My New Office Space

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’ve been working on a huge office redecoration. It’s more than that really though. I had an “office” in the smallest upstairs bedroom that I never ever used. It was too small, there was no space to work in, and too far away from both the kitchen and the family room, which is the heart of our home and where my children always are (and want me to be). It was essentially a storage room, but completely unorganized – to the point where I could barely walk in the room anymore. My computer is down in the rear part of our large family room, and my work desk was the kitchen table, so every night I had to clear the current project off so we could eat dinner.

Several years ago we had architectural plans drawn for an office for me along with a desperately needed new garage, but when the bids came in they were so expensive and over budget that we dropped the plans. However, we went into the exercise with the intent to do the renovation, so when I came across some vintage industrial furniture that was exactly what I wanted for my office, I bought it. The store that I bought it from kindly stored the pieces for me for almost 2 years, but they finally called for a delivery date a few months ago. Having no “office” to put the pieces in, I had them delivered to my (still) dilapidated garage. Sigh.

A few weeks ago I couldn’t take it anymore . Jim was away for the weekend, so my friend Cyrena and I, by ourselves, hauled two of the 3 very heavy pieces out of the garage, around the house (in the snow), and into the rear of the family room. That is the reason I’ve been wearing a wrist brace for the past few weeks in any photos – my poor old body just wasn’t up to such a task anymore. Sigh again.

The desk on the right is a reproduction of a french postal workers desk, and the built-in stool swings out. The desk on the left was already in the space, but I moved it from the other side of the room. It holds all kinds of printer papers underneath, and a lot of my craft patterns and files are neatly stored above now.

My desk was always in that spot and the dog's crate was always next to me. The metal glass doored cabinet to the left is new, and now holds a lot of my fabrics and yarns, neatly organized and labeled, in wire baskets. The piece on top is an old scale, and the chicken we got years and years ago on our honeymoon.

In front of the french doors at the back of the room we had a round table and chairs that were purchased to be a family game table, but was rarely used. I wanted a table that could replace the kitchen table as my workspace – one that I could leave projects on until completed. I looked and looked all over for an appropriate work table, but in our very expensive area of the country, couldn’t find anything that wasn’t very, very expensive. I really wanted a metal-topped table, and in the end I finally made my own. I absolutely love the way it came out, and will post that as my next Crafts post.

I didn't make the industrial metal and wood cart that forms the base of this new worktable, but I made everything else. It's a zinc topped table that I with a nailed edge treatment.

My new desk almost fills the space where the french doors are. leaving just enough space for one of my vintage dress forms. I think we've used those doors once in 15 years of living here, so it wasn't a concern to block them. My folk art collection was always up on that high shelf. The bookshelves got completely cleaned, reorganized by category, and many books were donated to a local book charity.

My old “office” upstairs still needs some serious work done to it to get that cleaned up. But, it’s a great start. I didn’t change the square footage of how the room had been laid out before, just reconfigured it so that the entire back area was my work space and not just a piece of it, so nobody else in the family feels that they got “pushed” out and has no place of their own because of it.

That’s about it. I did a ton of work, but there’s a ton more to do,