Room For Fun

Is there any room in a house more useless than the living room? Like many homeowners we never use our living room. Since most of our family and friends are social cripples, we don’t do much entertaining and the room sits idle. Of course, as far as Uncle Sam is concerned, that room is a fully functional and completely deductible home office.

You will often find that newer houses don’t even have living rooms, but our house was built in the seventies so we have a fairly sizeable chunk of real estate that serves no purpose whatsoever. Sporting lime green shag carpet, it’s about 300 square feet of totally wasted space. Aside from using the carpet to teach my children the basics of static electricity, I rarely set foot in there.

My wife, Julie, actually cherishes our living room. For her, it is a great place to store the antiques she has inherited from her family. I say “store” because most of the furniture is too fragile to use in any conventional sense. She places delicate vases and filigree picture frames on end tables with spindly legs. The sofa and chairs are decorated with needlepoint pillows, but strictly off limits for actual sitting. As in any nurturing household, our children are threatened with the pain of torture to stay out of the living room and away from the antiques.

Dissatisfied with the unused space, I recently took it upon myself to convert our living room into something we can actually use. This plan was made possible by the fact that Julie was on an extended business trip and it’s much easier to make home improvement decisions when she isn’t around.

I briefly entertained the idea of creating a playroom for the kids, but that kind of thing only encourages them to spend time in the house. It’s not that I want my children to experience the benefits of healthy outdoor activities, it’s just easier to enjoy my leisure time if they are outside or over at the neighbor’s.

After much soul searching and several trips to the home improvement store, I decided to create the ultimate den complete with a wet bar and tournament-sized pool table. My vision overwhelmed common sense as I picked out which wall would be home to the new 42 inch plasma TV. Once completed, I could host weekly poker games with my beer guzzling, cigar chomping buddies. Yes indeed, time to put my plan into action.

I have never been involved in a household project where the work or the results were any match for the fun I have going to the home improvement store beforehand. My kids even call it Daddy’s toy store. You see, if I can find an excuse to buy a new power tool, then I’m satisfied with the project before it even begins. The only reason to actually do any of the work is so you can brag to your buddies about how much easier it is with your new table saw.

That’s why all these home improvement stores are doing so well while at the same time homeowners are more dissatisfied with their houses than at any other time in recent history. Census figures show that there are 350 million unfinished home improvement projects plaguing the wives of do-it-yourselfers across America.

It’s no surprise that stock analyst Harvey Bullspittle recently rated the home improvement sector as a strong buy. Stock in these companies has been climbing for years. Harvey’s wife doesn't care about all that. She just wants him to finish her kitchen so she doesn’t have to wash dishes in the bathtub anymore.

As for my living room conversion; I won’t go into the messy details of the work accomplished. There was a great deal of sawing and sanding, hammering and cursing, a typical project at my house. I’m sad to report that the job ground to a premature halt when my wife got home from her trip.

She was dead set against the change so I was banished from our bedroom and told not to come back until she had her living room restored to it’s former grandeur. Presently the space serves as a makeshift bedroom complete with sleeping bag and an old blanket I wrestled from the dog. Even after all that, I have to admit that as I drift off to sleep staring at the ceiling, I’m thinking about installing a skylight.


David Theall is the proud owner of thirteen unfinished home improvement projects and can be reached at dtheall@triad.rr.com.


This column originally appeared in the Greensboro News & Record on January 4, 2005.

© 2005 David Theall