Sunday, August 28, 2011

Time for the Office... Almost

The last room in our place that was crying out for attention was the office. It was the room in the least need of help from the beginning, and also had the only paint color that Ilana didn't hate. Otherwise it might have drawn our efforts sooner.

It seemed like a straight forward job: upgrade our desks and add some crown molding. Should be easy. Might not even be worth a blog post.

Then we looked at the closet. Due to our aforementioned hatred of mirrors, we had gladly removed the mirrored closet doors when we moved the washer and dryer into the office closet.

Oddly enough: We just noticed that other than this photo of the new plumbing for the washer and dryer, we never actually showed the washer and dryer in their new space. Oh well. You'll just have to imagine a side-by-side washer and dryer here:

While this was a VAST improvement over their previous location in our kitchen, we were not crazy about having a loud washer and dryer in an open closet in our office. They protruded too far out to have a closing door in the closet, so we had resorted to a curtain that stuck out at the bottom like a maternity dress. We wondered if we could come up with a way to seal off that closet, with the washer and dryer on the inside.

Then all hell broke loose.

We zoomed right past the half-ass solution of building the closet sides out enough to get a door across and to the dream scenario we started fantasizing about two years ago.

It's a little hard to explain, but here is what we started with:
___________
| W D |__ __
| /

W = washer, D = Dryer, and that thing on the right is a doorway with a door.

What we wanted to do was stack the washer and dryer, then turn them -90 degrees and punch a hole in the outside wall to make them accessible via our hallway. The only problem was, that the hole we wanted to make wasn't actually big enough to fit the two appliances. This is what we wanted:
___________
| |W/D /__ __
| / /

Not sure if that makes sense, but it's a smaller closet on the left, and a new closet accessible from the hallway with the washer and dryer. But again, there wasn't enough room for that closet. So we wondered if we could move the doorway.

We called in the handiest person we know (sorry, Frank, but you’re actually the second handiest person we know). Roger not only said he could to the work (without the second floor crashing down) he said he could do it affordably. Bam. Crazy idea brought to life.

Here's the hallway before shot:

And after the first day of work:

You can see on the floor the place where the old doorway was. It's said that we were only about a foot off, but that's how it goes. Then Roger patched everything up and added the new closet door.

From the office side, we got a new, smaller closet.

Then it was just a matter of finishing stuff up and getting the washer/dryer in place.

Luckily we had some left over floor boards, and Oscar came over and patched the floors so well that we forget where the old doorway was.

A nice paint job later, and we're done:


It may seem silly to move a wall just one foot, but we have to say, this may be our favorite project we've done in the house (except for the kitchen -- we still love the kitchen!). It's great to be able to put in a load of laundry without going into the office, then closing the door and not hearing all the moving and shaking (and for those of you who have been here while our washer is running, you know what we mean by shaking). A million thanks to Roger and Oscar for their help!

With the walls and closet done, we turned our attention to our desks and related storage. Stay tuned for an update on the progress there...

Finishing Up the Den

We are the worst bloggers. The worst.

We haven't updated since November of last year (10 months), which was 6 months after our previous post. We are very sorry to let our 3 fans down.

So let's catch up.

Starting with the den... When last we left you, we had added a free standing closet. That was most of the major work, except for some aesthetic efforts aimed at our media.

We bought our first flat panel TV (welcome to 2005, y'all) and decided to mount it on the wall so that we could swing it out for couch viewing or fold it up to limit its profile. We started with this blank wall:


Then a mount:


Then a TV:


Great, right? Except that we pillars of modern living still have a lot of other technical accoutrement. Here you see our TiVo, modem, router, mini cellphone tower, dust buster, and a whole lotta plugs (DVD not pictured):


So Seth got to work on a custom cabinet to go below the TV. Here he is planning it out:


It started off pretty basic, and Ilana worried if this piece was going to be the right addition for the den:


But then Seth busted out the router and dropped the design hammer.


As you can see, he's very proud of his work.


After adding the doors and some feet, the final product looked like this:


Then Ilana does what Ilana does best: paint the damn thing. For those of you (named Dennis) complaining about painting over pretty wood: we tried various stain options and none of them worked. At all. We have wood floors and no other wood furniture, so it just didn't "go." To keep it simple, we went with a paint shade slightly darker than our walls.




Photo available via the AbbyCam
And here it is, disguising all the disorganization of technology inside and fitting in nicely with the TV:


Look mom, no wires!

With the den done, that left only one room untouched: the office.

We thought it would be simple. Then we had a crazy idea.

To be continued...