in this photo) on the cabinet opposite the sink. I never hung the shower curtain again, so there is only a shower curtain liner. And I poached the resin art a while ago to use in my studio. While it’s not terrible, it hasn’t looked finished for a while.
But again, I’m glad I didn’t waste my time finishing this room (and especially putting up the wallpaper) because now the plan is to convert this room into a storage room. It will probably be the least exciting project I do this year (with the possible exception of turning our ugly sunroom into a home gym), but this is a project I’m very excited about. I’m literally dreaming about this storage cabinet.
Matt (my husband, who has MS) has three devices that we use for his various needs – a power wheelchair, a shower wheelchair and a Hoyer lift. While we were in our house all the time, we never had a place to store his equipment when not in use. The Hoyer elevator is quite large, and when not in use it feels in the way. The shower wheelchair stays in the shower, which feels annoying when he’s not actually using it. And when he’s not using his wheelchair, he just stays in the music room.
That’s why I find the idea of having an actual space to store these pieces of equipment when he’s not using them incredibly exciting. I’ve dreamed of this for a long time, and now it feels very close and tangible. So while I’m finishing the bedroom and passing the hallway bathroom several times a day, I’ve been imagining, dreaming, and planning what this closet would look and function.
It’s not a big room, but I think it will be big enough for everything I want in it. In addition to storing his gear, I want lots of shelves and general storage space. Our new water heater will also be installed there. I think I decided to go with an electric tankless water heater, so I’m hanging it on the wall to free up floor space.
But recently I had a thought. This room already has plumbing as it is a bathroom. So why not add a sink to the room? I think it would be really handy to have a kitchen sink and this seems like the perfect place for it. I’m imagining something like this stainless steel sink. This is 20″ deep and 36″ wide.
I imagine the room will be set up something like this…
Once everything is out of the room, I can get a better idea of how much space Matt’s gear will take up and then I can plan accordingly. But there is also enough space for shelves above your equipment in the equipment storage area. The bottom line is that I want to maximize this area to get as much storage as possible. At the moment I’m storing a lot of things in the sunroom that can’t stay there, so I need to think about how I can use this much smaller space to store these items – items like vacuum cleaners, floor mops, carpet cleaners, etc. I need to take all of these items into account and make sure I have dedicated storage space for them.
Anyway, I still need to finish the bedroom and then I need to finish the studio bathroom before I can even think about starting on that storage room. But I’m so excited about this space that I want to have a solid plan in place long before I’m ready to start it.
I don’t know yet if I’ll try to make it look pretty or if I’ll just make it purely functional. If I make it pretty it would only be for me since I’m the only one who will see it. It’s not like guests would enter this storage room (unless I show it to them). But I like things to look pretty, even if it’s just for me. But it’s the practical use of the space that excites me the most.
