A Purple Bedroom

Tuffy moved into her new bedroom last night. It isn't new exactly, because it's mostly in the same place it was before, but it was shuffled around, losing space to one closet and taking some from two others.

And painted purple, and a color I would have to describe as dark toothpaste. But she likes it, and she has promised to paint it again before she moves out. She's almost 20; how much longer will she be living at home, do you think?

When we get home tonight, I expect they will have ripped into what used to be the master bedroom. The last step in this interminable remodel will be replacing one window with two, and turning a small-ish bedroom into a very small but accessible office.

So, after 10 months, we've got:

• A carport we can get into with the van, even when the power chair is loaded. Before, the van would bottom out at the break between the steep driveway and the level carport. If I wanted to go anywhere, Scarecrow would move the van to the bottom of the driveway, I'd go down the driveway in the chair, and we'd load the chair in the van at the bottom of the hill. Rain -- this is Seattle, remember -- or shine. Coming home we'd do the reverse. I do not miss this procedure even a little bit.
  
• A ramp to the front door, instead of two concrete steps.
• A front door with a minimal threshold, that opens to the center of the room. I used to have to negotiate a very lumpy threshold and immediately make a 90° turn (usually with the assistance of two dogs who were very happy to have us home) to avoid running directly into a wall.
• An on-demand hot water heater. With an adolescent daughter, never running out of hot water is not necessarily a good thing. It was a trade-off. We needed the space.
• A generously wide pocket door between the hall and the new master bedroom. I can even go through at a slight angle.
  
• An accessible bathroom, about which I have gone on at great length before. The novelty has not even begun to wear off.
  

The last step will be turning the space that's left into a very small office, since there's not enough to even pretend to be a bedroom. That's where we're at. So close...