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...