We bought a new coffee table at Ikea on the way home from my parents’ house after Christmas:

It’s a hair lower than our old coffee table, so it’s a little more comfortable for me to put my feet up on it, and it has more mass than the old table, which makes the scale better for our living room. The best part though?

The secret drawers on either end, one for me and one for Mike. Mine has plenty of space for all the knitting stuff that used to sit on top of the coffee table.

The little tote bag on the right was a gift last Christmas from my friend Katie, and it’s the perfect size for my knitting needles. She also made the little fabric bin that’s currently holding a sock project. Pattern books, my knitting tool kit, my new favorite knitting tool (the extremely fabulous Polder Pocket Scale, perfect for measuring how much yarn is left in a skein) — it all fits like it was born to be in there. I love it.

Some sleeper dimensions:
Crate and Barrel’s Troy Queen Sofa Sleeper: 78″x36″x29″h ($1399.00 + $225 s&h (up to $1600))
Crate and Barrel’s Bayside Full Sleeper (w/washable slipcover): 78″x37″x31″h ($1799.00)

To find out more about what hands our house has gone through (not having an abstract), we should do a title search at the County Recorder’s office. We can probably trace a chain of title, which would lead us to deed information.

One thing we’ve learned in the last couple of weeks is that our new house is very condusive to having people over. Brunch for 8? No problem. Cast party for 18? Also no problem (except that we didn’t have a towel and soap in the downstairs half-bath yet, but that’s easily fixed).

We’ve said we want to entertain more, and the thing that we thought was holding us back was our lack of space for it. We’ll see now if that’s the case, or if we’re just not very good about actually inviting people over.

Our house (the lovely new house we closed on yesterday!) is in Fort Wayne’s West Central Historic District, which means that anything we wish to do to the exterior of the home needs to be cleared for maintaining the historic character of the building. For example, if we want to put in an exhaust fan for the bathroom, and also move the washer and dryer to the second floor closet, we need to have a vent to the outside. I don’t know for sure yet, but I’m thinking we probably need to run it by them first, just to make sure it doesn’t get anyone all bothered.

Don Orban, in the City Planning Department Preservation Office, is apparently the guy to talk to about these sorts of things. He can be reached at 427-1140 or 427-2160. It’s also worth looking at the preservation guidelines.

So we’re moving into this house, right? Yesterday before work, I was watching some show on HGTV and there was this thing on with this woman who lives in a tiny apartment and has all this multipurpose furniture to make a great multipurpose room. Put this together with the fact that I get to have my own room — the craft room/guest bedroom/escape clause/cat hair free zone — and I suddenly have the whole concept in my head.

The room is already painted a warm grey, and the floors are wood painted a dark brown. It’s north-facing but has two big windows, so it’s nice and airy without being sunny. If I bought a sleeper sofa for that room, we’d have a place for guests to sleep, but keeping it folded up and out of the way most of the time would give me enough space to put a table in there pretty permanently, and would also make it possible to actually do yoga, or comfortably read or knit in there. And if the cats don’t get to come in, I could get a white sleeper sofa without worrying about the cats getting all on it. So I’m thinking white on white, with some dark wood and black accents. I’m seeing black frames with big matte and little black and white line drawings, and lots of different textured white and off-white fabrics. I’m so excited!

While I was up thinking about this past my bedtime last night, it occured to me to thank my husband for letting me have my own room, to which he said, “It’s so not a big deal for me, and I know it’s important to you.” He’s the best guy ever in the whole world.