We are very fortunate in that my wife's curate job comes with a house that the local parish own but let us live in rent free. But of course there is an expectation that it will be used for meetings and groups connected with my wife's role in the church.
So my advice is before you move into your curate's house think carefully about how you can arrange the various rooms to accommodate large groups and meetings whilst retaining somewhere for the rest of the family to be. In our curates house the previous curate had used a long lounge as just a lounge- and the other ground floor room as their dining room (also on the ground floor was a WC and small kitchen).
The trouble with that type of arrangement is that if we'd not changed it then when large groups used the lounge the rest of the family would be banished to a not very comfortable dining room or upstairs into our bedrooms - neither a particularly entertaining or social option.
Instead what we did is as follows ...
- we laid out the rear end of the long lounge so it had two sofas and a TV and the front end to have a folding dining table.
- This gave us a family space to relax and somewhere to eat as a family as well.
- If a smaller group needed to meet in the lounge they could use the sofas and some folding chairs as necessary without moving anything.
- If larger groups needed to meet in the lounge we could fold down the dining table and push one sofa back into the dining space giving even more room for folding chairs for seating.
- The previous dining room was set out as a snug with a sofa, coffee table and TV/PC on a narrow desk. This gave myself and our daughters a place to escape too that allowed us to watch TV or work on the PC without disturbing the meeting.
Thinking carefully before we moved in - about how to arrange the various rooms to allow us to accommodate large groups - whilst having a comfortable room for the rest of the family at the same time - really did pay dividends.
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