Open House: Living Areas

I’m participating in the Open House hosted by the 4 Moms, 35 Kids. Throughout the month of August, they are giving a glimpse into their homes and how they manage things for their larger-than-average families. So far, we have joined with them and given you a tour of our outside yard and entry, and the kitchen and dining room.

This week, you get to take a peek into the main living areas of our house. This is where it gets real, folks.  You’ve toured with us long enough that you finally found it – mess and projects.

Laundry room - before

There's a desk buried under here somewhere. Dress-up clothes are in the barrel.

Library/school room - before.

OK, let’s leave those “before” pictures and we’ll kinda start over at the family room.  It used to be the study, and way back when we first moved into the house it was the dining room.  Yeah, we tend to be nomads – inside our own house.   For people who don’t like getting lost in our house, the entryway is right behind me.  Here is where our TV is – see the crude hanger antenna? Just kidding… that’s for the weather radio.  We don’t have any tv reception whatsoever – we use our TV for videos and DVDs.  When I write blog posts, I sit at the computer you can see in the background.

This is the last room in the house that needs to be finished as far as remodeling goes.  It’s literally half-painted.  The room used to have wrap-around natural-edge custom shelves my husband put in to hold our books.  On the coffee table is the pile of hunting/fishing videos my husband just acquired at a yard sale.  The “lounge” in the back corner is a simple toddler bed my husband and I built for Sarah.  She’s outgrown it, so it was moved in here to help with seating when all 11 of us watch a movie.  The green couch is lovingly called “the courting couch” – it used to be my mom’s and was Dave’s and my favorite place to sit and talk during our “courting days” over 16 years ago.

There’s a taste of what this room will look like.  The corner behind the filing cabinets used to be a doorway.

The coffee table is a favorite spot for play.

This might look familiar to you – it’s the living room.  Sarah usually takes her nap here and this is where we read aloud to our children for school, and have our family worship times.  The post-it note chart was started when I was working on schedules and it actually has things penciled in, you just can’t see them in this picture. (Honest!)  The only things written in permanent marker are the children’s names, and “breakfast”, “nap”, and “dinner”.    It’s in a tough spot since it’s right at the beginning of the highway hallway leading to the children’s bedrooms – a high-traffic area.

My husband sits in this chair for leading family worship and reading, and has some of his favorite resources on hand – Strong’s Concordance, Matthew Henry, Milton Terry’s Hermeneutics, etc.  The shelf also holds our current Sonlight books for this year.

The bookshelf next to the piano holds the children’s music books, and most of their Bibles.  The pattern blocks get pulled out for quiet play during read-aloud times.

All right – let’s go see if there’s been any progress in that other area of the house – there has!  The pictures at the top of this post were taken Wednesday morning – by that evening it had started to get back to normal.  This used to be (is that phrase sounding familiar?) a two-car garage, and the back door was where the washboard is hanging.  My husband walled this off to make a handy laundry/utility room.  The box is one of two that is full of “scrap” paper (printed on one side) my husband brings home from work.  I had to ask him to stop for now.  This picture is taken from the pantry doorway.

Let’s turn around for a second – there’s the door going back into the pantry and kitchen.  My husband built this shelf to hold our photo albums and other large books.  On top is our “goat box” which holds medications and supplements for our goats.

There we go – that’s looking more like it!  It’s not completely done yet, but it is definitely usable.  One reason this was such a mess was we totally swapped this room and the family room about 4 months ago.

I love our encyclopedia shelf.  In our town, we’re known as the place to bring old books, so all these sets were free.  This is just one of the ways God provides for our family – above what we ask or think!  The drawers hold a massive set of K’nex that was a Christmas gift one year.

The other side of the room: more books, parakeets, toys, and supplies that will be sorted and culled in the next few weeks.  On the right of the picture you can see some cubbyhole shelves that work well to hold school books, and periodicals that we want to keep – mostly on theology, homesteading, and do-it-yourself handyman projects.  My old homeschool cubby shelf is here, turned on its side.  The other cubby shelf from the sewing room was put on top of it and fastened to the wall.

Behind the encyclopedia shelf is our mudroom – you saw the other side of this last week.  This is where our second fridge lives, along with winter jackets, fishing bait buckets, cast-net, skateboard…  My dehydrator sits on a trunk on the other side of the refrigerator.

This shelf has been with us for a long time – it was given to us by our local library – a true double-sided library shelf.  We put a backer board on it, and it houses puzzles, games, extra toys, and fishing tackle boxes on top.

My favorite spot in this room is the area by the window where the little girls play and do school.  Our chest freezer is in the back corner.

(Psst – here’s more reality…the top valance on the lovely free curtains is not attached to the wall – I’ll find the brackets soon, I hope.)

See you next week as we take the final tour of this Open House series – the bedrooms.

Be sure to visit all of the 4 Moms, 35 Kids to see their living areas:

• Smockity Frocks
• The Common Room
• Life in a Shoe
• Raising Olives

I’ve also linked this post to “Show Me Your Homeschool Room” at Mama to 3 Blessings.