First off, I’m sure you’re wondering what a “stair room” is..
We have a room in our house that originally was designed to be the dining room. If you walked in yourself, you wouldn’t think its a dining room. It’s just after the entryway, and has a hallway connecting to the kitchen. It’s a very open room that includes the stairs and upstairs balconies that look over.
Though what the builder had designed a was a creative dining space, this use for this room just didn’t work for us. I preferred a traditional dining room free of distractions.
With the way the original design was intended, all I could envision were kids running up and down the stairs, looking down at the table from the balconies, and skipping throughout the halls as adults are eating. Even worse, I could see kids throwing things on the table from the stairs. That’s a big fat no for me.
Quite frankly, we didn’t like the distractions it created during a time when family is supposed to come together, eat, and catch up.
If we had older kids in high school, we’d probably feel differently about it. Instead, it’s more than likely every family member or guest we’d have over will all young children under 10. (I can see the headache now of all my sisters trying to tame their children at Thanksgiving.)
So we’ve stopped the headache before it could even start and we’ve moved our dining room into the formal living room (you know, that front room so many traditional homes have). To us, this just felt like a better fit. That’s why we now call the original dining room the “Stair room”.
Now that this room has become an “extra” room, we’ve felt a bit judged for the house we chose (on top of it’s Texas size).
Of course, this staircase is a dream for us, and we feel really lucky to have found this home. For me, it brings a lot of inspiration.
We’ve imagined ourselves splitting up dinner duties with one cooking and the other working at a coffee table in this room. When we’re not doing that, we’ll use it for our Christmas tree, and even as a dining room (if we end up needing more space).
When we have small kids, we’ve imagined ourselves maybe even using it as a place to set up a play tent – or a place we could play games with our family – who knows? Point being is – we saw this as a room that can be well utilized for our needs.
We’ve heard the side comments and the underlying tone in people’s response when they see it. And to us, that’s okay. We get it that not everyone understands us and our needs, and they don’t have to.
However, we see the stair room as a room that will have different uses for us over the years. It’s the room we imagine so many different memories will be made in, and the room we’re most excited to see what we can do with.
If you’d like to read about the bible verse we assigned to this room (and the rest of the house), click here.