Two quick things first:
- We updated yesterday’s door-painting post with wider exterior shots for everyone who asked — and we also tweaked our header.
- Sherry still owes you a door-hardware post (she’s editing photos and writing it up for tomorrow), but to keep things unpredictable we’re switching gears and talking about our office for a bit. We’ve been all over the place lately!
After our recent nursery furniture shuffle, we decided it was time to fix our office situation. The space has felt the same for eight months and never really worked comfortably or efficiently. Adding a file cabinet was an important first step, but the room still feels like our old setup plopped into a larger space with windows and doorways in new places.
In this room we’ve got two doorways (a small one to the kitchen and a larger opening to the dining room) and two windows (one faces the carport, the other the front yard). That leaves only two usable walls and a couple of corners, which is why we’ve been living with this initial layout:
Here’s what the room looks like from the dining room doorway. The long desk that once filled nearly an entire wall in our old office now looks small in this new space. It made sense to place it along the longest wall at first, and we liked having a window to look out while working — even if it only looks into the carport. We tried a few arrangements the day we moved in and decided this was the best of a few imperfect options, so it stayed for the last eight months.
From the kitchen side, the green sleeper loveseat sits as centered as possible under the window without bumping into Sherry’s chair.
One corner houses our Effektiv file cabinet and an ottoman full of toys — Clara and Burger have a knack for returning quickly to re-scatter anything we try to tidy up.
We decided to test a furniture swap: moving the sofa under the front window and the desk over to where the sofa was. We’d tried this briefly when we first moved in, but without our secondhand desk chairs and before we shifted the formal living room into a dining room. So we rolled up the rug and tried the switch.
Our reasoning was twofold: 1) the front-yard view would be nicer than the carport, and 2) the sofa’s blue/green tones match the dining room and might make the two rooms feel more connected through that large doorway.
Unfortunately the new layout didn’t work. Getting into my chair (the left seat) was awkward — the sofa arm crammed the space and the chair wouldn’t slide easily on the rug. Maneuvering the chair became more aggravating than it should be, and the repositioned desk ended up right above an AC vent, which blasted cold air at our feet in the summer.
We could have shifted the sofa and rug to mitigate tightness, but the room started to feel off-center and the vent issue would remain — not something we want to block since it’s one of the few vents serving the room.
Because we aren’t emotionally attached to every piece of furniture, we’ve been considering a proper built-in desk for a while. The idea is to use base kitchen cabinets and a continuous countertop to create a long, efficient workspace with lots of storage underneath — ideal for two people who work from home all day.
We tested placing a built-in under the front window in theory, but that would push the sofa into a cramped corner, keep the rug/chair conflict unresolved, and still leave us with the vent directly beneath the desk. That wouldn’t be ideal for comfort year-round.
So the plan we’re sold on now is building the built-in along the long wall where the existing desk sits. This will give us a longer, more useful workspace with plenty of storage — and it will avoid the vent problem. The trade-off is that we’ll be back to the carport view while working, but increased storage and comfort outweigh that for us since we’re usually focused on laptops (or the baby) anyway.
That still leaves the sofa situation unresolved. We’re leaning toward moving the sofa out of the room and replacing it with a smaller armchair and ottoman to better fit the space. A compact seating area would meet our primary priorities: 1) a functional workspace for both of us and 2) a play area for Clara. A sleeper sofa for guests is no longer essential now that we have a dedicated guest room.
Next steps: we’ll start hunting for built-in components to retrofit — ideally repurposed kitchen or office cabinets from places like the Habitat ReStore or local classifieds so we can avoid the cost of bespoke cabinetry. For now we left the furniture in the switched position as motivation: cold toes and a misaligned rug are good incentives to get this room sorted before eight more months slip by.
Why are the rooms we use most often always the last ones to be finished?
How’s your home office set up? Do you work from home full-time, or do you only use it evenings and weekends? Have you installed built-ins or clever desk solutions that you’d recommend? Or are you nursing a less-than-ideal setup you can’t wait to change? Any frozen-toe stories to commiserate about?
Psst – We experienced slow loading and site crashes between 10–11am for the third morning in a row. It’s felt a bit Groundhog Day–ish as we think we’ve fixed it, only to see the problem return. We’ve been troubleshooting continuously for the past 72 hours, so thanks for your patience.