House Tour– Home Office

 

It’s Friday! Excuse me while I have a mini celebration…

It’s been a good week. I can’t lie. I have been crossing to-do’s off my list all week and for some reason being really productive puts me in a good mood…who would have thunk?

I was picking up and cleaning around the house lately and I realized that we are SO close to be being done with home renovations. The majority of stuff is done. Sure there will be further paint projects and stuff but for the most part, we’re done! The other thing I realized, there’s still renovation projects that I never shared!

Remember that scene in Beauty and The Beast when Belle walks into the huge library in the mansion? I always wanted that library!! I had dreams as a little girl twirling around my massive library surrounded by thousands of books.

Well, that isn’t a reality but I always knew a home office with book space was a must in my home! My job allows me to do some work at home if need be. But, to do that I need a quiet space to get away with my computer and focus.

I had this extra UGLY space that my parents originally used as a laundry room. It was hideous. Not a pretty sight to see if you were to sit down to a nice dinner. As you might remember from this post Ryan and I decided to finish off an old section of the basement as a new laundry room!

With our awesome new laundry room also brought an empty room. The room itself isn’t very big. It’s on the main floor. I had thought an extra bedroom was an option. The only problem with that is that it would be the only bedroom on the main floor while the rest were upstairs.

YEARS down the road I hope to have children. Because of my position in the family business I can’t just take a whole year off of work to be with a baby. It’s not an option. There is always stuff that I need to do. Thankfully, a lot of those things I can do from the comfort of my own home. After thinking about this lots, I decided the “old laundry room” would be a great space to use. I could keep my work space separate from the rest of the home by shutting the door. We can keep important family paperwork organized and all in one spot.

Once it was decided that this empty space was going to be a home office, I immediately began planning what I wanted and needed.

Before:  

Check out this super awesome floor that we ripped up. The thing is…we thought that it was only one floor. Turns out as we removed layer after layer of flooring that there were 4 floors all piled one on top of the other….joy! We were the first ones to actually see the original hardwood floor since my great-great grandparents!

When I began envisioning my space I wanted to use as much of the empty wall space as possible. There were certain things on the “must have” list. Space for books (adult and children), filing cabinet space, big desk/work space, and lots of space for organization.

When browsing all the different places that offered desks and shelving units (sears, ikea, etc), nothing ever caught my eye. Not to mention this is a small room and it seemed like everything was too big or too small. Nothing in between.

My mom actually came up with the idea to get the same people in who did the shelving in my walk-in closet. At first I thought it was going to be WAY over the budget that we wanted to spend. After getting California Closets in to do measurements and make a quote, we were pleased and surprised with the price and decided to let the professionals handle it.

We did have to remove the floor and do the painting of course but the rest of the room was completed in one day by California Closets. Couldn’t have been happier with their service and quality! It’s nice having shelves and a desk that perfectly fits OUR space.

After:

These baskets I found at No Frills grocery store for $1 each!

Nice big working space!

My own library is one of my favourite parts of the room! Holds all of our books and some other special treasures!

We were even blessed with Ryan’s children’s books by his Mom (Hi Bev!) they are such a treasure! I am so thankful to have them in our possession. I can just picture our future children picking a book off the shelf every night before bed.

Another neat thing we found in the room was a trap door. When we lifted all those layers of floor we found this random door. It had a latch and hinges but had since been sealed off. We had no idea what it was so we asked the family historian, Aunt Elaine. She told us that this room use to be the kitchen when they first build the house in 1912. There was no basement and obviously no fridge. To keep food somewhat cool they dug a hole in the ground and used it as a cold cellar. Every time they needed something out of the “cooler” they opened up this trap door in their kitchen floor, climbed into the cold cellar and got their food! We decided to leave it there rather over it up. It’s a part of our homes history and a neat story to those who visit.

Truthfully and selfishly, I kind of consider this room to be “mine”. I already use it a lot and it’s been a dream of mine since I was a little girl watching a classic Disney movie. I feel like Belle in my very own library. It’s a room I see us using a lot in the future. A room for family paper work, books, computer work and sitting down to do homework. It’s a space that is really going to be used a lot in our life both present and future!

Happy Friday!

xo