Best Office Ever

Well, maybe not the best office ever, but my favorite setup so far.

Neglected office, a few weeks after moving

Even though the office room was as big as the master bedroom, it was still a challenge getting our his-and-her desks/computers, a guest bed, and a bunch more of his stuff, arranged in a way that didn't require climbing gear... like it resembled for the few weeks after we moved in:

Internet ON, but that's all that's setup here. And Megan's station. Everything else is my junk!

To make matters worse, the closet door opened the wrong way, there was a big radiator in the middle of one wall, and there were limited outlets available for our gazillion devices.

Enough plugs?

This room was the last one we setup (the living room, bedroom, official guest room, and kitchen all came first). So after weeks of looking like a storage closet, we finally arranged what we had at the time according to our "must haves:"

• Adjacent desks
• Avoid using exorbitant amounts of extension cords
• Out-of-the-way placement of cat-box
• Able to look outside from desk 

The view wasn't even that great - just our neighbors' driveways.

A good setup, at the time. It was kind of sparse though - a lot of empty space in the middle of the room behind our desks, and nowhere comfortable for guests to sit when we inevitably forced them to watch us play Minecraft hung out at our computers.

I grew up with a computer across from my bed. Since elementary school I was always able to gather my friends and either play computer games or watch cartoons, TV and movies late into the night. I loved having my main computer spot the same place as the hangout spot, and things stayed that way all the way up to the point where Megan and I started living together.

At that point, we couldn't really fit two sets of furniture in the bedroom, and Megan introduced the paradigm as the bedroom being a place that was computer-free - a quiet space to decompress and unplug. It was a big change for me, but I did grow to appreciate it.

Anyway, I wanted a couch in the office, so I could get that old hangout feeling back.  Plus, we rationalized that if we got a pull-out, the office could double as prime sleep-over space when there were more guests than our dedicated guest-room could hold.

45% off a new full sleeper couch? Free shipping? Thank you JC Penny! 

Of course, we had to re-think our office layout to make everything fit, and spent weeks scribbling layouts down and then ditching them and starting all over again

Icovia planner screenshot - very handy for room set planning!

We don't even have that many IKEA bookshelves. What was I thinking?

That's it! The top left corner! Pure inspiration.

Late one night we came up with the idea of pivoting the couch in the corner so it faced both of our computer desks. It was like an epiphany. That left plenty of room for a couch coffee table and room to pull out the bed. The only down-side was not being able to look outside from our desks, but it was the best we could do for the immediate future.

Behold, office 2.0:

Standing with my back to the closet/corner

Don't let the foreshortened view fool you. Plenty of room in here!

Yes we still have a tube TV. It's 1080i! Perfect for classic gaming (SEGA, N64).

The room still needs a bit more love though. Our upcoming plans include:

• Larger, more colorful rug
• Painting the walls
• Putting a bunch of wicked cool posters on the walls
• Putting up shelves
• Switching the hinges on the closet
• Adding curtains and blinds

Stay tuned for office 3.0!

UPDATE 5/27/14

Just found the room planner screenshot from our current design - at work, no less. Here is the model:

The Kitchen Phase 1.5

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Originally, adding the downstairs bathroom was going to be "Phase 3" of the kitchen remodeling, in which we also would be gutting the kitchen and installing glorious IKEA cabinets. Since I couldn't wait for an extra bathroom, we ended up merging this in before the planned Phase 2. (Which I guess I will talk about at some point later?) Therefore, Phase 1.5.

To start, first we needed to make up for the removed pantry. That thing was *full*. (Contents went into the sun room, piled onto the former kitchen table.)

I found this pantry on craigslist; a very nice lady was remodeling her kitchen and didn't want it to go to waste.

A PERFECT FIT HOW LUCKY IS THAT I MEAN REALLY

For the record, AFTER we got the pantry to the house we realized that it was finished on the wrong side. Oops! So we put it in upside-down :P You can't really tell, right?

Adamo's uncle very kindly set it up, attached it to the wall, and added trim to the bottom!

It's kinda nice to have at least SOME cupboards with knobs. (Knobs are in Phase 2, promise!)

Adamo's uncle left when he finished the bathroom; however, that left us with the sanding, cleaning, priming and painting in the kitchen and dining room. We used a light to make sure that everything was flat. I don't know, it made a lot more sense when Adamo was explaining it. 

It took FOREVER

We also ended up moving the cabinet that was sitting awkwardly on top of the fridge to on top of the radiator cover. I have random appliances in there (probably not the best spot, but whatever). It became sort of a dumping ground for tools.

And caulk. And caulk jokes.

We ended up having to take it off soon after plopping it on there because we realized that the radiator (which we had moved for redoing the floors) was spitting and leaking all over the place. We finally got it with this MASSIVE WRENCH.

I really like this wrench. It makes me feel powerful.

After that was straightened out, we lugged the cabinet and appliances back onto the radiator cover, and now it is a landing zone for my and Adamo's purses. I mean, manly bags. 

Side note, the stairway to the basement (off of the kitchen) was in such rough shape that I had to take a mo and patch the plaster and then paint the damn thing with KILZ.  The "before" walls were SO disgusting that I did not permit a picture to be taken. Also, for the record, those wobbly giant patches were NOT my handiwork; you can't even tell where I patched. *snooty sniff*

This is what it looks like *fixed up*

 By the way, I think I forgot to mention that we were also trying to get this stuff done because we were planning on having a bunch of people over for Halloween, just a week after construction was finished. We only managed to paint the exposed drywall before guests arrived.

But hey, we did Halloween lights outside so it's ok, right?

 We were literally painting until just before people got here. Check out Adamo's sweet chief engineer costume!

(Trust me, he had the correct number of pips.)

 Adamo was a TAPE MASTER and painter's taped the crap out of everything. It was a sight to behold.

Before paint

After paint

I simply LOVE the color that we picked for the walls (svelte sage), but after living with it for a while, I think it is a little too gloomy for a kitchen. Therefore, the wall color will be changing in Phase 2 and Adamo will get to tape everything all over again! Whee!