The Office in PA, Part One

~ Jenny

Remember I said I’d do another Twelve Days of the Office? I lied. I don’t know how long it’s going to take. But here’s the plan: I have one big room (with a half-open kitchen off of it) that’s going to be my living room/office, which works great for me (especially with the fridge that close). For those of you who said it looked like my house was coming along based on the podcast, this is what where I was sitting really looked like:

The end of that room is going to be the office. It’s bad in some ways—all those windows on my computer screens are not a good idea—but good in others—all those windows are going to give me great light to work in—and of course once I’m actually working there, I’ll know for sure.

Then the POD arrived on Saturday, I unloaded it on Sunday and shoved my work table into place, and suddenly, messy though it all was, it started to look like home.

Now I have to reinforce the two tables on the sides–the move knocked them askew–and paint the top of the work table–the move did it no favors, either, plus it was a mess before that–and get the stuff off the floor and fix my couch–another victim of the move and not technically part of my office–and get my internet working in that room and . . . Hey, the white board is working even if it isn’t on the wall yet. (Please notice the mega set of whiteboard markers Bob sent me. Along with four erasers.)

It’s gonna be awhile, but there is progress.

36 thoughts on “The Office in PA, Part One”

  1. Oh, inspiring! You’re gonna have a great space.

    Sometimes I go back to the Cinderella Deal just to read the part where Daisy fixes up the living room, dining room and front hall in eight days (a riff on the creation story?).

    Now you’ve got me thinking about baby steps for my art room…

    Have fun!

  2. Great post. Can see the vision coming together already–the colour scheme, the lamps, the airy feel–just lovely.

    I also have lots of windows in my writing room. I have sheers on my windows so I can slide them to shield light streaming in on my computer monitor when needed. Works great for me because any closed bits still let in filtered light to keep the room cheery. Also very versatile option because the lighting actually changes a lot depending on the season.

    Looking forward to seeing more pics when you’re done setting up and those markers are in full use:)

    1. The sheers are a great suggestion for that space!

      Jenny how on earth did you manage to have so much open floor space at this stage in the move? I am impressed and slightly green with envy. It is also great that you have a lot of open space on the bookshelves. I like the huge whiteboard too, lots of space for you to use for creating… Taf

      1. My garage is completely full. I’m trying not to pull anything out of there until I’ve cleared space inside and know where to put it, bur since every room is stacked with stuff, it’s going to be a long process.

        2. I hope you do better with your garage than I am doing with mine! More than a decade here and the garage barely has room for me to walk around a few piled high spots-grrr. My sweetie (Gary) died in 2016 and there is still an awful lot of brewing equipment he had in there. The rest of the clutter could be sorted into trash, donate or keep piles (bet the keep pile will be the smallest). Taf

  3. I re-oriented my office space in the living room. In the process I broke the mini desk where my collage stuff lives. I will get it fixed eventually but in the meantime I have a plan for shifting other stuff around in that room and the adjoining room to accommodate my needs.

    My daughter says I move furniture a lot and refuses to help which is okay because I have a bunch of those slidy things that go under furniture legs to make moving them easy.

    Will put an instagram link to a pic of the first shifts in comments.

      1. As Katy said, the light moves. Sometimes my computer is in the bright light in the morning, and I try to sit where I block it at those times. That looks like a very nice room. It will be fun to see how you shape it for your needs. I love that Bob sent you all those markers. What a champ! The two of you are an unbeatable team.

    1. I clicked on the storage racks and Amazon informed me that I’ve already ordered 3 of them. They work as pot and pan storage, tool storage, they are great!
      .

      1. I shouldn’t have bought the shelf liners. I could have made them myself out of cardboard or poster board – or picture a 4’x8′ sheet of plexiglass cut to fit.

        But then I say to myself, “No. You’d never get it done.”

        Right now, Amazon is aiding and abetting my procrastination by not delivering stuff until Friday. 🙂

  5. I really like the room and desk/living room plan you’ve described. And I totally admire the fact that you packed an entire POD in New Jersey and unpacked same quickly in your new place. Final organization of things is always the hardest part of moving or changing spaces, though.

    Have you thought of organizing your garage first, setting up areas where you consolidate your To-Be-Placed items into categories that you know you’ll want in your office, but don’t want to clutter up the surfaces before your large things like work table and fully wrangled sofa can be moved and placed? I always have trouble when I put decorative things in place before the pedestrian, ordinary stuff. I like to look at them so much that the useful tools get banished to places I find hard to get to.

    Also, I’m so impressed that you created a really nice backdrop for your podcast like magic or something. It looked great!

    1. I need to get the space I’m living in organized first. Once I get the couch in there, all the big pieces will be in and I can start working. It’s getting all of this stuff in place.

      And I only packed and unpacked one POD. Mollie packed the other and I unpacked that. Mollie is wonderful.

      I didn’t really create a backdrop for the podcast; that’s just where I put everything that might get broken/torn/damaged while I was dragging heavy furniture in.

  6. My workspace / writing space is actually right in front of a window, but I have white semi-translucent drapery over it plus privacy film on the glass. It’s roughly the same brightness (during the day) as my big-ass monitor. Off to my left is the kitchen, which is pretty bright all day, and off to my right is the east-facing picture window. Even with all the natural light, I have a tall double-headed torchiere to keep the space bright and minimize eyestrain.

    tl;dr: love those windows and can’t wait to see what the finished office looks like!

  7. I assume you have the blinds you want, but if not, I highly recommend top down, bottom up cordless blinds from blinds.com. All kinds of colors and light levels (blackout, light filtering; etc), but most importantly, top down! Also bottom up!

    And very easy to install if someone already drilled holes for the brackets.

    Looking forward to more pics!

  9. All areas of my house are a mess and it is starting to drive me nuts. My hubby has taken point in the kitchen and it is much better, but it is amazing how quickly flat surfaces collect… everything. Still, we spent some time trying to wrangle it and will spend more. I like going into winter with some sense of clean. Otherwise when the seasonal depression takes us we just add to the pile and live amongst the goat trails.

    1. My sister Katy did a small needlepoint project for me that says: Law of Household Geometry:
      Any horizontal surface is soon piled up. (Too true drat it all!) Taf

  10. Looks great! I’m so impressed with the speed. Two and a half years after I moved there is still stuff to be done. But once I could work (I also have a lovely bright room to do my day job in, though freezing in winter) and function around the house, the impetus for unpacking and rearranging vanished.
    Every time I go upstairs I pass boxes of photos waiting to be hung up. Luckily, I mostly don’t notice them now.

    Completely off topic, I am very happy to see Donna Noble will be back in the anniversary Doctor Who episodes (with David Tennant). New trailer is great.

  11. There was a podcast? I know I’ve been on the other side of the world for a couple of weeks, but how could I have missed that? Meanwhile I have a Japanese head cold and jet lag. It will be a while before I’m actually coherent.

    1. Just scroll down in the main blog to September 17th and 18th. The former was the day of the podcast, so it shows a lot of comments During. The latter has a lot more discussion of After — how it went and what drove Jenny nuts in places. Very fun (except, maybe, for Jenny, for whom it was a headache and a half.) But in the end really alive and rewarding for us all.

  12. Good for you, Jenny, and for Bob, who gets what you need. I remind myself often about the line on how to eat an elephant–one bite at a time. It will happen!

  14. I love the big window. I shift my small desk from facing a window to being at right angles to it as the whim takes me. But windows are a must. I’ll put up with the glare on monitors to get the daylight.

    1. This place is like a campus, so it’s landscaped and has parks and cafes within walking distance. The little waterfall in the back of those pub shots is right by the Grille, a very small cafe, and that’s a block from my house. I will walk for food. There’s a creek and a pond and two dog parks next to each other, one for small dogs and one for large. They really do try to make the whole place healthy and welcoming, but the houses all look alike so I’m investing in flamingos and other things to try to stir things up. I’ll probably get kicked out. I really like the floorplan, there’s an extra bedroom for Krissie and Mollie to visit, Gaffney is right down the road, and I’m about five miles from a Target and a good grocery, so I’m happy.

  16. That sounds nice. The place where my mom moved to doesn’t have a lot of things to walk to, but the building was constructed in 1920 and has some architectural charm.

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