New House!
Well, it sure looks new. I've been making some organizational changes around the house. I have some new furniture and have moved around some of the old stuff.
The main thing that started the whole thing was moving from using a desktop on a regular basis to using my MacBook Pro exclusively. Since I bought it a year ago I used my desktop a grand total of zero times. Huge transition for me, since one of the things I've always done is build an area of my living space to accommodate my computers. In this case, that meant a gigantic 5' by 5' L shaped desk I've had since college. Now that my old desktops live in a closet, turned off until I know what to do with them, I've disassembled the desk and shoved it in that same closet, leaving me with a gigantic void space in my second bedroom, once my office.
So, I decided that the best thing to do would be to make a new space that could fill two needs. One; a proper guest room with television and maybe stereo, and two; a place to read, write and relax away from the big screen and the downstairs in general. Since I still had my old TV this seemed like a good plan, but I had nothing to put it on, so I decided to move ahead on a purchase I was planning for a while. I ordered a new TV stand for my LCD TV that includes a mount so that the screen floats above the top shelf. I'm a huge fan of this kind of setup, since you can fit more components in a small amount of space, and it doesn't seem too cluttered. It also does a much better job of hiding my wires than my old setup did. I've got that all assembled and set up now, and it looks very nice. So I took the current TV stand and moved it upstairs. Done.
Oh no. Not done. Not even close.
The logical place where the TV would go had a bookcase in its place, and the logical place the bookcase would move had a piano in it's place. The piano would be moving to the place where the desk was, then the bookshelf moves, then the TV stand is placed. Done.
Oh no, not yet.
The TV stand doesn't match the shelves on either side of it, and it's meant to be space saving, so the shelves on either side of the TV that once held the A/V equipment were no longer needed for that purpose. I decided to reconfigure them (thanks Ikea) and move them to the back of the living room. This is actually quite nice, since now the home theater equipment has a much smaller footprint, and the entire system is more compact. Not sure what effect that'll have on sound yet, but I'm not too worried. This also makes the dining area bigger, so that's more comfortable for guests and gamers. One surprising side effect is that I now have this little space at the back door to store little odds and ends, and a browsing space for the shelves that hold all my movies and music. It's a nice little segregation that I think makes a lot of sense.
So!
My house (except for my bedroom) has been completely reconfigured. I'm very pleased with the result! Many many thanks to Shawn and Alan for their help moving some of the big stuff. Today I'm picking up my new coffee table (which doubles as an ottoman, score) and that'll make even more newness. I hope I can find my way around.
The main thing that started the whole thing was moving from using a desktop on a regular basis to using my MacBook Pro exclusively. Since I bought it a year ago I used my desktop a grand total of zero times. Huge transition for me, since one of the things I've always done is build an area of my living space to accommodate my computers. In this case, that meant a gigantic 5' by 5' L shaped desk I've had since college. Now that my old desktops live in a closet, turned off until I know what to do with them, I've disassembled the desk and shoved it in that same closet, leaving me with a gigantic void space in my second bedroom, once my office.
So, I decided that the best thing to do would be to make a new space that could fill two needs. One; a proper guest room with television and maybe stereo, and two; a place to read, write and relax away from the big screen and the downstairs in general. Since I still had my old TV this seemed like a good plan, but I had nothing to put it on, so I decided to move ahead on a purchase I was planning for a while. I ordered a new TV stand for my LCD TV that includes a mount so that the screen floats above the top shelf. I'm a huge fan of this kind of setup, since you can fit more components in a small amount of space, and it doesn't seem too cluttered. It also does a much better job of hiding my wires than my old setup did. I've got that all assembled and set up now, and it looks very nice. So I took the current TV stand and moved it upstairs. Done.
Oh no. Not done. Not even close.
The logical place where the TV would go had a bookcase in its place, and the logical place the bookcase would move had a piano in it's place. The piano would be moving to the place where the desk was, then the bookshelf moves, then the TV stand is placed. Done.
Oh no, not yet.
The TV stand doesn't match the shelves on either side of it, and it's meant to be space saving, so the shelves on either side of the TV that once held the A/V equipment were no longer needed for that purpose. I decided to reconfigure them (thanks Ikea) and move them to the back of the living room. This is actually quite nice, since now the home theater equipment has a much smaller footprint, and the entire system is more compact. Not sure what effect that'll have on sound yet, but I'm not too worried. This also makes the dining area bigger, so that's more comfortable for guests and gamers. One surprising side effect is that I now have this little space at the back door to store little odds and ends, and a browsing space for the shelves that hold all my movies and music. It's a nice little segregation that I think makes a lot of sense.
So!
My house (except for my bedroom) has been completely reconfigured. I'm very pleased with the result! Many many thanks to Shawn and Alan for their help moving some of the big stuff. Today I'm picking up my new coffee table (which doubles as an ottoman, score) and that'll make even more newness. I hope I can find my way around.