Safe room

When we started talking about building a house, I think we decided that no matter what else we had in the house, we would make room for a safe room.  I am freaking scared to death of storms  have a great respect for storms so I really wanted a safe place to go.  And what I envisioned wasn't a small closet that we would have to scrunch into with maybe one folding chair.  I wanted a place I could just go to sleep in if strong storms were being forecasted overnight.

So our safe room is kind of like an extra bedroom.  We call our house a three bedroom house because the safe room couldn't technically be considered a bedroom since it doesn't have a closet or windows but we really have four useable bedrooms.

This is all of the furniture we had in our guest bedroom in Little Rock.  I don't like the look of the bed, but its comfortable and I couldn't rationalize a reason to buy furniture for a safe room when we already had this.

I wish I could tell you all about the cool doomsday items that are stored in the armoire but its really just a bunch of crap.  I do plan to one day clean it out and put things in there that we would need in case of a disaster.

The door into this room is just a regular door that matches all of the other doors in the house.  But you can see the steel door just outside the room.  You actually have to step through the mechanical room to get to this room.  The mechanical room is also "safe" so we were able to put a more attractive door on this room but still meet the guidelines of a safe room.

One of the other good things about having a room without windows is that Brad works 3-4 nightshifts each month.  So I thought this would be perfect for him to sleep in when he had to sleep in the middle of the day.  But he hasn't slept in here much and I don't really know why.  He sleeps on the sofa in the basement instead, but the drapes don't keep it all that dark in there, so I'm not sure why he prefers it.  But the good news is, I don't have to wash the sheets and make this bed on a regular basis!

On my last visit to the Pottery Barn Outlet, I had a reward certificate to use and decided to get this rug.  I needed something to soften the room and this did exactly what I wanted it to.  The concrete floors seem cold and this warmed it up in there.

I have this photo taken by my friend Dawn hanging above the bed.  It's one of my favorite things in the house and at first I thought it shouldn't be in the safe room.  But I like it in here and this way it won't get destroyed if disaster struck!

I actually like this room a lot.  There is no indication that it's completely concrete and in fact, I have a hard time making some people understand that this isn't just another bedroom.

Thankfully, we haven't had to use it for it's intended purpose.  There were a couple times I gathered some things up to get prepared, but then what was being predicted passed us. But I'm amazed at how much peace of mind this give me.  I say "me" because anytime it's storming, Brad is out on the porch watching it like it's entertainment.

Good news. And bad news.

The good news:  This herd of deer.....

Almost every evening that I'm at Coppercreek, I see this herd of deer.  Its usually right about dark so I haven't been able to get a great shot of them.  But today I saw them early.  They had been up close to the house earlier but I scared them when I starting taking pictures.

 I counted 11 tonight but a week or so ago, I counted 13.  Brad is going to love living here!

The bad news:  This SNAKE!

Um.....YES, its in the house!!!  

Brad and I had been working at the house all day until he had to go to work at 5:00.  I dropped him off and went back to the house to do a little more work.  We have a big tool box full of things we need when we work out there.  We just left it in what will be Brad's gun room so as soon as I got back to the house, I unlocked the box and then realized that Brad had left the door open on the other side of the safe room.  The drain is not working in that area so water is standing and its really dark in there.  Paul has a series of boards he puts behind the door so that no one can open it and I was picking all of those up and trying to put them like he had them.  As I was walking back to the other side, I noticed a stick in the room and I thought it was odd because its all the way at the back of the basement and I wondered how would it have gotten there.  Of course, it wasn't a stick, it was this stupid copperhead!  I freaked out!  Why couldn't I have found it 2 hours earlier when Brad was there?????  I didn't know what to do, we had a gun in the truck, but he was right up next to a wall, right inside the doorway so there was no way I would have actually hit him.   Brad told me to find something to beat it with but its so dark and wet and closed in back there I couldn't do that either.  So I took some pictures of him and just sat outside hoping he would come out.  He didn't.  Its times like this I really wish I knew someone in Mountain Home.  I really wanted to ask Brad if he would call his friend Billy but I decided that was ridiculous since this probably wasn't a full-blown emergency.  I did get a good laugh out of the whole situation though.  I sent a picture of it to Tara and her reaction cracked me up!  I wish I could post it on here, but it wasn't PG.

I grew up in the country and I remember having snakes around, what seemed like, all the time.  But I don't remember being so scared of them then.    I just freak out now.  

Brad got off work at midnight and we went back out there to see if he was still there but he wasn't.  I had already called Paul to warn him so I guess we're safe for now. 

Looks like a prison

Wouldn't you agree?  :)

The forms are completely off so now we can go inside the safe areas. 

We didn't intend to make the entire back part of the basement "safe" but it ended up that way.  We wanted a safe room so that I would have a place to go when tornado's are threatening (I say "I" because I don't expect Brad to ever step foot in it). The rest of it is all under the front porch so it just turned out that it would be safe too.  The actual safe room is on the right, the Mechanical room is in the middle, and the door on the left will be Brad's gun room.  That room was supposed to be the closet for one of the bedrooms but we made some not-so-slight changes on Wednesday so now its going to be his gun room.

I'm standing in the closet looking through the mechanical room toward the actual safe room.

Standing at the safe room door looking through the mechanical room area into Brad's gun room.  

They were filling in around the basement walls when we got there on Tuesday.

The front and side right side are now completely filled in.