I have good news, bad news, and dilemmas.

This post is going to be chock-full of doom and gloom, you guys! Project Make-the-Guest-Bedroom-into-a-Room-We'll-Actually-Use (Project MtGBiaRWAU, for short?) is off to a rocky start. I'll begin with the good news, though, which is that it only took about 30 minutes of carrying coat closet junk upstairs, and carrying jackets and hangers downstairs, to take the coat closet from this:

to this:

Yayy!

The bad news? Well, for starters, there's this: I decided that there's no sense in planning out a room and hunting for furniture if I'm not even sure what exactly my storage needs are, so I pulled everything out of the two junky-closets to get a better idea of what we're dealing with here. I'm sorry to say that what you see in this picture below is probably less than half of it. Where does it all come from?!? Looking at all of that makes me wonder where on earth it's going to go, if not right back in the mess of a closet from whence it came. I feel a little in over my head!

My second piece of bad news is really only bad news to Jemima, who has had her whole little world turned upside down. You see, quite a few months ago we had a relatively minor earthquake, but it shook Jemima to the core and she took up temporary residence under the guest bedroom bed. She hardly came out for days, and while I believe she has recovered from the emotional stress of the quake, underneath the guest bed has been her favorite place to spend time ever since. She uses her lair, or her "clubhouse" as I like to call it, as a place to hide treats, store special toys, and get some time to herself, away from her annoying parents.

Apparently, by moving it over a few feet, I have ruined everything. Now she won't set paw under there, and she's been in a state of emotional turmoil ever since ... a state she hasn't been in since the unspeakable horrors of the month of the rat.

How the situation appears to us (i.e. the bed has moved over a few feet).

How the situation appears to Jemima (i.e. the world, and everything in it to which she holds dear, has been destroyed)

And now for my third piece of bad news: when I posted this post, I had several ideas (labeled A through D) in mind for how I could make Project MtGBiaRWAU a reality. Sadly, I somehow overlooked a major detail while doing my planning:

There is a large radiator/heater/unit thing sticking out from the right-hand wall, right smack-dab in the middle. I guess I could still put furniture there, but it would have to be sitting at least 6 inches away from the wall, and that would drive me crazy. So which of the ideas does this rule out? Pretty much all of them but the "B" plan. And yet another thing I didn't really consider?

It's going to be hard to make a pillow-lined, daybed-ish bed out of this when the only place in the room where the bed can really go is right up against a window. (Side note: doesn't Jemima look despondent?)  I don't like the idea of half the window being covered by pillows, but I also don't like the way the bed looks with all the pillows at the head of the bed.

And after reading all of your comments in my last post, I started getting really excited about the idea of having a home office (plan A, shown here). It would be great to have a place where I could set up crafting supplies in a permanent spot, as well as have a work-space other than the kitchen counter. And when one commenter (Anon #2) mentioned that she and her husband have double desks and chairs, I got super-excited about that idea. I really, really like the thought of having a long, antique work table or something to serve as a big "His and Hers" desk.

Which brings me to this: it doesn't look like it in the picture, but the space between the bed and the right-hand wall is actually pretty long, so there's definitely room to bring in a big desk without having it pushing up against the bed. I could still put the bookshelves on the left-hand wall, but (unlike in plan A up there) the bed can't go against the right-hand wall because of the heater. If the bed is not in the middle of the room like it used to be, the only other place it really can be is running along-side that window. But, like I said earlier, that sort of rules out lining it with pillows to make a day-bed sort of thing. And I'd really like to keep a full bed in there, rather than have to get rid of it altogether and bring in a pull-out sofa.

What's a girl to do? I don't know yet!