A Wonderfully Wonky Switcheroo

I made mention a little while back about having moved some things around at home.  Here's the story:

As you know, we have a really small house.  You might also know that it is on the outskirts of a small village in the country (a 45 minute highway-drive from the nearest small city/big town).  Because of the rural setting, the availability of cheap (or free!) firewood and the elevated storm activity we see every year (causing numerous and lengthy power outages), we have a small wood stove to supplement our oil-fired (I know, I know, it's awful) furnace.

That wood stove is located in the living room, with good reason.  It's central-ish, it's roomy, and it's on the ground level.  Except we never use the living room.  You see, we don't own a television.  And living rooms are primarily tv rooms.  We each do lots of other things in our spare time, but they revolve around the use of desks and/or computers.  I knit while watching movies on my iMac, I read lots of blogs,  I sew, I paint and draw.  My husband is a teacher, so a good portion of his evenings and weekends are spent in front of his laptop.  Plus, being in such a small house way out in the country, we don't get a lot of visitors and when we do, we all end up hanging out in the eat-in kitchen or outside - if it's nice.  The living room contained a never-used sofa and not much else.  The dogs commandeered the sofa for their own use and the humans walk through the room on their way upstairs - that's it.

Up until now, my desk area was located in the smaller of the two bedrooms upstairs.  The furthest room from the wood stove.  Because I spend hour upon hour up there in the winter, I was having to use a plug-in electric heater to keep my fingers from freezing and falling off.  The laundry gets done in the basement, so that task was often-forgotten (out of earshot, out of mind) until the end of the weekend approached and we realized that we would have no clean clothing for the week.  

Can you see where this is going?

Behold, the new studio (sans iMac, as it was in the shop at the time - she's sitting there all pretty and primped up, now):

All this stuff is quite makeshift of course.  The idea was to use up some things we already have for now, in order to keep our budget on track (I didn't pay for any of this stuff - it is all recycled from other projects/rooms).  As I go, I will figure out what I need and we'll build new shelving and possibly a new desk when we have a few extra coins. 

 The entire house is a work-in-progress, as evidenced by the huge gap along the stairs to the basement (currently being closed off by a dresser and a tabletop propped on its edge):

But the best part?  This little black box of miracles is right at my back.  I officially declare this the Winter of Comfort.

Pretty raw, all in all.  But it does the trick.