Basement Ballerina
- Hanna Shiplett
- Aug 15, 2020
- 4 min read
Not every state gets to experience the glory of additional square footage brought to you by the underground. In Iowa, basements are critical for tornado safety, extra storage, and play space for kids. In our first house together Jon, our friends, and I painted up a dingy damp basement to make an art studio. We lovingly called it "Club Radon". I planned to put on a pot of coffee every Thursday night and invite other artists to come hang out and paint, write, draw, whatever. Guess how many times that happened. Zero times! Instead God used that labor to transform the space from unusable to highly functional as a bate and switch and we ended up hosting 30-40 people every week for church dinners and meetings. Our 1000 sqft starter home became a church. Classic God move.
Our next basement was quickly transformed to house my first interior design office. As a stay at home mom of two kids under two I used my interior design skills to bring in additional cash money. I started it somewhat by accident and somewhat by request. Jonny had his own business as a trim carpenter and budding general contractor, but the basement, that was primarily my space to create would later became Eden + Gray Interiors. God did it again when Jon and I became business partners and we traded in the "interiors" for "design build" and my artistic outlet became a way Jon and I worked together to make a life for our growing family.
Both basement ambitions were centered around the need for an outlet. A place, a space for expression for the world around me which often felt challenging, heavy, and laden with responsibly that comes with adulting. I found myself looking once again for a source of release. It had been five years since I had been in a classical ballet class. I didn't even know where to begin. I knew I wanted to go some where where I was unknown. I wanted to dance in secret, to return to the barre, and let's face it, my most recent basement offered not near enough room for such an endeavor.
Class was a God send. I found a new love unlike my days of training in my youth. Every time I could make it to class it was legit a miracle. Jon was working crazy hours and had to stop his work to be with the babies so I could go. It made me grateful. I never took a class for granted and even though I was far from perfect, It felt amazing to move and every once in a while a long balance awoke in me the hope that I had some dances in me yet.
Shortly after this new found outlet, we found ourselves needing to simplify our lives. With baby number three on the way and the business growing like a wild fire we needed to have a lower maintenance life, and dreamed of moving to a more family friendly home.
I'm going to skip over a large part of the story here because I have so many to tell and above all I need to stay focused so this isn't 5000+ words blog and if you are a loyal person you are forced into boredom.
Fast forward three years and we find ourselves once again with a basement of potential. At one point during the time I skipped over in our story, I had designed a custom home for us to build on a spare lot the business owned. It had an unusually large basement "bedroom" that I envisioned to be a basement ballet studio. Jon challenged me on many occasions about the odd size of the room and I assured him it was designed with no flaw at it's overly large size. Well God's fingerprint is all over this new house of ours. In the basement of our already built house is a very large bedroom sized out almost exactly to the specs of the never was custom, and it was obvious to me that this was a gift straight from His hand to my heart.
This past month we removed the flooring and installed a sprung floor, covered it in regulation performance Marley and lined the walls with mirrors. After experiencing class at home during COVID coupled with a desire to work on my own skills and work with my daughter Lucy to support her art and passions the studio was prioritized as one of the first rooms we would renovate in our new home. I'm a little scared, very excited, and looking forward to what crazy plans the Lord has for my newest ambition. I can tell you one thing, it's most likely a bigger and harder path than I envision, but I prefer his every time. This is the home of many of This Bun's Not Done activities so we'll start with that and see what happens. Follow here to keep in the know and follow along.
Proverbs 16:9 In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps.
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