Plan B

Alicia, thanks for sacrificing, I mean offering John, but I've already moved on to Plan B, which went something like this.....

How about if we close off the front part of the basement near the stairs and make a room with our second refrigerator, some cabinets, and a few shelves. Oh, and we'll need a door so that we can access the rest of the basement. Much simpler, and we don't have to worry about disturbing whatever is living behind wall number one.

It would be a small room, and no pool table, but hey, it would be better than nothing. It was suggested by Tim (actually,he begged) that perhaps we should just put bigger shelves or cabinets up all around the basement and be done with it, but this was my project, and I wanted to make it as complicated as possible. Anyway, his plan did not take into account the many oversize floral arrangements, plant stands, Christmas trees(two), styrofoam cemetery and 6ft. Halloween coffin (it's only cardboard and nobody is actually in it...yet). No, all of this truly deserved a room of its own.

I sat down with pen and paper and began to draw. And then inspiration struck. Since it was such a small room, it seemed a shame to take up almost an entire wall with a door. It would totally throw off the feng shui. There would be too much yin and not enough yang. How about...if the door....was hidden?! Oh yeah. One side of the shelves could actually be built on the front of the door with a hidden latch, and then...Abbracadabbra!..it would swing open to reveal a secret room (filled with junk, yes, but that's beside the point)!

Excited,I spent the next few days measuring and designing and annoying everyone I know with detailed (and animated) explanations (I suspect Tim was trying to get a Ritalin prescription filled behind my back). Design school? Architecture degree? Those were for people without vision. I was beyond all of that. I was a creative genius! (Besides, I saw this done once in a house we visited, so I know it was possible.)

Pleased with myself and the clever use of space (could my own show on HGTV be far off?), I presented my grand plan to the man who would make it all happen ( a.k.a. not Tim).

Once again, I got a lot of head shaking (but at least there wasn't a flashlight involved this time, so I counted it as progress), and long suffering looks. Yes (sigh, eye roll), it was possible, but the door would have to be bigger and thicker than standard size to hold the weight of the shelves and the God-only-knows-what that I might decide to put on them.

Oh, and it would have to open inward because of the air duct that was lower than the rest of the ceiling, and the shelves couldn't be too deep because, otherwise, they would block the opening, and the door could only open to the left because of a support pole that was in the way, and then we couldn't have shelves behind it...and...and....

I don't know how or when, but Tim had obviously gotten to him.

Had Frank Lloyd Wright had this much difficulty when he designed Falling Waters? Had someone moaned and groaned at Thomas Jefferson when he designed all the nifty little devices at Monticello?

After several more attempts to work out my brilliant plan, I had to admit defeat and settle for a regular old set of shelves and a normal, unimaginative door. Clearly, whoever had designed the basement sixty years ago had not taken into consideration any future plans for having it featured in Architectural Digest.

So, Plan C is was. Now to choose the tile, paint and lights...