lodger what?

it has come to my attention that i kind of forgot to mention something in my catching up post on Friday that is actually a pretty big thing that has happened in our life in the past few months: we have a lodger at our house.

note: this is not our lodger.

this is a tiny turkey we found when moving a chair in the basement.

in a nutshell - there is a girl in our community group, (let's call her A) whose long-distance boyfriend (henceforth known as B, aka the lodger) was able to find a teaching job in our area which enabled him to move across the country from Seattle to be closer to her. so he had a job, and a moving date, but was striking out on finding an affordable place to rent once he got here.

and that's where we came in.

in a grand gesture of an attempt to embody Christ's servant heart, we mentioned to A and B that we might probably possibly be able to rearrange the space in our finished half of the basement to relatively reasonably accommodate a short-term lodger if a more suitable situation was not able to be found. apparently this offer, caveat-filled as it was, was too good to pass up because it wasn't long before we were rearranging the basement to clear out the office and turn it into a bedroom.

click to embiggen and see if you can spot the tiny turkey in the chaos!

we made ourselves a mini-to-do list for this project that covered some of the most important items that needed to be done in order to make this space inhabitable:

- get a new dehumidifier. (our old one was on the fritz)
- relocate the office.
- relocate the futon. (and maybe actually get a futon mattress)
- rearrange the basement furniture.
- relocate the contents of the office closet.
- clean out the window well. (it was buggy and gross!)
- install baseboards in the office to make it feel more room-like.

of course, this threw the rest of the basement into a state of semi-controlled chaos for a while, and even spilled into the upstairs guest room with the relocation of the futon and a major overhaul of the organization of all three closets in that room.

there's a tiny turkey in here, too!

one of the biggest hurdles we encountered as we tackled the to-do list was relocating the office and all of the office related flotsam and the modem hookup into the main part of the finished basement. (the lowpoint was living without internet for a few days while we thought through the new arrangement) we also had to find a workable furniture arrangement which ultimately involved moving every piece of furniture except for my craft corner and the blue bookshelf.

 

last chance to spot the tiny turkey!

 

once the room was cleared, Mark scrubbed out the window well, painted and installed some baseboard, and called it good. we also spent a few evenings finally fixing up the little desk we trash-picked a year and a half ago, so that B could actually use it if he so desired, without worrying about the door falling off.

 

i honestly love the new layout of the basement. we were able to work with the furniture we already had down there to create several different "zones" - the office area, a lounge/tv area, and the craft area(which hasnt changed since i reorganized it).

 this arrangement makes the space more functional overall, while still leaving room for the addition of the lodger and all the contents of his moving truck. (the most surprising contents included a sewing machine, a garden fountain, and a dining room table and chairs) B moved in with the help of his cousin on a weekday while we were both at work, so we were not able to help him move in, but apparently it all went smoothly.

its been about six weeks since the lodger moved in and, while there has been a little bit of a learning curve for everyone involved as far as figuring out the best way to coexist in the shared spaces such as the laundry room and especially the kitchen, so far so good. of course, once school starts in a couple days and B's schedule adjusts accordingly, the balance we have maintained so far might get thrown off a little and require some readjustment. i guess we'll just keep figuring it out as we go.