The weekend of January 8th, I had a modest goal…take down the Christmas tree. And I got it done on Friday, the 8th. I was very happy when I went to bed that Friday night, thinking I had met my one and only goal for the whole weekend, and I would have the rest of the weekend free and clear to relax after the hustle and bustle of the holidays.

You know the saying “Man plans, God laughs?”

That Saturday, I decided to put together a bookshelf that we had waiting in a box in the den. It had been waiting for the aforementioned tree to be put away, because I knew there would be some mild furniture rearranging involved. So I got to work. And as I worked, Ryan and I began talking. Talking about that room…the front room in our house, which we call the den, but has functioned primarily as his office since he began working from home over six years ago. We threw around a lot of ideas about how to position things in the room, but we kept coming back to one point…his work equipment was the part of the room that didn’t fit.

Refinishing our basement is just not an option right now. So, we turned to the upstairs. What if we took our guest room/library, and turned that into his office? What if we put a sofa bed in the den, and let that function as our guest room when we had guests? And what if we moved all the bookshelves into our school room? So, off to Ashley Furniture I went (with Turkey), to see if we could even find furniture we could afford that would suit our purposes. Oh, and while I was there, why didn’t I just look for new furniture for our living room, too, since the couch we’d taken to referring to as the “green monster” wasn’t really working for us anymore, and our recliners, while still comfortable, were in kind of sad shape?

It didn’t take long in the store to find the perfect sleeper sofa (and a matching chair!), plus a full-length reclining sofa for the living room, and a matching reclining sofa with a center console. The next day, after church, the whole family went back to the store, and it was decided…that was the furniture for us! And then the furniture rearranging and other work began in earnest.

What was the final count, all the result of one bookshelf?

• A sleeper sofa
• Matching chair
• Reclining sofa
• Reclining sofa with center console
• Poster frame (for the Doctor Who print we had purchased a year ago for the den)
• One area rug (to go with the new furniture in the den)
• One accent rug (to go by the front door)
• Light fixture (for Ryan’s new office)
• Paint and primer (for Ryan’s new office, and the children’s bathroom, while we were at it)
• Electrical work (also for the office)
• Drywall work (to fix up the remnants of the electrical work)
• Large item trash pick-up (which was long overdue, even before the “green monster” went out)
• New curtains for Ryan’s office (and a curtain rod)
• Other incidentals
• Hours of labor moving furniture up and down stairs and within rooms (the still comfortable recliners found a new home in our master bedroom, the queen-size guest bed became Turkey’s, and his old bed went to Chickadee…oh, and the old den sofa went up to Ryan’s new office)

If I had known how much work one bookshelf would have involved, I never would have gotten started. I am very glad that other than the “green monster” and an old rickety desk, we didn’t throw away any furniture we had been currently using…we just found new homes for it. We’re still not quite finished, but I have to admit, everything is looking good, and it’s definitely nice to have the first room guests to our home walk into look a little more open and inviting, and a little less like an office! It will be a long time before I agree to do any more home improvements, though!