(Mar 1) Major Layout Changes

We had 3 days of freezing weather and ice over the past week. I guess we got cabin fever even though we didn't go out to the property until yesterday. It did give us some time to reflect on the whole Murphy Bed situation. We had planned on having a sleeper sofa for guests in the living area but most were mildly uncomfortable at best. We decided, since this was going to be our resting and main seating, that the sofa portion would be a priority. If we could find a good sleeper on a great sofa, we would consider it. If not, we would just go with a nice sofa. For the twice a year that company comes to stay, we could pull out an air mattress. It would be more comfortable than any of the sleepers we had looked at over the past year.

We stopped in at Haverty's as we had not checked it off of our list yet. There we found the mother of all sleepers - Comfort Sleeper by American Leather. I've got to warn you though, the sticker shock took a while to shake. Here was a great seating sofa with an awesome sleeper mattress. It actually folds out to a flat platform (no bar poking you in the back) and has a premium mattress. I couldn't get over that it was firm and solid and flat as our bed at home. The sofa portion was full and very homey.

We decided we would make this our primary bed and scrap the Murphy Bed for now. That would free up room in the cabin for a lot of things we had been sweating - full-sized appliances and more counter space in the kitchen, a computer desk, a wood burning stove. It meant shelving 3 months work on the Murphy Bed concept that I had been designing but it was a good solution to a lot of problems. We also moved the stove to the south wall to accommodate a vent-a-hood and rotate the sink to the east wall. This meant we could leave both windows in the kitchen area. Something I was adamant about.

Floor plan as of March 1

We changed the location of the closet to the south wall. This solved the problem of fully opening the doors to facilitate the pull-out drawers. It also gave us another 4" of closet width to work with which doesn't sound like a lot, but every inch of storage is going to be critical when you're dealing with less than 250 sf. We will have to cut the height of the closet by about a foot, 8' instead of 9'. Kim doesn't mind since she can't reach the top of either one! :)

Since the bed was no longer a concern, it meant we could put a small computer desk (39" wide x 24" deep) along the adjacent bathroom wall. I like my Mac Laptop but I really love having a large screen to work on. This will accommodate both. It also gives us ample room to organize bills and paperwork. Not that we have much now. I tend to scan and store almost everything that comes to us on the computer. It's nice having all of this information at your fingertips, even on the road, with the help of DropBox. I will have to run some electrical conduit/wire under the cabin to the floor at the base the wall - Computer, Wide-Screen LED, Scanner, Printer, UPS Battery Backup. Plenty of room to take the hutch on the desk up to 8' if we need. This will be very helpful!

We have also budgeted space for a wood burning stove - The Hobbit by Salamander. It doesn't have everything that I want in a stove but it's feature rich for the price. Since it has a large glass front, we wanted to be able to watch it from the main seating area in the living room. It will have to compete with the 6' window and the TV but I'm sure it can hold it's own. :) It offers a cooking area on top, rear flue, fresh air draft and a secondary burn feed. You can substitute a hot water heater for the fresh air attachment but you cannot have both at the same time. It's rated at 13,000 BTU max which should be fine here in Texas. There were a couple of times this winter that our 9,000 BTU propane heater would not keep up and I look forward to the extra horse power when we need it.