Diane's Office

We just finished remodeling John's office and my office. John's office isn't quite back together yet so we'll save his office for another post. My office mainly got new floors, new windows, new wiring, new lighting, and new drywall in this remodel. The stupid pipe that stuck out of the floor (see earlier post) got rerouted. And in doing that, we had a little surprise. We're on a concrete slab, so John removed some of the slab so the plumber could get to the pipe better. Well, as he was cutting through the slab, he thought it sounded hollow underneath. Not a good sign. Sure enough, once he had cut a big enough hole that he could look under the slab, he could see there was a big hole in the dirt under the slab right there. A big enough hole you could fit a person into. Then he remembered that last year, in redoing the deck, which was right outside that wall, he had found a big hole under the old deck that a squirrel had made. And there had been a tunnel going from that hole towards the stem wall.... Well, the tunnel obviously had led to a big comfy heated squirrel condo under my office! It took 4 wheelbarrowfuls of dirt to fill it in. You could see where the slab had sagged over this hole, but I had never noticed it before. Good thing we found it. John used a lot of floor leveler to fix it. Well, this is the kind of stuff you discover when you remodel an old house!

So - here's a "pre" picture of my office wall from the hallway door-

And here's how it looks now-

I now have much better lighting. The original house had basically no built in lighting. We added track lights for over the desk and work table, and also added globe lights for more overall light. I really like the trio over my work table - all are scavenged from thrift stores and Restores - they are all different sizes, at varying heights -

We ended up going with the same tile floor that we used in the bathroom directly across the hall. It's a fake slate by Mohawk (Ember Forest, Gravura). I like the having the continuity and I also like having a sturdy tile for a workroom / high traffic area (access to our deck is through this room).

And finally - I had had lightweight wood slider closet doors.



I had been happy with these and would have been happy to re-use them after the remodel. But for some stupid reason, they had been cut off at the bottom so they were too short and hung too high above the floor level. The contractor thought we should get new, heavier doors, so I agreed. At first, I just figured they would be a natural wood finish like the others. But then, when I was thinking about painting a wall or two of the room in a bright color, I started wondering about painting the closet doors instead of a wall. Then I started thinking about painting ONE closet door. It seemed kinda weird and the idea got mixed reviews from my friends. I was really going after the look of those cabinet doors in the Kerf ads-

But I really didn't know how it would look with only two doors. Well, we went for it and painted one of each set of closet doors a nice orangey red. And I love it! It adds a lot of color to the room.

And I just saw an article on the trend of mixing natural wood with a color. So I guess I'm right in the groove.... :-)

Then I found this pic of a vintage house, that shows a set of doors, each in a different color (blue and white)! Pretty cool. I will definitely be playing around with door color more when we remodel the 2 bedrooms.