It’s been a dramatic couple of months here at the Hammershack. If you know us, you probably know this on some level or another. Morgan and I had a sudden and urgent need for emotional space, and I was welcomed into the homes of a couple of different friends to make this possible. Obviously, this was really hard. “Really hard” doesn’t even approach it, actually, but there it is. We are doing much better now, still keeping a little bit of space, but spending a lot more of our time together, and feeling the real rewards of giving ourselves that time out.

One good thing we were able to do with that space is accelerate the project of giving Huck our bed. He had outgrown the loft bed we bought him when he was 5- it was fine to crawl up into a small space a bit too close to the ceiling back then, but as his 14-year-old body is probably 6′ at this point, it was getting ridiculous. In the photos above his “before” bed is the blond one, with orange wall. Our plan has been to give our bed to him when we finally move the living room downstairs, freeing up that room to become a larger bedroom in which we can have a king sized bed. This will eventually happen! But not soon enough for Huck.

Morgan built our bed for us when I moved in in 2001 to accommodate a closet because the closet in our bedroom is teeny tiny (see photo above). Giving Huck our bed would take away the majority of our clothing storage without the new storage we have built being quite available yet. When I moved into my temporary “emotional space” home (thanks, Buphalo!!) I suddenly had a huge walk-in closet and was able to take all of my clothes over there, freeing up the bed for Huck. It seemed like one good thing we could offer in the middle of an otherwise unhappy and confusing time.

While we were at it, it was time to fix the plaster cracks, paint the walls, finish some outlets, and generally bring the room into a nearly-finished state (floors will have to wait). Huck chose purple walls and grey trim and decided to move the bed to a different wall. Morgan spent a lot of time bringing this whole vision to life for him, and he loves it. He has made it a cave, and our cat Vader loves it, too.

For Christmas, he got some LED strip lights and a hammock, among other things, to really bring it all together. He is hanging out there now…