Rock the Cot

A few weeks ago we had some friends stay over after a beer fest in our town. Our intent was to put a cot or two in the third bedroom for one of the couples, but when we tried to set them up we realized that they couldn't fit. It hit home that we needed to rework how we had this room set up. When we bought the house, we designated the third bedroom as the  office / Jon's music room. As we moved in Jon's bulky and space consuming music equipment, we found it difficult to do anything but arrange it all around the parameter of the room. This left little space in the middle of the room for anything, let alone another bed. So the second couple that was staying with us was forced to stay in the living room and we were left pondering what we could do to gain some floor space in the office.

First we took note of what was in the room taking up space:

7 guitars and one bass on two separate stands (5 on one 3 on the other),
1 organ
1 keyboard,
1 desk,
3 guitar amplifiers,
1 chair,
and misc boxes of guitar gear and pedals

We decided that if we could hang some of the guitars on the wall we could probably get rid of at least one guitar stand which would give us more floor space to utilize. So, Jon bought some "Fret Rest" guitar hangers from Guitar Center and started hanging his guitars.

This ended up being a great move! With 4 guitars and the bass hung up, not only were we able to get rid of the larger of the two stands, but it also made the room look more decorated and Jon's guitars more "displayed". By putting one other guitar away in its case, we were now left with only two guitars to deal with (much easier). We now are able to trade out both large, bulky stands and replace them with two smaller solo ones.

Next we added some floating shelves to store some of the music accessories Jon needs access to on a regular basis. Any boxes that were not used much were put away in the closet. The keyboard was moved to the attic opening up some space on top of the organ, and the amps were rearranged to take up as little space as possible.

The next thing on our list is reworking one of the existing closets to be used as more storage instead of clothing overflow. And we are still deciding on weather or not we will keep the desk in this room. But for now, we can fit some cots in if we need to, and we really feel like we utilized the space much better then before.