Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Home Office Redo: Before & After

I have to say, I like our house, I really do. However, once we updated the family room in April, the only room that was an eyesore on the main level was our office. I work from home occasionally, but rarely ever sat in the office. Carl would work from home when he wasn't traveling, and would complain about the office on a regular basis. Can you really blame either of us for feeling the way we felt?



If you were working with this, you'd probably be thinking the same thing. Our college solution desks weren't really cutting our grown up working lifestyle. The problem was, it wasn't a priority. Carl would disagree, but still realized we had other things that needed to be done first. With Zombie Baby almost here, we decided it was now or not for a reeeeally long time. Oh and the fact that Carl was pulled off the road and working solely from home (yippee!!!!) might have had something to do with the pressure as well.

Our first step was to decide on all the things we wanted...in an ideal world since the space is small.
  • Two workstations- room for two chairs
  • Lots of lighting (there is one window, but once the sun goes down it's super dark)
  • Big enough work station for Command Central, otherwise known as Carl's THREE monitors
  • Shelving for our books and magazines
  • Lots of storage- including a place for the printer
  • Some filing solution for the few files we need to keep readily available
  • Doors to help cut down the noise both going in and out
  • Nothing too costly. There is still a baby on the way.

Now that we have a list, let's take a quick trip back in time to the start of the office. It used to look like this.
Ahhh! That's a lot of wallpaper. But I remedied that. We removed the carpet, painted and installed new hardwood flooring.

Sigh. That's better. Then Carl cased every.single.window in the house, including the office of course.
Tee Daaaa!

And then we just put back in our old crappy furniture, and that's how we lived for 2+ years. Eek. Finally, this past Fall, we purchased a set of French Doors from Home Depot. Carl primed and painted those bad boys and installed them, which actually was a lot more work than I anticipated it being. All the trim had to come down and be redone, and the doorway had to be adjusted. Luckily, my man is handy. I don't even want to think about what the project would have cost if we had hired someone.

Trim removed and doorway getting prepped:

Unprimed and painted:

Starting to be primed:

Primed, painted, hung and hardware:
Once we had a little noise help, thank you doors, it was time to work on the furnishings. We debated on a single piece unit, but like I said the space is small. And the options out there weren't really working the way we wanted. Plus, the options that were sort of working were out of the budget! Plan B: Put something together from Ikea. 3 Trips to the store, countless measurements and about 4,592 Brain Powerables later, we drove home like this:


Thank goodness we live close to Ikea, because 1. I was terrified to drive home like this and 2. we still had to make 2 more trips after this to exchange and buy more things! And yes, that is the bottom of a cinnamon roll pan. Don't judge. They are delicious.

This office was not done without compromise either. First we'll take a look at our wants list and then we'll get to the lovely photos.
  • Two workstations- room for two chairs
  • Lots of lighting (there is one window, but once the sun goes down it's super dark)
  • Big enough work station for Command Central, otherwise known as Carl's THREE monitors
  • Shelving for our books and magazines
  • Lots of storage- including a place for the printer
  • Some filing solution for the few files we need to keep readily available
  • Doors to help cut down the noise both going in and out
  • Nothing too costly. There is still a baby on the way.
Ok, so we didn't have to compromise on much, but losing an entire workstation hurt. We realized that the space really wasn't large enough to accommodate them, BUT, we were ok with it for a few reasons.

1. We realized we would rarely ever be in there at the same time
2. So long as we could fit another chair in the room somehow (I do most of my work on a laptop so we focused on a solution for that rather than another working desk)

And here it is. There is a good chance we'll do some type of shelving over the desk down the road, but for now, we have plenty of storage and really don't need them. Since we don't have an overhead light in this room, we just laid some rectangle lights on their sides on top of the standing bookcases which gives great overall light. Then, we just bought two task lamps for either side of the desk as well.


The solution for me not having a workspace was a super comfy chair and ottoman. I have a feeling it will get a LOT of use. I sit in there so long as we don't have conflicting conference calls and it works quite nicely. I'm actually sitting in it as I type :) The lamp (repurposed from our guest room) over there makes this the perfect reading chair too! The shelving, placed on it's side, was the perfect spot for our printer.


Command Central in all it's glory. I tried really hard to get him to minimize his screens, but he really does use all three, so I had to let it go.

Lastly, cord management was another high priority for Carl. Those hanging trays are actually for a different desk system at Ikea, but with a little cutting, they worked just fine for our space and no more cords! And that little filing cabinet is on wheels, so it can easily be moved out of the way. We put our large filing cabinet in the basement with the files we don't need regularly. Everything that is used on a monthly basis fits nicely in that one drawer now.

I don't have a complete breakdown, but when it was all said and done, we redid the entire office for less than $2000. That included the floors, paint, trim, doors, furniture and accessories. It was definitely worth every penny spent. We are really enjoying the new workspace and are kicking ourselves for not doing it sooner! Feel free to ask any questions, my fingers are just too tired to type any more details :)

19 comments:

  1. It looks awesome! I love the comfy chair and bookcase :)

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  2. The whole room looks amazing! I absolutely love the french doors... I wish I had somewhere in my house to use them!

    I had to LOL at the Command Central. That's hilarious! At least it doesnt look like it takes up too much room.

    Where did you get the rectangle lamps/lights?

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  3. Thanks all!

    @Jamie- they are the Grono lamps from Ikea. They come as a pair, and we bought two pairs. We just used to two large ones in the office and will put the two small ones in the guest bedroom here is the link:
    http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/00095588

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  4. molly, this looks great! so sleek and functional too! where are the little silver lamps from?

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  5. Looks fantastic! Do you have a link for the desk? I love it!

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  6. Wow, this is great. Gave me some ideas. I especially like how you handled the cords. Those drive me NUTS w/our living room office space and that is a great solution. French doors are a beautiful choice, too!

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  7. wisewife- this is the actual desk: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/S79871401

    Then there is the filing cabinet under it on the left and Expedit Shelves flanking both sides.

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  8. It looks great. I especially love the doors being changed.

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  9. I'm looking for a nice yellow color for my kitchen. Can you tell me what color you went with? It looks great.

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  10. Courtney- It's really more green than yellow, but it is Wheat Grass from Ace. It definitely has yellow in it, but still would call it green.

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  11. Office looks great! My husband works from home and has like 5 or 6 screens. lol!

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  12. Thanks! I know exactly what color you speak of. We saw it painted on a wall in Sherwin Williams and I've flagged that for possibly another room in our house. :) We're currently building a new house and I have to admit, I love your site - it is very inspiring and gives me lots of ideas of what to do when we move in. If only my husband were as handy as yours. I also look forward to testing out some of your freezer meals, as we are expecting our little one in April. Good luck with everything. Can't wait to hear that your little one has arrived!

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  13. I love the french doors sometime when you have a chance I'd love to see a breakdown of that project we're considering something similar for our study right inside the front door of our home.

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  14. Molly- Thanks so much! i thought they were the ones from Ikea. I never thought of putting them on their side... i really like them! thanks so much for letting me know what they are! I think I'm going to have to pick some up. It's really dangerous for me that Ikea is located 2 blocks from my office!

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  15. how did you organize all those cords???Details please...my desk is a mess underneath!

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  16. I agree that we all need to know how you organized those cords! Plus, we would like to do french doors. Did you widen the doorway? Essentially - what is the width of the opening you put the french doors in? We have an opening from our formal living room that i'd love to protect a little better from the sounds in the house (and keep the little ones from getting into!!)

    Love the transformation. You do good work!!

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  17. @Dori & Andrea- the cords are managed simply by those holders that are found at Ikea. They come with brackets and screw into your desk. Then, you just set all your cords in there and they run to whichever side of the desk you want. Like I said, the cord management containers weren't really for the desk we purchased, but they are just sort of a still felt material that is easily cut down.

    And then Andrea- the doorway was already wider than stander, but the doors we bought were a smaller set. They aren't standard full size doors. We did have to "widen" a bit, but not really anything more than what was manageable hiding behind the trim.

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  18. I was laughing at the three monitor thing because my husband has EIGHT, and yes, he does need them all (he works from home as a software developer).
    Does that make you feel better? I think the 3 monitors look perfectly fine, and the whole office looks great!
    BTW: I'm purpletulip from the nest

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