A Photo Tour - 2nd Floor Office

Our office originally contained two desks and two bookcases. The first three photos show the original setup. A bookcase on the south wall for Jason's books - plus a bunch of his crap piled in a corner. One desk on the east wall for Jason's laptop and research, plus a tall bookcase for my books. And the north wall held my desk with my desktop computer. A few weeks ago, my tall bookcase was moved to the living room and the laptop was moved to the dining room for first floor quick web access.

Now that Jason's thesis was finished, I was very excited to reorganize our upstairs office into an office/sewing room. At Christmas I had received a sewing machine from my grandmother and had excitedly taken up the hobby of sewing (discussed on my sewing/knitting blog). Unfortunately, the only place for me to sew was in Ellie's bedroom.

For the last few months, I have been using Ellie's tiny desk for my sewing machine and storing fabrics & patterns in her dresser. Since Ellie is coming back for the summer in June, I knew I had to find a new solution. The only thing we were still waiting on was the sewing machine table from Jason's grandmother. I was lucky enough that Jason's parents personally delivered it to us at the end of April.

What with Jason no longer needing to cover his desk with thesis research, we could now use his desk for my desktop computer. Which would then free up my desk as a cutting table for sewing! So we moved things around to create two work new areas. See the last two photos.

Only three things had to be purchased for the transformation to be complete. The first item was a plastic office floor mat for my sewing area. I can't believe it cost $40. For a measly sheet of plastic! Clearly I am still shocked at the cost. The second item was to hold my yarn stash.

At first I had planned to store my yarn by reusing an old CD rack that Jason had built. I wasn't especially happy with it for two reasons. One, I was worried that the yarn would collect dust since the yarn sits in the open. Two, I was afraid Kaiser will grab a skein and destroy it with crazy puppy glee. So this past weekend, we went to Target to find a rack for the computer printer and I looked at storage options. At first, I wasn't very happy with what I saw. They looked pretty cheap, weren't in the shape I needed (a tall skinny storage area), but I liked the concept of using storage cubes to store my yarn. As I wandered away from the closet storage area, I came across the bathroom area and the angels started singing... I found this spa style shelving system for $90. And the squares are just the right size for purple and cream storage cubes ($5.99 each). The shelving unit was the perfect width and depth to fit the awkward space. I hadn't planned to spend so much money on a solution, but I'm very happy with the result, so it was worth it. The final purchase was a wood topped microwave cart ($40) to hold the printer and computer tower. It's hidden in the corner to the right of Jason's desk in the last photo. It wasn't exactly at the level of the desk, so Jason sawed off sections of the metal legs to make it look more seamless.

Within the next month, we are talking about purchasing, staining and installing picture rails in the office and bedrooms. Then I'd get to hang some of my Japanese prints in the office!

And how could I forget? With the heavy rains a couple weeks ago, our basement had a flooding problem. I'm so grateful to Jason for dealing with the clean up. I was emotionally traumatized by the whole mess that I didn't even think to take photos. But due to Jason's forethought, nothing in the basement was damaged because everything is raised off the concrete floor. The washer & dryer were the only things that he hadn't raised (due to my concern that they might rock off their stands) and he completed that project on Sunday. The sump pump also kept things at a manageable level. But talk about noisy! I see a new sump pump in our future...

FYI: the walls are the same color in both sets of photos. Again, it is just a matter of different levels of daylight.