Re-vamping an Office…

In preparation for the “big arrival”, we are doing some serious re-arranging in our house. For starters we are moving our bedroom into the other bedroom, which as of now has been a den/office. The reason we are doing this is because that room is connected to a smaller room that was once the teeny garage of this little house we call home. It was converted at some point in the 90’s and it it’s great to have some extra space, but it would be useless as an office if we put our precious sleeping babies in the room next to it and then couldn’t access it except on tiptoe. So – we are moving. Initially we thought of making the “garage room” (as we call it) into the nursery, but the room has some negatives 1. it’s tiny 2. we weren’t able to install the central air in there because it is on a concrete slab and the HVAC dudes were not able to put in the vents and duct work 3. having the babies so close to our bedroom (only accessible through our room) could have some disadvantages… we want them close – but perhaps not that close.

And there is another snafu… in addition to re-vamping this little room into a cozy office, we need to put in some kind of closet. Right now I use the closet in our bedroom and Jon uses the closet in the den/office… yes, the joys of living in a 1920’s house – very LIMITED closet space! Once the babies “move in” they will take up the closet in their room, leaving us to share one – not gonna happen. So we’re looking at something like this from Ikea:

image from www.ikea.com

Probably not these doors, but you get the idea… let’s just hope it is big enough for all of Jon’s stuff. The room currently looks like this – (we’ve moved most of the junk out at this point)

The closet would go along this wall – pretty much floor to ceiling:

Because the room was once a garage (hard to even believe that a car could fit inside this little space… but I guess in 1926 folks weren’t too used to the oversized garages we have today) – it has a concrete floor. While I was trying to use this room as a “craft room” previously, I was hesitant to lay down carpet, (I do a lot of mosaic tile art and little pieces of glass would be harder to get up from a carpeted floor) now I am all for it. Something needs to warm this space up and I think carpet is just the thing! We also thinking about painting the walls a warmer, darker color. The desk that is in there now is getting taken apart and moved down to the basement and the little mini-tanker desk in the den is moving in – it’s much smaller and we need all the extra floor space we can get.

On this wall we are going to put up a bunch of floating book shelves:

We’re also going to have to find some space for additional storage – I still need to put my knitting and mosaic supplies somewhere! It is a small room (around 100 sq. feet) but somehow we will make it all work! Here are some inspirational images:

Love the monochromatic-ness of this space.

I would love to do wallpaper, but I am sort of looking to do this one quick and dirty and save the wallpaper loveliness for the nursery!