John's Office (finally)

I can't believe it's taken me so long to write about John's office remodel but better late than never. You may recall that John's office had started out, years and years ago, as part of the carport, or perhaps, a little laundry area out under the carport. The last owners had enclosed this and incorporated into the house. But it always felt a little funky - a very low ceiling because of the slope of the roof - and it was a pretty dark space. Definitely a "man cave." Here's how it looked when we started -

And here's how it looks now-

We knocked out the cedar closet they had added so that the room would be bigger - and we now have 4 windows instead of 2 (3 are rectangular and one is trapezoidal, continuing that theme throughout the house). We had these bookshelves custom made to put under the windows - they were made to echo the style of the original kitchen cabinets (with sliding doors), except we painted the doors. We had some aluminum "fins" made for under the rafters. John had seen a picture of some similar ones in a 1950s house design book and had to have them. He also paneled one wall in cherry, a nod to the original wood paneling in the houses on our street (although ours had all been painted white)-


We used a nice orange click marmoleum for the floor. But to protect it, we covered a lot of it with FLOR tiles-

I love the mix of color. It's a color mix that we saw in the FLOR catalog and liked. I think it came out great.

And by the way - I never realized how much FLOR tiles were based on the work of Alexander Girard, but here is a picture of the inside of the famous Miller house in Columbus, where Girard designed the fabrics and interiors-

And here's another picture of the Miller house. I really liked how their bookcases had different colored backings.


So we decided to paint the backings for the Billy (Ikea) bookcases we bought for John's office (more color!!)-



It seems like a lot of color at first, but with the shelves full of books, it's a lot more toned down.



And that Eames aluminum group chair? 50 cents at a salvage sale.

John is loving his new light-filled, colorful office!

Well, I'll be writing again before too long. We're going on a quick trip to LA at the end of May - we'll be able to see the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's modernism show before it leaves AND we're going on a tour of the Stahl House (Case Study House #22) - you know the one- my dream house -