Creating the Dream Bedroom Space for My Child

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Well it’s been over 12 weeks since my family moved from the UK to New Zealand and with that came a lot of changes. We went from living in a spacious 3 bedroom rental to moving in with my parents. Living with my parents is something we considered seriously and it’s the long term plan for our family. We intend to stay with mum and dad permanently.

So, my parents have 3 rooms in the main house, one for my parents and one room for each of my brothers Chris and James. There is a lounge and a small galley kitchen. Then there is the garage.

A Garage Conversion

The garage is split into two sections, one section has been built into a living quarters with two rooms and a shower and toilet. The other half of the garage is my dad’s space for woodwork, storage for dad to make things with his tools.

So when we decided to move into the garage living quarters, we had to get creative. You see with two adults and one teenager, we all need our own space. So what we agreed upon was to create a beautiful room for me and Sylvia to share and then a “man cave” space for my husband John.

The idea is that in the day, I can work from the girls room, at the computer desk. If I’m unwell I have a peaceful and serene space to rest as I often get sick with nausea, pain and dizziness.

Homework and Office Space

When Sylvia comes home, she can have the girls space for homework and chilling and then sleeping at night. I can spend my evenings upstairs with my parents in the lounge and work upstairs on my laptop when I need to work at night.

John can spend time in the man cave area, which doubles as a gaming zone and a sleeping zone for both of us. In a dream world we would have 3 rooms, two bedrooms and a working space but I’m happy with what we have.

To be honest, we swapped space for family. We now have my parents close by which is great for the days I am very unwell. I can get support and can also help my mum as well. We work well as a team and can cook together and hang out in the evenings.

Plans for an Extension

Long term we would like to knock down the garage and build a huge extension but we need to work for a good few years to reach that goal. We are in a good social economic area, the high school is only a few 100 meters from our home and is the high school I attended. The school has a good reputation and has a high percentage of students that move on to University. I’m so happy Sylvia is in zone for one of the best schools around.

So it’s taken a long time but we have created our dream space. A lot of thought and time went into this. You see, I had mum measure the space long before we came to NZ and was able to get the items I knew we would need to make our dream space.

After staying in a beautiful hotel upon arrival in New Zealand I was inspired by the decor and serene nature of a minimalist but organised space and so I tried to create something which felt luxury but is practical and useful.

A Beauty and Cosplay Space

One of the things we did was create a personal space for Sylvia. It’s a great place to store all her cosplay, beauty and stationary items and she can use this area to do makeup as well as school work. We got a piece of wood and painted it white, added hooks and now she can hang her wigs so they don’t get all tangled and damaged.

Future Ideas

I am thinking for Christmas it would be nice to get Sylvia a ring light for making her tik tok videos and then buying her some everyday clothes as she is simply growing so fast. We have all we need now except the clothes and shoes! Everything Sylvia grew out of has gone down south to my sister who has 4 girls of her own. That way they get more wear and we are able to help out our extended family.

The Man Cave

So John’s space, aka the man cave has our bed, a gaming space for xbox and movies and it is a work in progress we are working on a bookcase on the other side of the room and have boxes piled up to finish opening. That is going to take some time to organise.

We have a small toilet and shower down in the garage and a little sink area. We brought our fridge from the UK and it’s super useful for storing Sylvia’s fruit, John’s drinks and the food we need for recipe development and Instant pot cooking. I’m still sorting the curtain, blind in this area but it has a nice view in the morning of the garden and dad’s chickens.

Photography and Filming Studio

We’ve been building a kitchen/photography and blogging room for John…it’s a big mess at the moment but we will organise it better in time. This is called organised chaos! We built the whole area from free items collected over the last few months. Then we added his photography gear and our kitchen gear which came in cargo a few weeks ago.

I think it will take another month to get everything sorted. We had to wait a long time for our cargo and with my health it’s hard to sort and put things in order but we have made huge progress.

John’s desk is up and running and he has begun taking photos of the recipes we make. His first recipe this week was a lemon and blueberry Cake which I’ll link to once it’s live on the blog.

Well, I think we have done well. We have really downsized and given away many things but kept the best and most practical items which we needed to be comfortable and to be able to work. I’m super pleased with our progress and by June or July we will hopefully be in order.

For now the girls space is sorted and all we need to do is tidy around for ten minutes a day and keep it nice. Monday to Friday is work for me and John. Saturday’s is tidy up, sorting and laundry day, when we wash all our clothes and Sunday is our day off. In July we will take a week off and visit my sister which will be super exciting. I’ve seen her once in 11 years.

In the meantime, I will try and share more of our progress here on The Inspiration Edit. I’m working on a plan to share more of our life here in New Zealand and am excited as I am slowly getting my mojo back. It’s been hard moving countries, settling in getting set up, trying to work and battle my health issues but we are making progress and I felt it was time to share. I’m super happy with the girls area. What do you think?

Angela