Making Room for One More- PART ONE

There's always room for one more! We are just in the process of trying to discover where it is at! Hehe. We live in a wonderful home, but it is not large by American standards, for eight people, at about 900 square feet. But with a little creativity, we can make it work very well.



When we moved into this house about a year and a half ago, we used one of the three bedrooms for us, one for the four older children, and one for storage - with enough space to also house Olivia's pack-n-play. But it wasn't technically "Olivia's room".  The one thing I lament is that Brazilian houses do not come equipped with built-in storage. No closets, no basement, no attic, no shed, no cabinets unless you install them yourself, no garage, nada.  We do have what they call a "garage", but it is more like what we would call a "carport" in English, as it is open on three sides. It is great for bikes and some other things that are not affected by the weather, but does not work so well as storage for off-season clothes, our seminar materials (think 1,000 manuals plus 1,000 folders - TONS of bulk!), six sleeping bags, my sewing supplies and other misc items that we would like to store. So that was what we used the third bedroom for. Storage.

But now, we will have an even team: three girls and three boys. And Dominique is nearly ten now, which means it would be nice for her to not have to share the room with the boys. So we have been transitioning the "Storage Room" to the "Girls' Room" ... a painful transition! BUT.... I am SO happy with the results!!! It's fun to have some place so girly in the house. And I'm so happy Dominique has sisters now!

I am going to post the projects in parts. First, we had to figure out a place for my clothes that were not able to fit previously in our room, and therefore were in the storage room. I measured and discovered that we *could* squeeze another cabinet into our room if it was narrow. I am SO thankful that after quite a bit of searching, I found one JUST the right size at a used furniture store!

Now I was able to empty that section of the storage room of my clothes and shoes, and WOW was it nice to have them in my room! There was only one problem with the cabinet: the side that showed the most was really badly scratched. 


 Here is a picture of the badly scratched side. I tried to think of a solution to cover this.... as I wasn't really feeling like a refurbishing project, and I finally decided to cover it with cloth!

 I did this while Fabio was out of town for the week at seminary.  I covered both of the sides so they would look even, and I actually LOVED the result!  Fabio said it resembled a bandaid when he got home, but that is essentially what it is! hehe. Anyway, no more scratches!

And now I could work more easily on the "Girls' Room". :)