Last Wednesday, it was Steve’s 40th Birthday. I wanted to get him something lovely, not too expensive, and something he wanted. 2 days beforehand, I had an epiphany.
These days he doesn’t go a bundle on material goods, and largely anything he wants, he buys for himself – often under the guise of Business Need. Although, the material goods he actually got for his birthday this year were spot on, before anyone starts taking a fence….
So. For a while now, Steve has expressed dissatisfaction with working in The Cupboard when trying to work from home. Firstly, although it’s technically a room, with a window and everything, it’s really a glorified cupboard (a better prepared person would have a photo here – my target audience knows what it looks like, Rosie’s hench-person will have to use their imagination – it’s the small window in the middle of the front of our house – have a toot on your way home) and it’s right outside Lily’s bedroom, so if he’s working while she’s supposed to be going to sleep, and she knows he’s there, not much sleep or working goes on. And the wireless signal is crap. And the curtains get in the way. Also, it’s not for the claustrophobic. And we’re thinking of trashing it anyway and getting a bigger landing with an extra window instead.
So, we’ve discussed “sorting out” the spare room in the back and making room for a work area. I didn’t take “before” pictures – suffice it to say that where there is space there was previously stuff.
This is my birthday present plan. We wake up on Wednesday morning, give him cards, make no mention of the lack of wrapped gifts, and send him off to work. Then we start “sorting out”. There are big piles of crap, unsorted stuff, and computer bits in stacks around the edgeof the room. There’s a big long carpet (destined for the hallway outside the room, but only when the plastering has done – it’s a tangled web and no mistake) across the middle of the room. There’s an allegedly already-stuffed cupboard which it turns out can fit more stuff in it. And there’s a sofa which should arguably be chucked out, since the only one who sits on it these days is Bruiser. And after the sorting out, Steve comes home, and we drag him into the spare room and say “LOOK!!!”
After a mere couple of hours and a trip to get the table from the garage, here we are (these were taken after Steve got home – as you can see he’s making use of it already):
He was really pleased. I did a quick trip to a famous Swedish furniture store (well, I was passing) and got the notice board, desk furniture and bin, the chair, desk monitor etc we already had. I made sure it was near a power socket, one of which I made sure was free for ADSL over power bridging to get round the wireless being a long way away (our house isn’t that big – I’m quite disappointed about how far wireless broadband *doesn’t* reach, to be honest)(broadband power bridging is spooky magic – if you don’t have it, you probably should have)(I knew Steve had a couple of doobreys in his toolbag for doing the spooky bridging magic). The noticeboard is called Chris by Ikea – it has been pointed out to Chris at Work that he is now represented at home. I’m hoping Steve doesn’t start pinning things to Chris at Work by accident now. It’s already been used for PC salvage work over the weekend, and he’s out there now.
As Gordon Ramsay would say – spare room sorted. done.
A footnote – sorting the spare room has re-ignited interest in the Walk-o-lator. As if we didn’t get enough exercise:
