Sometimes the best gift
of all is a space to call your own…right down the hall from the people you
love.
So when one moves into a 90-year old house, it probably
seems like a given that the idea of functional space take on a different
definition. Rooms that might be included
in the blueprints of a home built in 2012 were unheard of in 1926, and in turn,
luxurious spaces from the roaring ’20s might these days feel more like a hindrance
than a help to a modern family. Because
of this, we all furrow our brows and tap our temples, coming up with new ways
to use the floor plans we are given, and although this process can at times be
challenging, it might also force us to flex our creative muscles in an innovative
way that may, in the end, provide us with better results than we ever could
have originally imagined. And so begins
the story of my darling husband’s home office.
Our new Home Office: a small space that definitely lives up to the big function we have tasked it with. It has a vintage/shabby chic feel, but more polished additions like the desk legs and this cream colored leather upholstered chair from TJ Maxx give it a sleek edge.
My husband is probably one of the hardest working people I
know. He gets up at the crack of dawn to
start his day so he can make it to every ball game and dance recital, and can often be found squeezing work into the evenings and
weekends while most of us are taking a break from the daily grind. Of course, he’s also a hand-on dad and
husband, so when he can, he likes to work from home so he can take care of whatever
pressing work need might arise, then immediately get back to whatever scheme
the kids have roped him into for the day.
And while the kitchen table or the back porch might in theory be great
places to set up your laptop and have at it, in the end, client calls and
complicated documents can’t really be seriously addressed with the dog barking
and the kids clamoring for their pb n j’s.
In light of this conundrum, the kids and I decided it was
time to create a home office for our favorite working guy. Normally the idea of a collaborative effort
between me and all of my three children on a decorating project is a bit
frightening, but in this case, I can honestly say everyone was on board and
excited to make this need a reality. So
of course the question was…where? Home
offices are a modern invention, so there wasn’t a designated room for such an
item in our imperfectly perfect old house.
In the end, a sleeping porch off of our second floor guest room became
our best option, which up until this point had become an impromptu storage
closet that we had curtained off when guests would occupy the room next
door. It was dark, dated, and dirty–but it
would work.
My last post detailed the saga of prepping and creating the
painted floor in the 7′ X 8′ space, so
after that aspect of the project was complete, it was time to have a little
fun. My husband really likes light,
open, airy spaces when he’s stuck at a desk, so the two walls of windows were
perfect for our needs, and whitewashing the dark wood paneling made the room
feel even lighter and brighter…then painting the ceiling sky blue completed the
illusion of the outdoors inside.
As always, I wanted to see how far a small budget could go,
so we built the desk from our neighbor’s old four-panel door and four metal file
boxes that were filled with bricks to weigh them down. To get the desk to the appropriate height, I
wanted to add bun feet to the base of the file boxes, but it ends up that bun
feet can be a little pricey when you need eight of them. The solution?
Fence post finials from Home Depot–half the cost, and I love the
whimsical design they add to the desk.
Another great project was our shelf. We found the brackets under our back porch
soon after moving in (there were eight of them and we assume at one point they
were used on the outside of our house, but where is now a mystery), so we used
two that were in good shape to create a storage shelf on one side of the
room. Originally we thought about using wood to create the shelf, but once we
saw how much character the old brackets exuded while mounted on the wall, we
instead opted for a laminated piece of glass as a topper–which the nice folks
at Allerdice Glass were kind enough to help us with.
Since our office was a group effort, we needed to add the
kids’ touch to the décor, and my assistants were more than ready to oblige. Each created a painting for the wall, and
signed the desktop using chalk on the chalkboard paint we inset into the door
panels. They also enjoyed an excursion
to Ballston Spa’s junk and antique shops and Saratoga’s vintage mecca ReRuns,
where we found old trunks and suitcases for storage, vintage comic books for
Dad to browse through during work breaks, and old cubby drawers that can be
used for desktop storage.
And the end result? A
space we surprised my husband with (the kids insisted on a big reveal, eyes
closed and all…I really make these kids watch way too much HGTV) that utilizes
an unused area of our home in a way that makes life easier for somebody we
love. In the end, I can’t think of a
better way for us to spend the first few weeks of summer vacation. J
