Living Room Mod

June 24th, 2007

Every couple years, Cindy and I rearrange our living room. I’ve had an idea to create a family workstation where we can do our separate things but do them together. Of course computers are central, so I figured we’d have long desks where each one of us can have our computers and our own workspace. After a couple months of planning we settled on getting a dining table and fitting it for our needs.

We then decided that instead of using office or dining chairs that we’d use some kind of lounge chairs. We kept two dining chairs that we’ve had around the house to give the kids a bit more vertical reach. Cindy, being an occupational therapist by training, saw right away that the table was a couple inches too tall. Cindy’s brother John brought over his miter saw, and we chopped the legs down and now it works perfectly. To manage the wires, I got some wire strips to hide and guide them, and of course zip ties help out tremendously. I’m still debating whether to core a couple holes in the middle of the table top to have wires go straight down.

Why do we want everything all together? For two reasons. First, this will force us to do life together rather than go off into our own rooms, and secondly there is accountability where all computer usage is out in the open. I hope we can continue with this spirit as our family continues to mature.

What do you think? Any suggestions? We had a friend walk into our house and say, “It’s like a Starbucks in here.” After I got over the initial insult of having my house compared to a place that sells burnt coffee, I decided that it’s a good thing, because Starbucks generally is appealing to the eye and is a great place to hang out. :)