Trading spaces

So I know I committed to blogging once a week, but this subject of this blog has taken two weeks to progress, so instead of doing a part 1 and part 2, I opted for one big blog devoted to our trading spaces plans.
Dave and I have had many friends begin families over the past couple of years, and we have seen them all struggle with "fitting the kid" into the house. For one reason or another, they didn't feel like they had the space they needed for a baby, and they spent most of the pregnancy trying to solve this problem. Some were brave enough even to buy houses and move during the time. Well, even though our time to begin a family won't start until the end of 2010 (Lord willing, of course) we wanted to start thinking in that direction now to avoid some major surprises and headaches when the time came.
We have a three bedroom house. It is the perfect size to start a family. Currently, one of those rooms is ours, one a guest room, and one an office/hobby room. But lately, some of our extended family dynamics have changed and we wanted to be able to support those dynamics at all times. On the Vendsel side, two additional people are going to be added to the mix (one adult and one child!) and onthe Norvell side we have our amazing nephew. Not to mention, all of these people live somewhere other than the greater Dallas/Fort Worth area. So, needless to say, our desire to have a comfortable place for them to stay when they decide they are homesick for Texas is a high priority. I've always told Dave and a guest room isn't something I want to do away with. So, when we get to the point of starting a family, we decided the office was going to be the room that would be converted into a nursery.
Our office is the main location for two big items in our house: Our computer and Dave's gaming hobby. We had a large computer desk, a hobby table where Dave paints his game pieces, and the closet is almost totally taken up with my sewing stuff and all of Dave's gaming accessories. So, we were faced with what to do with all of this stuff so that we can be ready for a nursery when the time comes ( again, let me reiterate, especially for the grandparents, that time won't be till late 2010). So, here is what we decided.

This is a picture of our eat in kitchen (notice Dexter's tail and hiney in the bottom left). We used to have a kitchen table here, but two weekends ago, we took it apart and gave it back to my mom. As we sat around figuring out how to rearrange our house, we realized that the only time we eat in our eat in kitchen is when it is just Dave and I grabbing a quick bite to eat alone in the mornings or when our evening schedules cause us to not have dinner together. Any other time, we always eat in our dining room. So, having a kitchen table that seats 4 wasn't the best use of our space. In addition, the desk that we had in our office was massive. We bought it when I just went back to school and needed allot of desktop space for papers and books. No need for it anymore. So, we got rid of the computer table on Craig's list and bought this

Welcome to our eat in office! And we still have plenty of room to get a small, two sweater table to sit right behind it. It may be the slightest bit crowded, but, ultimately, I think it will be a better use of our space. So the next project to tackle was the closet. We decided that Dave's gaming stuff needed to find a new home so that we could begin to clean out that closet area.

This is our garage. It is "clean", meaning everything was put up, but not organized by any means. So, on Friday night last weekend, we got rid of everything we didn't need and were able to free up an entire cabinet to put some of Dave's gaming supplies.

See....much improved! We took all of the old paint cans to the hazardous waste drop off in Fort worth, got rid of a bunch of dried out paint brushes, etc. It is much cleaner and more organized. And, you can see the left cabinet is full of Dave's gaming stuff. So that got us thinking "where else can we stash some of Dave's gaming stuff:

Dave's closet. Like and true man, it was a mess. But, like any true lover of organization, it only took me 20 minutes and one trip to Bed, Bath and Beyond to get it in tip top shape.

A shoe rack to clear off the floor, and repurposing the plastic drawers for sweaters, we now have extra room in here to put gaming stuff as well.

Now....if only I could start picking out colors for a nursery.........