My happy place…

I am back home after a week on the road in Houston. I was tired yesterday after working, waiting on the plane and actually flying home. Once home I spent a little time with Frank and Kenzie, changed into my night clothes and then watched some mindless TV until I fell asleep on the couch from sheer exhaustion.

After retreating upstairs to bed, I didn’t even set my alarm because I knew there’d be no point.

As morning comes each day, my body seems to celebrate by waking early. My mind turns on full speed and even as I wobble towards the stairs, I know what lies at the bottom will fill my heart with joy.

The writing room.

I had big ideas when we moved into this house. It had the one room that had eluded me for 25 years of house-living. The house has a grand entrance that leads into a beautiful dining room. I had mentally shopped for the perfect dining table, hutch, table lamps, chandelier, and rug. I envisioned beautiful holiday dinners there celebrating with our loved ones. A Christmas table set beautifully with my Pottery Barn plaid dish set. I was setting aside money each month to fund the construction of the room, and last year went so far as to formalize the room by placing wainscoting in the form of board & batton on the walls (which turned out lovely, by the way). The space was ready and waiting for its other contents.

And then I paused.

Before we moved, I had inherited an old kitchen table turned craft table from a friend back in Castle Rock. When we first moved here we were in an apartment with the contents of our house stored. We needed something to act as a desk for me while we lived there and I had no need to buy another kitchen-sized table for the interim. When Sara offered her craft table for free, I jumped on it.

It served me well those months at Bryaden.

When we moved to the house, that table, brown and weathered, sat in my dining room. I always knew that room would be the last to tackle so I didn’t think much of it. We went about painting and setting up the rest of the spaces; kitchen, casual dining, family room, Frank’s den.

After everything was filled in and we had begun breathing life into those rooms through daily living, my dining room sat with just the craft table for months and months. Until the day I pulled up a chair and sat in it.

I pulled up a chair so I was looking out into the foyer. I soaked in the beautiful soft light from the large windows on the northern wall. Beyond the room, is the front door with it’s 10 panels of glass, complete with side lights and a transom. The room is literally bathed in light.

Sitting at the desk I started to picture a different use for this room. What if I used this space as something other than?

And in that moment, my mind was swept away in possibilities. I could envision the rug I had selected for the dining space, but on a smaller scale. I pictured two rugs defining two spaces in the room. One, a sitting area where I could go to ponder my ideas, daydream a bit, and read my many, many books. The other corner would be a space for my bookshelves which would hold more books, fancy pens and beautiful notecards. The wall would have a dry-erase board (but a classy one, of course. One made of glass and metal, not the old white ones from our days of school or in the office) to hold my ideas as they flooded in. Another corner would contain a printer and a stand. Finally, the table. That old craft table, large and spacious, would receive new life.

I took that old table out to the garage, sanded it down to the bare wood from once it began, making sure I wiped it down carefully removing every speck of dust. I primed it and finally covered it in a lovey shade of white. Crisp, unblemished white. A clean, blank slate from which dreams would be realized.

That long dreamt of space became something different the day I put the table back in it. The space became my writing room.

A room where I can dream, read, romance ideas, plan, learn, and create. And I have never looked back. It’s the place I go to feel most like myself after a long day and before the long day even gets started. It’s the room where I find myself most at peace.

The writing room is by far, my happy place.