Tag Archives: office

The Chamber of Secrets Reveal: Part One

Once, a very long time ago (six months, to be exact), I shared the gruesome underbelly of our house with you–the Chamber of Secrets.

chamber-of-secrets-signToday, I ask you to once again push that door open to see that the Chamber of Secrets has transformed into… well, the Chamber of Secrets (the name has stuck, but now we say it in less sepulchral tones).  Go ahead, take a peek inside.

Red House West || Chamber of Secrets Reveal Part OneOkay, okay.  So it might have a been a little preemptive to call this a reveal post.  Because we haven’t finished the cabinet doors.  And the top of the shelving still needs trim.  And there’s one more trim piece to add to the floors.  But it’s hard for me to even feel that bad about misleading you because when we started this project there was this whole crappy carpet/exposed insulation/puny ceiling fan/random plywood squares/unholy mess of boxes situation.   Here, let me remind you.

from-door-2Then scrub your eyeballs with this:

Red House West || Chamber of Secrets Reveal Part One

It’s a trick of perspective making that post on the corner shelves look bent – in real life that thing is straight as an arrow!

I mean sure, it couldn’t really have gotten worse, but it is so, so much better.  Today I thought I’d give some details on the main elements we added to the room: the floors, the closet, and the shelving.

Floors

Our house was built in 1930, and the downstairs floors are fir. Our entire upstairs though (excluding the bathroom, thank goodness), is a patchwork of poorly-fitted industrial carpet over subfloor.  No gorgeous wood floors just waiting to be exposed here.  Our plan is to banish the carpet in the next year or two, so we needed to choose flooring that fit in our budget not just for this room, but for the entirety of the upstairs.

We knew we wanted something period-appropriate – a domestic hardwood that would feel right in our old farmhouse.  My initial thought was pine. It would definitely suit our house, and I really love the way it looks. But even though pine is notoriously soft, I was pretty surprised by how soft the sample actually was.  I mean, I could make a groove in it with just my fingernail.  Here’s a little video:

I don’t mind a little patina (shoot, our whole house is patina’d), but Cameron and I both worried that the rolling trundle bed and rolling office chair, and just general living, would leave the floor with deep grooves and scratches.  So we cast our net a little wider and eventually narrowed our choices to hickory and ash.

Samples of ash, hickory, and pine

Samples of ash, hickory, and pine

Tearing out the carpet and removing all the staples was dirty and tedious, but not difficult.  Overall the installation of the floor – we chose pre-finished wood with boards the same width as our downstairs floors – was straightforward.  Our house is sloped and canted and definitely not square, so there was some alchemy (the alchemy of measurements and swearing) required to get the job done.

Red House West || Chamber of Secrets Reveal Part One

Cameron replacing part of the subfloor. He could be wearing those headphones to protect his ears from power tools, or maybe to block out the Scottish strains of hundreds of hours of ‘Outlander’ that played incessantly during this project. Try not to be too jealous of our sound system.

In the end we chose hickory for its durability, price and beauty.  The variegation is a little more intense than I pictured when extrapolating out from the four-inch sample, and I admit to some serious second-guessing when the floor was about halfway in.  It’s growing on me though, and I think it’s pretty in this simple, all-white room.

Red House West || Chamber of Secrets Reveal Part OneThe Closet
You may remember that the inspiration for the closet came from this old door (that we think is original) that we found in the storage room of our house.
closet-door-beforeAfter a thorough cleaning, painting, and a quick refreshing of the hardware, it was looking sweet.  But also short.  We didn’t want to hang it so the bottom was flush with the floor, because that would mean ducking down to see inside the closet.  Instead we opted to hang it high, so the baseboard forms a little step.

Red House West || Chamber of Secrets Reveal Part One

I might be a little proud of my drywall work – those small walls represent so many hours of mudding and sanding!

I’m glad we hung it high, because it led to one of my favorite little details in the room – the door trim cut to fit the slope of the eave.

Red House West || Chamber of Secrets Reveal Part OneIt’s a decent-sized closet (I’m so glad we didn’t do a cupboard like we originally planned), and inside we just put a simple shelf and a hanging bar.

Red House West || Chamber of Secrets Reveal Part OneShelf design
The biggest and most complicated part of this project by far was designing and building the cabinets and shelves.  It took a lot of discussing, negotiating and idea-bouncing between Cameron and me, and I couldn’t be happier with how they turned out.  Here’s where we started (if you missed the first part of this saga and are wondering why there’s no drywall, you can read about it here):

desk-and-windowsWe’re in a much better place now!

Red House West || Chamber of Secrets Reveal Part OneWe knew (thankfully) ahead of time that if we built the shelves down in the shop they would be too big to fit up our narrow staircase, so we hauled all the tools upstairs and built them in the room.

Red House West || Chamber of Secrets Reveal Part One

Red House West || Chamber of Secrets Reveal Part OneThen we grunted like the weightlifters we aren’t and lifted that thing into place.  The corner shelves were screwed directly into the studs  of the closet.

Red House West || Chamber of Secrets Reveal Part One

Not the prettiest stage of the renovation.

A major consideration in the design of the shelves was how to keep everything from being too visually heavy.  This room has really lovely light and a nice view into the treetops that we didn’t want to block, and so Cameron came up with the idea of radiused shelves near the window.  We also left the edge of the corner shelves open.  I like the idea of placing some books with their spines facing out to break things up a little and keep it interesting.

Red House West || Chamber of Secrets Reveal Part One

We’re still finishing up the trim on the top and bottom – those gaps won’t be there when we’re done.

Cameron installed an outlet in the corner, and we wrote lots of secret messages for some future inhabitant to find in the space behind where the two shelves meet.

Red House West || Chamber of Secrets Reveal Part OneI was pretty adamant about having just a single support in the front, which meant adding some wedge supports near the curved ends to keep the shelves from bowing under the weight of books.

Red House West || Chamber of Secrets Reveal Part OneWe built the window seat lower so that the cushion will sit flush with the top of the cabinets. I plan to pretty much live in this spot in the coming months.

Red House West || Chamber of Secrets Reveal Part One

Oh man I could go on and on, but this post is getting pretty long so I’ll save some for next time.  I’m so excited to finish up the last few little projects so we can start moving furniture in!   Can’t wait to show you!

Home Office Inspiration

As people who spend a considerable amount of time on our computers, we’re both trying to figure out how and where to create small, functional, and attractive work spaces in our homes.  Here are some beautiful and inspiring home offices where we would love to blog our hearts out (we’d have to bring our own computers to most of them–these spaces seem to have the necessities of actually working styled out of them):

Mera’s favorite is the first one with Dall sheep-esque chair, and Katie feels like she could write a novel and a half in the second to last one (sustained, naturally, by the cereal already on the table). Which is your favorite?

Chamber of Secrets Part Two: Designing the Shelves

The transformation of the Chamber of Secrets into the Chamber of Nice Things (might need a catchier moniker) is underway.  Just so your hopes don’t get dashed like waves upon the shore, this is by no means an after post.  There’s still exposed insulation, an ugly ceiling fan, and teetering stacks of boxes, but don’t despair!  Decisions and progress were made! As a reminder, here is a photo (in all its hideous glory) from a few weeks ago when I introduced you to the Chamber:

Red House West//Designing Built-ins

As I mentioned in that post, this room needs to function as both a guest room and an office.  We’re in dire need of bookshelves, as well as some closed storage for craft supplies.  Our initial plan was to do cabinets the whole length of the wall with bookshelves up to the ceiling, but as we discussed it more we decided there might be merit in adding a closet.  Of the three bedrooms in our house, the only one with a closet is ours.  This wasn’t a deterrent for us when we bought the house, but long term we thought it would be a good addition to this room.  Our first thought was to add a narrow closet that was the same depth as the cabinets.  There would be some extra space because of the slope of the eave, so we considered putting in a couple of drawers too.  Like this:

Red House West//Designing Built-ins

In this first iteration, it would have been just deep enough to accommodate hangers, but I could already imagine the frustration of a door that wouldn’t close because of a bulky coat. It felt like a token closet and we decided a closet would only be worth it if it were actually functional (we like to shoot for the stars, obviously).

Then we remembered a funny, tiny door that had been tucked into the corner of the garage when we moved in, and with the recollection of that door came a plan.

Red House West//Designing Built-ins

In our new plan we still had the closet tucked under the eaves, but bumped it out so it was deeper than the cabinets.  We didn’t want a huge box of wood in the corner so we opted for drywall instead.

Red House West//Designing Built-ins

The door is solid and heavy and probably original to the house.  Because it’s little, we’re going to hang it high so it’s easy to see into the closet. It still needs to be painted, but I decided to give the hardware a little makeover right away.  After a quick Google search, I found that the best way to remove old paint from hardware is to boil them.

Red House West//Designing Built-ins

This was my favorite kind of project – fast, simple, and satisfying.  I just put the hardware in a pot (it’s a pot we use for making soap and such, not for food) and added a little dish soap.  Then I boiled my restoration stew until I could see the paint lifting off.  I transferred the pot to the sink and used the scrubby side of a sponge to work the paint loose.

Red House West//Designing Built-insIt required very little effort and it looks about a million times better:

Red House West//Designing Built-ins

So nice! Even though the room is still in chaos and footprints of drywall dust line the hallway, just looking at the cleaned-up hardware makes my heart feel calm and happy.

Here’s what the room (after lots of running up and down the stairs to the shop, so much mudding and sanding of drywall, (and Cameron saying, as he placed another shim, “it’s like this house was built by fu*#ing Dr. Seuss) looks like now:

Red House West//Designing Built-insIsn’t that closet going to be so cute?  I love that little door and I think the house is happy to have it back in use.  There will also be shelves on the side of the closet that wrap into the corner, like this:

Red House West//Designing Built-ins

I like to think about how one day, from the vantage of my highly-skilled-with-Photoshop future, I’ll look back on this photo and laugh tenderly at my embarrassingly bad mock-up skills. Thanks for bearing with me until that day comes.

The cupboard doors are almost done and then the window seat, with a hinged top, will go in next.

Red House West//Designing Built-ins

I also settled on a paint color.  My initial plan for this room was to paint the walls Crystal Ball (which I love so much in our living room) and the cabinetry and trim bright white.  I started to worry that with the sloped ceiling and all the woodwork it would look choppy, so I decided that a single color -with a matte finish on the ceiling and walls and semi-gloss on the cabinetry and trim – would be better.  Once I made that decision I put up swatches of four paints I already had, and very quickly I decided on White Dove by Benjamin Moore.

Red House West//Designing Built-insIt’s a really pretty almost-white that reads a little almond.  When the whole room is painted it will just look white, but with some warmth.  This decision feels great, and the all white background will really allow me to play with the textile patterns on the daybed and window seat.

I’m learning a lot on this project.  Cameron grew up building things, and also did it professionally for a while.  I did not.  When we first moved in together I brought to our shared home a spray-painted particle board bookshelf.  I had wanted to run my stereo cords through the back but, because the only tool I owned was a hammer, I’d just hacked my through it – leaving a jagged hole.  An inelegant solution, but I guess it showed determination?  Point is, I could do a way better job on that bookshelf now!

It feels good to have the foundation of this room figured out, and I’m putting together the plan for furnishings and decor which I’ll share with you soon.  Thanks for reading along!