ABOUT PRIVACY: Part I: Making a Basic Bedroom More - a Suite of Spaces

Melissa has the smallest bedroom in our home, 11 x 15 feet. Not bad actually. Still it's just a basic rectangle-shaped bedroom. But as you'll see, it can be made into something more. 
(Click on any of the pictures for a larger view.)

It has lovely northern and western light. Melissa's moved her bed to the outer corner of the room so it's framed by the two large 4-foot-wide windows, and is farthest from the bathroom she shares with Stephen. They tend to use the bathroom about the same time in the mornings, so it doesn't disturb her sleep, but she likes the outer space for her bed.

She prefers a removed feel for her work area, so I suggested she place her desk  in the corner where it's also flooded diagonally by natural light, which happens to be northern light. The best. 

Below and in the plan, you see that the wall her door opens onto also leads to her closet and its door, so major furniture tends to be placed on the window side, making the room feel overly-weighted on the far end. But as is, if her door is ajar, you can see directly into her room from anywhere on the landing. So most people using this room will do exactly that. There's no sense of privacy if she wants her door open, which in our house is an invitation to say hello.

Essentially, you can add privacy to a box of a bedroom like this by creating an entry into the room. There are several ways to do this, and you get a bonus when you do - more activity niches for yourself!

You can create these spaces as easy temporary DIY additions which you'll see here. I'll talk about more permanent options in Part II.

THE TEMPORARY, EASY FIX

The simplest, most flexible fix can be done in any room (rented or owned) by creating an entry alcove with something vertical that acts as a visual divider. Be as creative as fits your soul! I'll work the principle here with a shelf-unit, but you could use ceiling-hung fabric, an art panel, a textural wood piece, or anything that appeals. I like shelves or cabinets because they offer additional storage.  So here's what happens if you use one 6-foot shelf:

Placing just one tall shelf facing the entrance just inches beyond the entry door's full open swing creates a new path of entry that requires a turn before they see into your room. (Also notice that since this is earthquake country, I have anchored the end of the shelf to the wall with a piano hinge. This secures the shelf, but allows it to be easily rotated against the wall for moving larger furnishings in and out.)

Interestingly enough, an open-backed shelving or a divider works just as well; either draws the eye as someone approaches, so the onlooker's vision is foreshortened. It depends on how private a feel you need, and how much light you'd like passing through this "wall" you've created.

Now decide if you want the stuff on the shelves facing the entry as decor to intrigue, or facing the space you've created behind the unit. (You can hang a picture on the back for visitors to see as they pass or enter.) Maybe find or make a unit that has some of each?

Plus, you have this new niche behind the shelf. There's enough space for a small upholstered chair where you might read by all the natural light of that large window. Maybe with a tiny ottoman. You also have balanced the room's furnishing better as well. 

People will tend to walk into the room straight towards the desk unless they plan to sit on the bed. If you're reading my posts, you'll note right now there's "wasted square footage," that could be put to use along that wall. We placed Melissa's hot water kettle and tea set-up on a small, low carved table just behind her within easy reach, with her favorite books on a series of wall-mounted shelves above. It creates a vertical element that's very special to her, and it feels quite delicate and intimate. She likes her space spare, and only wants a picture on the wall. So for her, that space is where she kneels to prepare tea as she works, or stands to scan her treasured books.














Okay, if creating a sitting niche right by your closet isn't appealing, you can move the shelf or divider further back as you see in this second iteration, to allow the space for a second shelf perpendicular to the entry door. See what this does:

These units should be just high enough to cover what you want covered. You do not need to go high on both, and want light moving easy around these walls you create. So you might make one 6-foot tall, while another is 3 or 4-foot  high. 

You now have a protected entry. Hang some pictures along the left wall? Put a changing display on the shelf? A photo montage or collection you own? You are drawing your visitor deeper into the room before they turn to see where you are. While doing so, you get to choose what they see along the way. There's also a nice feeling of entry here and waiting to be invited in.

In addition, you have created a large alcove behind the perpendicular shelf. If it wasn't against the bathroom wall, you could put your bed against that low shelf using it as a headboard,or make it a seating nook with a comfy chair, or a creative task area. Music listening/making corner and collection? Up to you.

If you draw a plan of your room on graph paper to scale, you can play with the width of these two pieces to find more alcove variations. The shelves or dividers are creating circulation paths into your room. Directing these paths lets you add an activity area, and their heights and transparency lets you choose how much visibility you want that activity to have.

So if, for example, you're comfortable letting someone see over the perpendicular unit, keep it low. Try shortening it to about half the length that I show above. Doing so moves your "entry" more into the room's center allowing you to push the larger unit facing the door closer in. That allows you to fit a hamper right next to the closet, hidden from view.  As long as you leave 36 inches as your entry opening, it should flow nicely. Play.

And what you choose to use, and put on any shelves becomes another expression of you. Nice.

I am the Perfect Crash Test Dummy - Part 2

To be as accurate as possible, I realized I needed to include the other side of how I experience sharing life and space with other people.

 I do need my own space, literally and figuratively. But when being around other people is a choice, rather than a requirement, I can enjoy it. I grew up with five brothers and sisters, and sometimes I miss the feeling of a house overflowing with people and activity and conversations. When a musical band I’m in is clicking, it doubles or triples the excitement of performing over playing by myself. When I was a writer and living in Seattle—and they had finally invented laptops—I often would take my computer to a coffee house and write. I enjoy the feeling of having life flowing around me, without having to interact unless I choose.

I can also enjoy what Loni and I call having people “flow through” our space. When I lived in Moenkopi, we had a constant stream of people coming to stay with us at the mission. It was part of our role as a voluntary service unit to host the people from all over the world who were using the “Mennonite Your Way” network to travel across the country cheaply and, in our case, see the Hopi and the Grand Canyon.

Back before the Internet, we never exactly knew who would turn up next, or when. And often as not, they weren’t people with whom I would have chosen to spend time. But there were enough people who were interesting, or who asked in-depth questions about our work in the village or the Hopi, to make having new arrivals be something like opening an unknown present at Christmas. I became good friends with several of our return visitors as we got past surface impressions and got to share and know each others’ lives.

It seems for me it’s a combination of having the right to choose whether to share time/space with people, and who the people are. I know that no one usually has a pure choice about this; I’ve spent lots of time being polite with travelers and others because it would be rude to just leave. But being at home should mean being relaxed and more yourself, so for me to feel ‘at home’ around others means I have some level of choice about sharing.

I don’t yet see how all this can happen in our 1908 Victorian. Having seen Loni’s gift for space planning, and her sensitivity to what people need, I believe that if anyone can figure it out, she will.

But this is my life and our lives and our home, and I’ll have to live with this however it turns out. So sometimes this project does really feel like being a crash test dummy…

I am the perfect Crash Test Dummy, Part 1

I’m TJ. And while I happen to be Loni’s partner in life, it turns out I’m also the perfect crash test dummy for this project. So I’ll be sharing my experiences as an active passenger, as we go from plans to remodeling to adding housemates.

I started calling myself the crash test dummy when we first were seriously considering this project. Why?

Because, compared to most other people I’ve known, I have a very high need for physical and personal privacy. Due in part to how I grew up—large family, no private spaces, no respect for boundaries, my father’s profession requiring me to be a public person and under social scrutiny all the time. And in part due to my nature—I’m an introvert in most circumstances, and an empath who more often feels drained rather than energized being around other people. And I’m also a musician with sensitive hearing whose sleep is disturbed by noises.

My de facto solution has been to have as much private physical space around me as possible. Whenever possible as an adult, I’ve had a bedroom to myself as a creative studio and personal lair. When there was no bedroom available, I improvised: to escape living in a triple dorm room in college I moved myself down into the furnace room of the off-campus house. When I lived in the Hopi village of Lower Moenkopi, Arizona, I moved into the unheated upper floor of a stone barn to have space to myself. We were only eighty miles from the Grand Canyon, so at night it was colder than Hades. And I’m not joking. But it was a respite from the constant social flow in the main building of the old Mennonite mission.

(You could also say that by moving onto the reservation, and down inside a desert wash, I was trying to put as much private physical space around me as possible. Once you left the lower village, if you didn’t go up to Tuba City, you could drive your car or ride your horse for hours and not see buildings or other people. When my Hopi friend Lyle was still alive, he would sometimes loan me a horse, and I would ride all day by myself, soaking up the solitude and feeling my way through the seemingly endless desert .)

So, our thinking goes that if Loni, with input from me, can do space planning that adds two or three new people to our existing house AND gives me enough experience of privacy to be comfortable-- well, you’ve got some good crash test results.

Prospect & Privacy

It’s intriguing to think I can use the qualities of light to offer refuge to others here as well as ourselves.

How much will different light, especially natural light, make for separate space? 

I like the notion that I can use it to create  a sense of separateness to anyone we  invite in be it a weekend, or a few months, or maybe a more permanent sharing.

Phototropic

I’m like a houseplant turning toward the light. 

Light alerts me, and brings me around. After 18 years in the Pacific Northwest, where darkness falls before 4 during the winter, it’s no wonder. I hunger for brightness in my eyes every three days throughout the year or so down here. It’s sunlight I crave, not the heat.

At night however it becomes a problem. I don’t know if it’s my very pale eyes, but since I’ve been eleven, I’ve had to shut out light in order to sleep. Never mind the chapter about the Nazgul Blackriders sniffing out Frodo I’d just read. It had to be scary dark for me to fall asleep.

So it just so happens that we have Skytubes in our family-room turned bedroom. The lenses that cover these 16" circles on our ceiling make the light sparkle. When it was a family room, it was wonderful! But now as our “lair,” uhm, no. 

So we’ve covered them with upturned large flower pots on the roof which happens to be flat. Now that we’ve moved the bed down to one end, and we’re giving TJ the other side of the bookshelf/divider for his studio, we uncovered the one immediately over his studio area behind our high headboard. 

My intention was to make dark fabric covers to Velcro on or off from the inside (We won’t have easy roof access when we rent out the master suite upstairs.), but I haven’t gotten to it yet. So we’ve been sleeping and letting the morning light intrude.

I’m surprised. 

When I don’t have to rise to an alarm clock, the growing light seeps gently around the 6-foot high bookshelf/headboard while I sleep. Like Vermeer paintings, it feels soft and humble. It has been lovely to wake up to, and it doesn’t intrude before I’m ready. That one Skytube can be quite bright when I get out of bed and tussle with the puppy to say good morning. 

Light gives us such a strong sense of place,…and also a “separation from.” Think of a pool of light over a table in an otherwise darkened room.My friends and I used to frequent the Cork & Board, a wine and cheese place near my University back when. We had to let our eyes adjust to the low light for the first few seconds after we stepped through the entry door, but could already hear quite a bit of chatter, laughter and wine glasses tinkling at the tables. The large wooden tables were big enough for game boards and food, and closely spaced. But once my friends and I were seated under the hanging lamp that spilled light over our own table, the joyous noise of people around us fell away, and felt ..away.

Or have you’ve ever stood inside thick adobe, rammed earth or strawbale walled homes? The light coming through the deep windows framed by the thick walls has a removed quality. Rather than streaming into a hot spot on the floor like most modern homes, it hits the deep broad sill  and frame and bounces softly, spraying indirect light into the room. The pathos plant in me likes the feeling.

What I believe I’m experiencing now in the mornings is also like that. Light beyond or behind adds to one’s sense of refuge, making it feel a protected place to sleep. Nice.

The Lair Redux

Moved our bed to the other side of the room yesterday and turned it 90 degrees. 

You have to understand that we are already sleeping in the old family room downstairs behind the kitchen. It isn't really a bedroom. It was an add-on in the 60's,  and as is typical of the rest of that upgrade, it has exterior siding on its walls. 

But...

It's very removed and private, away from the kids upstairs, and it even has a little sink/bar in one corner. Years ago, I convinced TJ it would be a lovely removed boudoir. And if we put a simple room divider that had one side as a closet, and the other a bookshelf, we'd create a sitting area as well, That seating looked out onto a small enclosed piece of our yard that we could make into a garden.

We've loved the realm we created, if not the finishes in the room. The room divider offered some soundproofing from the street noise beyond the "meditation garden."

So the current move: Now we face the small garden. Our sleeping space is really tighter, but it feels intimate with a view, and I really like it. I specifically wanted to remove the bed from possible view through the doorway since it's to a common area (the kitchen). Now it feels very private, even though it’s in the same room as before. (Gotta clean up that garden now though.)

We hung up  our private lair pictures, ones we haven't used in years. They found their own perfect wall.

....Now if only I can figure out where to put the emergency food storage we’ve store in corner of our new bedroom. Staring at it really changes one’s mood.