My stepdaughter is demanding I renovate a room for her 2-month stay

"I just can't believe that Rich is actually catering to her unnecessary requests, or how bratty Olivia is being about it," the Melbourne mum tells Kidspot.

My stepdaughter Olivia and I generally have a pretty good relationship. 

This may be partly due to the fact that she lives interstate from myself, her father, Rich and our children and whenever she does come to stay, or we go and see her it is more like a holiday than everyday life.

Despite this, she has always been respectful and kind to me and embraces her stepbrother and sister, which from all accounts can be a struggle in other stepfamilies.

This summer though, Olivia will be staying with us for the lengthiest period of time she ever has, nearly two months while her mum travels overseas and while usually her visits are smooth sailing, this one is already causing issues.

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"She wants to feel at home"

The drama all began recently via a Facetime call planning her visit. She told us that she doesn’t want to sleep in the spare bedroom as it is (the one she has stayed in numerous times before). Instead, she wants us to renovate it so she can feel “at home.”

When we asked her what she meant by this, she elaborated, telling us that the room as it is, is “too chaotic” and “too busy” and that she needs the aesthetic to be simpler and “calm.”

Admittedly, our spare room is a bit chaotic. It is a room rarely used by anyone apart from Olivia and when she uses it, it’s only for a weekend or two each year. So, like many people, our spare room doubles as a bit of a storage room- it has a treadmill that doesn’t get used, our filing cabinet lives in there and there is a hodgepodge of mismatched furniture like drawers that have been shoved in there to make it somewhere that can be stayed in, even if it doesn’t look like a furniture catalogue.

While this room has never been an issue before, at least not one that we were made aware of, it seems that now due to her extended stay, or perhaps her recent 16th birthday where some more attitude seems to have been gifted to her, she has very strong opinions on what her room should look like, or as she says the “vibe” that it gives.  

Despite the fact that the room has a built-in wardrobe, and queen-sized bed and does everything a bedroom needs to do and has so on every other occasion she has stayed, now it isn’t enough, and it is ‘critical’ that these changes are made before her stay.

According to Olivia, the busyness of the room is not productive to her mental health, she requires neutral colours that are calming, which means a new bedhead, furniture relocated for her stay and matching linen that will help create this soothing effect.

Image: iStock

"She has a point, we need to"

Once the Facetime call was over, I turned to Rich, with an expression of astonishment and said, “as if”, expecting him to agree.

Instead, he said, “She has a point, and we need to make her feel at home.”

I initially thought Rich would come to his senses once he had thought about it more but seemingly, he gave Olivia the green light at some point because she soon started to send suggestions through about what her room should have. This included specific links to items like lamps and doona covers she said would work and Pinterest boards of how she’d love her room to look.

But it was when Rich started to actually buy some of these items and begin to move out some of the furniture to the shed that I knew that it was time we sat down for a chat.

I raised my concerns, the main one being the cost and the time that doing all of this was going to take, especially when we had no spare time and weren’t in the greatest position financially as it was.

But it was clear pretty quickly that this didn’t matter when it came to Olivia and her room “needs” and that I would have to just get on board.

To be honest, I just can't believe that Rich is actually catering to her unnecessary demands, or how bratty Olivia is being about it. I mean it is a functional bedroom (albeit a ‘chaotic’ one as she’d say) that she probably won't even spend much time in any way and after the summer she will head back home and won't even be back to stay in it for another six months.

Seriously, what is the point?!

Originally published as My stepdaughter is demanding I renovate a room for her 2-month stay