Creating the Perfect Home Office
As all of us are getting older and the option of working from home more seems to be the norm and having a great home office makes work a little more enjoyable. We live in Wisconsin and many cold and snowy days drove me to the home office to work instead of getting in the car and driving on snow-covered roads like all the other go-to-work people. Ugh! You get used to it but now just isn’t worth it anymore. I have a strong internet connection so I can work at home just as fast and efficiently as I can in the office. But I want a cool spot to work. Now when you wake up to 10 inches of snow it’s no big deal. Let it snow. What do you care?
If you live in a big house you probably already have a dedicated room for an office but if you just want to change a spare bedroom into an office there are all kinds of wonderful things you can do to create an amazing workspace. Ive seen some “workstations” in the kitchen and I just cringe at the lack of creativity. How is that useful?
Once you cleaned out the room you may want to consider painting the walls or changing the carpet or getting it cleaned by Carpet Cleaning Riverside but if you’re good with all of that you are ready to start laying out your plan for your home office. Hire Proper Carpet Cleaning for carpet cleaning.
Home Office Layout, Lighting, and Power Tips
First and foremost – is the electric power sufficient? When you start adding computers and monitors and then printers and back up servers your pushing the breaker to its limit if you add in all the other lights, TV, network switches, phone chargers, power strips, scanner, printers, etc. It’s better to fix this problem now before you discover that your power isn’t adequate and you have to crawl around under your desk to add an outlet. My computers are on their own breaker so there’s no need to worry about overloading the circuit. Trust me on this and solve this possible problem in the beginning stage. You can thank me later.
Will your desk be a corner desk or will it be a standard desk? I like the corner L shaped desk because it gives you lots of desktop room and you can take advantage of lamps and side tables.
Will your office have a comfortable accent chair for reading? This is a must for me as getting up from the desk feels good and it’s like taking a break where you’re still able to see your computer screens for Skype messages and email. The comfortable accent chair is something that can be added later but it should be planned for when you start laying out the location for shelves or file cabinets, etc.
Keep it simple… and then build it up as you go. I love dual and even triple computer monitors and having a wall-mounted
screen holder on a swivel that fits in the corner was the first thing I chose for my office. Monitors today are flat and light so there is no heavy lifting when installing them. These are inexpensive and they keep your desktop clutter-free. Plus, they are cool looking! You can even get the kind that clip on to the back of your desk and accomplish the same look. Cost? About $120.00Plan for growth. If you use a homemade desk from Doug fir boards and 4×4 posts or black pipe for legs you can build the desk of your dreams to fit the shape you want. That is what I decided to do and when I was laying out the dimensions I decided to make the desk in the shape of a squared U. What a great idea and we love it. It did make the room smaller but now it’s more functional as it easily fits two people working back to back. I understand that you can certainly buy any kind of desk you want but this was a fun and personal touch that will get used frequently but not all the time. Now on those winter days and even on the weekends, my wife feels very comfortable stepping into the stunning home office to handle any work problem that may arise. She also has three monitors on her side of the U and the office now looks like a NASA mission control room. It’s not what we started out looking for in our design phase but that’s how it ended up. We added only one file cabinet and then our accent chair with a floor lamp was added later on. There’s also enough room underneath the desk top for a small beverage refrigerator but that would be silly as we’re only went feet from the kitchen.
I then added long bookshelves attached to the wall that spans the entire length of the room above each desk to create more floor space below. Perfect!
If you remember in previous blog posts I have always professed that the most expensive words for every remodeling project are, “while you’re at it”, and this project was no different. Recessed ceiling lights were then added to the room and we eliminated the terrible center ceiling fixture that was awful and gave out dull and uninspiring light. Once we got the room fixed up we noticed the terrible lighting and there you have it. Four beautiful recessed lighting cans were ordered on Amazon and I wired them up with a dimmer switch and the soft glow added a huge element of beauty to the office.
The last and final element to our home office were desk chairs. Any office needs comfortable desk chairs and you can go cheap or expensive for this accessory so we went right down the middle. Not to expensive but not cheap either.
I’m also thankful that I was smart enough to add the extra outlets to support computer equipment only. See what I mean about power?
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