7 Ideas For Renovating The Spare Room
By JD Esajian on June 1, 2015
What do you do with your kids’ rooms after they leave the nest?
Do you keep your children’s rooms a shrine to their childhood long after they are gone and off building families of their own? Or, should you get busy flexing your interior design and home improvement skills before they even get down the street for their first day of college? If you renovate, what should empty nesters do with the space?
The empty nester days are approaching quickly for many members of Generation X. So here are seven ideas for re-purposing that space:
- Home Offices
This is the perfect opportunity to slash unnecessary office leases and design your ultimate office space. This will do more than create surplus income, which can be invested in real estate to improve lifestyle in retirement. It can fuel increased inspiration and productivity for entrepreneurs, small business owners, and remote workers.
- Snore Rooms
The Wall St. Journal highlights one of the most popular uses of kids’ old rooms as being ‘snore rooms.’ Apparently this is that time of life when couples would rather sleep apart to avoid the interruption of their partner’s snoring at night. If that is not your speed, try turning it into a quiet place where you can focus your thoughts.
- Luxurious Closets
For those that have never yet had their dream closets, this is the chance. Go all out with custom organizers and lighting, and make this your power room for getting ready for whatever you day or night will bring.
- Spiritual Spaces
Spiritual spaces have been one of the hottest home design and addition trends over the last 24 months. Turn it into a morning mediation room for preparing for your day, a yoga studio, or a prayer chapel. Whatever, helps you connect, recharge, and stay fueled.
- Airbnb Rooms
Why not rent the space out for extra income. If you don’t really need to use the room, it could help offset your housing costs, pay off your mortgage sooner, and even come in handy for helping your kids pay for college without having to start life buried in student loan debt. You can even rent these rooms out part time, and let your kids use their old spaces when they are home for the holidays.
- Home Gyms
Home gyms haven’t lost their appeal. In fact, we seem to continue to fall deeper and deeper in the trend of getting fit and being healthier. However, technology is also beginning to empower more individuals to get even better workouts from home without missing out on the social aspects. Plus as more individuals begin working at home, it is becoming even more efficient to workout at home too.
- Art Studios & Galleries
The art scene is becoming an increasingly bigger trend. Art and commerce are blending together. More professionals are finding various forms of art a fantastic way to keep their mental edge, and art and real estate are emerging as two of the top investments. For many keeping expensive contemporary art in the living room just doesn’t make sense. It might not fit the décor, visitors may be at risk of damaging it, and no one wants to make themselves a juicy victim for crime.
Summary
There are endless valuable and fun ways to re-purpose spare rooms for empty nesters. The bedroom itself shouldn’t be eliminated for fear of devaluing the property, but design options are flexible. Noting how attached even many 30 somethings are two their old rooms, and how distraught their comments are online after mom or dad zapped their space it is worth finding ways to keep the story. Maybe it is a single wall left untouched, documenting it with photos, or creating an album.
Looking at the bigger picture as many households are finding they are unexpectedly becoming multigenerational households it may be better for some to hold onto those larger homes than to downsize. Other younger home buyers may also realize that they don’t have to stretch themselves so far financially if they look forward further into the future. Maybe a child is only a couple years away from heading to college. So do you really need that extra bedroom, or will you have an extra room in the near future anyway?
What will you do?