I like to think that I'm not a wasteful person, but if something just doesn't work for me I am not above changing it out for something that DOES work. Case in point, the man cave.
Zack had been begging me to give him a "media room" for a while. He said he needed a place to go chill out, watch movies, play video games etc. It took a lot of persuading but I finally caved and we got started on what we would end up calling the man cave. We painted, got a new rug and TV [and a new cable box], moved all the video game consoles upstairs along with our old love seat and brought in some accessories. Awesome, right? Wrong. I can count on one hand the number of times that man has gone into that room and hung out.
Then, on Black Friday we picked up a new TV [a 32" for our room] but agreed we wouldn't get another cable box because 1. it seemed like overkill having cable in 2 rooms less than 3 yards from each other and 2. the bill goes up significantly with each box, but after a couple weeks we realized that we really enjoyed watching TV in bed and we wanted cable in there. We didn't want to take the cable away from downstairs since that's mostly the place we hang out, so the only option was to take the cable from the man cave. In doing that it completely removed the purpose of that room. Basically without the cable there's no reason we would go watch TV in there at all.
I was feeling defeated, seeing this room that I made all pretty go to waste, then Zack just said, "Hey, lets just eliminate the man cave all together and do a functional office/work space in there." I was hesitant at first, but in all honesty it just doesn't make sense to keep the room decorated and gathering dust. This new plan will make the room a useful space so reluctantly, I am on board.
Right away, Zack took the new TV out of the man cave and put it in the living room down stairs, took the TV from downstairs and put it in our room and put the small TV that we bought for our room into the guest room. whew. Did you follow all that? I hope so.
Now, we are going through most of whats in the room and figuring out if we want to keep it, sell it, give it away etc, and in the meantime I think I've come up with a plan, here goes nothing....
First things first, we will change out the blue paint for the light grey we used in the rest of the room to give it a cohesive look.
Next, we'll turn my current desk area into Zack's scale model area by adding a shelf above the desk to keep his paints organized. We we also be moving his military art over here so that he can still enjoy it.
After that, we'll build a L-shaped desk coming out from the side wall wrapping into the center of the room, this will be my work space. One side will hold my computer and printer while the other will be open for project space.
Lastly, we'll change the curtains to something darker, get new covers for our desk chairs and add in some functional accessories to complete the look.
This one's definitely going to take us a little while but in the end I know this is going to be the best solution for us. I know it seems like we wasted time and money, which we did, but sometimes you just have to admit that it was a fail, move on and create something even better. I'm hoping that this was a lesson in DIY and we learn to better plan for what functions a room will actually serve BEFORE we go all out on remodeling it. We hope that you appreciate our honesty and would love to hear your suggestions for this room if you have any!
xoxo,
Jackie
