An Epic Epicenter Improvement

The kitchen might be the "heart of the home" for most people, and indeed, I adore my kitchen and am transported to a Zen-like state whenever I'm cooking up a storm on the weekends. But my home office is actually where I spend the vast majority of my time. I work at home, full time, for a law firm that has employed me for the past 25 years. I sit in my home office, the "command-central" of my life, from dawn until dusk every weekday. And for the past 17 years that I've lived in Maryland, I've been dreaming about how that office would look if I could remodel it to my heart's desire. I am happy to say that in 2018, I finally got it done.

This is how my office looked a few months after I moved
to Maryland in 2001

You know? If you sit in a room day after day, week after week for 17 years, you begin to come up with imaginative ways the space could be utilized better. I actually liked the layout of my home office quite well. When I moved into this old farmhouse in Baltimore County back in 2001, I had to hit the ground running with respect to my job. I remember scurrying to Office Depot to purchase a desk, as I had utilized a spare dining table as an office desk in previous homes, which wouldn't do in the new house. I chose a corner desk with an attached bulletin board and storage hutch and had it delivered and assembled. Amid the unpacking of an entire household, I scooted the desk into a narrow nine- by 16-foot room between the living room and the kitchen, just inside my front door. The arrangement left me only enough room to squeeze between the shorter end of the desk's protrusion and a radiator sitting beneath a side window. I hurriedly unpacked boxes of documents and reference materials, for I would need to have my computer and all my files organized and operational by the following Monday morning, when I would be flying off to northern Alabama or South Texas or some other state to meet with clients as part of my job. There was no time for aesthetics.

After enjoying the use of my grandmother's maple furniture

for almost forty years, I gifted them to Leroy for his college-

age daughter, Samantha, to cherish for the next forty years

I pressed my maternal grandmother's solid maple secretary into service in that room, just as I had in the offices of homes I'd owned in California, Nevada and Texas. Her matching corner hutch and a couple of small bookshelves rounded out the ensemble. Together with two tall metal file cabinets, I arranged all the furniture in the small workspace as best I could. I employed an old particle board computer desk and, later, added a tall, dark, wooden bookshelf. The new blond, laminate-covered corner desk clashed with the maple furniture and the other pieces, and that was okay.  Most surfaces were covered with books and papers much of the time, anyway. At least everything had its place. The office functioned, and it functioned well. I couldn't complain.

Over the years, as my collection of legal (and other) books, papers and research material multiplied,  I stacked bookcases on top of bookcases. It wasn't pretty, and it probably wasn't even safe. My printer/copier/fax machine, in it's third iteration from the bulky unit I moved to Maryland with, now sat atop the tall metal file cabinets, causing me to have to climb a wooden stepstool in order to push documents through the automatic feeder. Said file cabinets were stuffed to the gills with papers. I began to long for more filing space, more counter space, more of an orderly, aesthetically pleasing look to the entire room.

Elfie, left, and Underfoot, loved to curl up in their beds

on the radiator in my office and sleep while I worked

As much as I loved the old-fashioned hot-water radiators with their quiet, even heat which warmed my new abode, I deeply resented the space they took up in every room of my house. If only that radiator wasn't there beneath the side-window in my office, I lamented, I could add a file cabinet! I started to research alternative heat sources. The electricity to run the furnace which heated the radiators was expensive, and there was also a fuel oil bill every few months, and a rusting fuel oil tank, a potential bio-hazard whose presence in my basement wasn't even to code anymore. I'd never gotten around to putting insulation beneath my hardwood floors, believing that radiant heat might someday be the option I'd choose, and I didn't want fiberglass batting to be in the way of the installers. A traditional heating system was not an option in my 1862 farmhouse. The installation of all that ductwork was prohibitively expensive and would require cutting into antique ceilings and floors in every room.

A new Mitsubishi ductless mini-split unit was installed over
the doorway to the kitchen in my home office. Here, they had
just installed its mounting bracket. You can see in this image
how overstuffed with papers my office was. It was clearly
time for a change

Several years after I moved in I started to research whole-house heating and cooling options in earnest. Radiant heat, as lovely, silent and hidden as it was, would be far too expensive to operate over the long haul. High-velocity "mini-ducts", designed to be retrofitted into older homes like mine, from which radiators and their attendant piping had been removed, appealed to me. But my research revealed that the small ports push air so forcefully that it makes an audible noise. I didn't want to live in a wind tunnel.

This old 275-gallon fuel-oil
tank was just beginning to
rust through when I removed it

And so it went, year after year, the daydreaming of what could be and the day-to-day continuance of the status quo. Until last summer -- when I finally decided on a new HVAC system. In May of 2017, I chose Mitsubishi ductless mini-splits. Yes, they would be all-electric, but they would be far more efficient than radiant flooring, and I would get air conditioning in the bargain, something I'd never had throughout the house. I got a couple of estimates and chose a contractor. In June the radiators came out. The old floor-to-ceiling piping through every room came out. The boiler in my basement came out, and so did the rusty old fuel oil tank, just in the nick of time, it turned out, as the bottom of the tank was beginning to seep through, a condition which, if left unattended, would have allowed fuel oil to leach into the soil beneath my home on the same side of the house as my water well. My home and its surrounding two acres would have been deemed uninhabitable and condemned, losing all their value. I narrowly dodged a rather large bullet.

Despite the expertise of Advanced Heating & Cooling, LLC, the installation of the ductless mini-splits did not go smoothly, and I am still getting used to their operation. They create a rather ugly eyesore near the ceiling in every room of my home. But for the most part I am happy. Although my electric bill has doubled this winter, I no longer have any fuel oil bill at all. I am content with my choice.

Better yet, the absence of all the old radiators and piping allowed me to finally set in motion the rest of my master plan. Without a radiator in my office, I could now utilize the space for maximum storage and... beauty!, something I had been sorely missing in a room where I spend so many of my waking hours each day.

From Thanksgiving to Valentine's Day,  my upstairs hobby
room served as a temporary home office. Cramped for space
and working out of boxes, I was overjoyed when I could
finally move back downstairs.

But first things first. If this was to be a full-scale remodel of the nerve center of my life, I would need a place to set up a temporary command post. So simultaneously with the installation of the mini-splits, I hired a handyman to convert a spare bedroom upstairs into a hobby-craft-sewing room. I was delighted with how the hobby room turned out, and regretted that I wouldn't be able to actually use it as a hobby room until after I'd finished using it as a temporary home office.

As soon as construction of the hobby room was complete, I began designing my dream office on paper. It would have lateral files instead of vertical ones, and they would be made of wood to look like furniture. Bookshelves would extend from the top of each file cabinet clear up to the nine foot ceiling on three of the four walls. A new desk, configured in the same shape as the old one but built of real wood instead of particleboard, would allow my printer/copier to sit within reach from my chair. And wouldn't an upholstered bench look nice sitting at the base of the floor-to-ceiling window facing my front porch?

My dreams almost always start with a hand drawn sketch

I was determined to employ my talented neighbor, Leroy, for construction of my dream office. A highly skilled and discerning carpenter, Leroy would use only the best materials and employ only the finest craftsmanship. I knew the quality of his work would be top-notch. Trouble was, Leroy's talents are very much in demand.  He couldn't begin construction of my office until Thanksgiving -- and then he would be available only on evenings and weekends.

I was heartbroken but resolute. Slowly I began to box up 25 years' worth of books, papers and reference materials. I stowed away a lifetime of awards, certificates and other minutiae, packed up family photographs and wall art, and began sifting though those overstuffed vertical file drawers, discarding what I could -- receipts for clothing and furniture I didn't even own anymore, old bank statements, the flotsam and jetsam of a long life.

Leroy, on the right, and his helper measure for the new ceiling.
Look at the bright green color those walls used to be long
before I moved in!

The new office ceiling lends a decidedly more sophisticated
air to the room

The week before Thanksgiving, I made the big move -- hoisting my computer, copy machine, desk phone and several boxes of  important papers upstairs into the hobby room. I didn't like it up there. Oh, it was fine for an afternoon of crafting or sewing or wrapping gifts. But to spend day in and day out in the cramped space was decidedly uncomfortable for me. Two small windows did not provide much daylight, and although the room is well-lit with light fixtures, the windows sit higher than in my downstairs office, so I couldn't see out of them while sitting at the desk. I arranged things to be at my fingertips as best I could, but it just wasn't the same. It's only temporary, I consoled myself. It's only temporary.

Leroy got right to work, installing stamped-brass ceiling panels from Shanker Industries in the new office to match the ones in the adjacent kitchen. I carefully prepared drawings of exactly how I wanted the cabinets to be constructed, and now I grew excited as I saw my dream begin to come to life. I ordered deeply cut crown moulding from Bosley Moulding Company to frame my new brass ceiling. I wanted drama. Lots of drama. This was the room in which I would be spending every workday hour. I'd been imagining the space for almost two decades. I wanted to love to enter the room and work in that environment every single day. I was finally going to have everything I'd fantasized about all those years.

Once the 9-foot by 16-foot room was empty, it was time to
refinish the old floor. I was eager to get rid of the harlequin
pattern a previous owner had painted. Look at how my office
chair wore away the painted floor pattern over 17 years

Leroy balked at constructing lateral file cabinets out of wood. He suggested I buy metal file cabinets and he would construct wooden bookshelves on top of them.  I acquiesced, with one restriction. I would agree to metal file cabinets as long as he was willing to construct wood faces so that the file cabinets appeared to be made of wood. Thankfully, he agreed. I burned up Pinterest, printing picture after picture of file cabinets which had been imaginatively covered with wood facades.

Carlos, of Earickson Hardwood Floors, sanded the paint
off the floor boards

I ordered trim for all the cabinet and bookcase faces, also from Bosley Moulding Company, going so far as to make an impression with a needle gauge of a panel near my front door in order to find a moulding pattern that would match the existing 1862 trim as closely as possible. I made arrangements for the the hardwood floor to be refinished, sanding away a painted tan and yellow Harlequin pattern that I had hated for 17 years and replacing it with a honey-colored stain that closely matched the hardwood floors throughout the rest of the house.

I researched lateral file cabinets and was fortunate to find a used office furniture dealer not far from my home. They had four matching secondhand black metal file cabinets in stock at a fraction of the cost of new cabinets, plus two smaller vertical ones that would form the base of my corner desk. The only lateral cabinet I had to buy new was a longer, deeper 36-inch one for the extended portion of my corner desk. I was thrilled.

Look how the new stain glows!

Then I considered the countertops for my new desk and the tops of the file cabinets. A finely finished wood surface was my original preference. Once again Leroy intervened. "Choose granite", he suggested. "You will work in this office every day. Wood will get scratched from cat claws and pen impressions and show wear over time".  I compared prices. The difference between a fine wood countertop and a granite one was negligible. So I began to look at granite colors. I had already decided that I would paint all the wood in the room glossy black, so my go-to color choice for granite, Black Galaxy, even with its fiery gold and copper flakes, would result in far too much black for the tiny room.  I made a Saturday morning visit to a granite store in Baltimore City. The sales representative, Alexandra, at Big Brothers Marble and Granite, named for the Ecuadorian brothers who own and operate the business, was an absolute delight. She listened to my wants, took a look at the sketch I showed her, and guided me into a vast warehouse, picking up a sample here, pointing out a slab there. Then she handed me a heavy piece of Madura Gold. It was gorgeous, containing all of the colors I wanted in the room: gold and black and brown and beige, even sporting a few sparkly flecks here and there. And they had a slab in stock that was big enough to do my whole room. And it wasn't the most expensive granite on their price list. And they could install it in less than two weeks. I was sold.

The granite desktop was constructed
out of cardboard first to make sure it
would fit through my front door
in one slab 

On December 4, Sandro from Big Brothers came out to the house with gigantic sheets of cardboard.  He measured the desk and the cabinet tops and then carefully constructed a template of the entire surface area out of cardboard. Once he had made his pattern, he checked to make sure it would fit through my doorway.  It would be a shame if they were able to construct a giant slab of granite in the shape of my desk and then not be able to get it into my house!

Meanwhile, Leroy was busy building and installing the base cabinets that would go between the metal file cabinets. I was busy designing bookshelves that would go above the base cabinets. I wanted drawers for storage of office supplies and gadgets. I wanted shallow shelves on two of the three walls, but deeper shelves above my desk for my workbooks and binders. I worked out every detail. Things were progressing so smoothly!

With the metal file cabinets installed,
Leroy began to construct the base cabinets
between them, as well as a support beam
for the granite expanse across my desk

I wanted library lamps to cast soft warm light downward from the tops of the bookshelves. I wanted an electric outlet in every bookshelf bay, so that I could display digital photo frames or maybe a small aquarium. I wanted spotlights over each window, especially the floor-length window I envisioned would one day be a reading nook with a bench seat. I wanted task lighting above my desk. I wanted all the lighting to be LED and I wanted it all on dimmers. For these tasks I hired Carroll Talbott of T-Electric, a very nice electrician from a neighboring county who knew just how to install what I needed.

And what about the kitty beds?!  In the old office, the cats' beds

Out in my guesthouse, which
served as my craft room until
the new one was built last
summer, I applied special
cork flooring glue to a
simple frame of plywood
and black plastic trim

One cork at a time, my new
bulletin board took shape

sat atop the radiator, warming my little pocket lions throughout the winter from beneath their plush bassinets. But there was no longer any radiator to warm my kitties. Now a slab of cold granite spanned the cabinets below the side window. So I ordered special electric heating pads to fit their little cat beds. The low-voltage heating pads would need to be plugged in. I designed a way for the cords to be incorporated into the bookshelves so they would remain mostly hidden from view.

And let me tell you about my bulletin board! It had long been a dream of mine to design a bulletin board to replace the one I had enjoyed with the old desk configuration. The new bulletin board would be made out of wine corks. It would be eight feet long. I'd been saving wine corks for 17 years in anticipation of this project. Months before work on the office began, I put my idea into action, ordering special cork glue from Home Depot, building a frame and then gluing corks in a herringbone pattern across the eight-foot expanse. 1,014 corks later, my bulletin board was finished and ready to install. I didn't have a new office to put it in yet, but the bulletin board was ready!

Using a needle gauge, thick foam was
measured and cut to fit the pattern of
my 1862 window framing for the
reading bench

Heidi did an outstanding job on the
cushion, pillows and valances

For window treatments, I turned to a dear acquaintance and extremely talented seamstress, Heidi Wurzbacher of Heidi's Custom Sewing, who agreed to fashion valances for my two windows and to make a cushion for my window bench with pillows to match. I found stunning gold and black upholstery fabric at JoAnn Crafts and Heidi came right away to pick up the material and take measurements. I was ecstatic. 

Christmas came and went. Half of the hobby room upstairs was devoted to my temporary workspace. The other half became Christmas Central. I made gifts, assembled gifts, wrapped gifts, and prepared gifts for shipping. It was all very cramped and claustrophobic up there. I just kept telling myself how nice everything would be when it was all finished.

Electrical outlets, telephone jacks
and internet ports all went in
beneath my desk 

Then life, and the weather, got in the way. Early January brought with it bitter cold. Pipes all over Baltimore froze in the sub-zero temperatures, and some of them burst, including mine. While I labored with the plumber to repair the pipes and insulate my basement which was no longer warmed by a boiler, Leroy's progress on the bookshelves came to a stop. His garage workshop was neither insulated nor heated. It was just too cold to work out there. And even if he could have braved the cold to build my bookcases, it was too cold to paint them. Construction of my office came to a screeching halt.

Nick added the same custom faux texturing finish to the
ductless mini-split as he did to the walls so that the
protruding unit virtually disappeared

Eventually, the weather thawed. The bookshelves got installed. The lighting went in. 16 outlets and 12 internet ports and telephone jacks got put in below my desk, with more across the room in a corner where I envisioned a guest or a visiting business associate would be able to set up a laptop and work alongside me on occasion.

It was time for paint. For this task, I employed two people. I first met Nick Pelekakis when he painted for the company that remodeled my master bathroom in 2015. Nick did a stunning job of custom texturing with three different paint colors in that room. I liked it so much I had him give my kitchen the same treatment in 2016. Now, he had struck out on his own, calling his business Creative Colors, LLC, and I was thrilled when he had time to apply the same custom textural finish to my office walls.  I didn't need much, as most of the walls would be covered by bookcases. Nick got right to work, creating just the texture and interest I needed around both doorways and on both sides of  one window frame. He even applied the faux finish to the new mini-split so the white plastic unit would be disguised. The camouflage worked like a charm.

Mike O'Leary never backs down from a challenging paint job.
It's a good thing for me he doesn't!

For the rest of the painting, I turned to Mike O'Leary of Kickstart Home Improvements. I met Mike during the summer when he was sent by the HVAC company to fix holes in the floors, walls and ceilings created by the removal of the old radiators and piping and the installation of the new ductless units. Mike had done such a good job on those repairs I began hiring him for my own painting projects. Now, he was charged with two arduous tasks: paint all the trim in the entire office glossy black, and paint the back of every bookcase with a shimmery gold paint I had found on the internet. The black proved to be the easy part. The shimmery gold paint was gorgeous but proved to be a challenge. When we couldn't get the paint to stop streaking, we finally read the fine print on the website. "Must be used with special latex extender for improved flow and leveling". Oh.

Once the new file cabinets were in, I moved all my documents
into new, hanging files. I shed thousands of papers I no longer
needed and still managed to fill every file drawer.  

It was a Sunday. It was snowing. The big box stores didn't carry a specialized formula like that. Mike texted his favorite painting rep for advice. Even though it was the rep's day off, he helpfully suggested to Mike that Sherwin Willimas carried exactly what we needed. And they were open. On Sunday! I got in the car immediately and made my way through the flurries to the nearest Sherwin Williams store. Mike experimented with how much extender to add. He eventually found the perfect blend and the gold paint went on like a breeze. Well, not exactly a breeze. It looked great in the end, but Mike said he didn't care if he ever worked with that type of paint again for the rest of his painting career (sigh).

Once the computer equipment was moved back downstairs
into my newly remodeled home office, I could begin to set
everything up again

On February 10th, I hosted a dinner party for my neighbors to thank them for their endless support and watchful care over me. The next morning, at 9:00 a.m. sharp, my dear friend and incomparable computer guru, Will Fastie, appeared at my door with gadgets and testing equipment in hand. Today we would move my computer equipment, telephone, copy machine and other devices back downstairs into the new office. This was the day I would officially reclaim my newly refurbished office as my own, a supremely outfitted command central. I would be moving back downstairs. I was excited beyond words.

This might be my favorite image of the new office. The cats
are happily ensconced in their heated beds and I have beloved
photos of family and friends on every shelf.

The move was not without hiccups, of course. I had been allotted "three free holes" drilled through the granite by the granite company. But the hole for the telephone cord did not allow for the size of the right-angled jack to the transformer. The path I had plotted for the copy machine cord to weave behind the file cabinet did not take into consideration the jagged edges left behind by the drill-bit penetrating the metal cabinet -- which immediately shredded any electrical cord pulled through it.We improvised. We made several trips to Best Buy for different transformer jacks. We compromised. Six hours later, we had everything hooked up, checked out and operating. I was exhausted but ecstatic.  I moved 25 boxes of books and papers and office supplies from storage into my living room. I could finally begin to unpack those boxes, fill the bookshelves, outfit my office, set everything up the way I had long envisioned it.

I even designed a guest
workstation with a
hidden, pull-out shelf
that expands to hold
a laptop for visitors

It took several weeks, but by the end of February my office was finally finished, fully decorated and functioning optimally. Everything now has its place. Each morning when I descend my staircase, enter my workspace and sit down at my desk to begin work for the day, I am overcome with joy. This is the home office of my dreams. This is the natty nerve center of my life. My new office is everything I hoped it

A place for everything and everything in its place. I am so
happy with how my new office turned out

would be -- and so much more. I sit at my desk, tapping at my computer, whilst my two furry fluffbuckets sleep contentedly in their heated beds beside me. Everything is at my fingertips. A lifetime of papers are organized. Digital frames displaying iconic trips to Europe, Ireland and Australia flash snippets of memories before me throughout the day. I am surrounded by photographs of friends and family which warm my heart. What little wall space there is features art which inspires my soul. This space, of my very own creation, is truly the heart of my home. I am a lady in love with my workplace. I couldn't be happier.
Cheers,
Lynell