Nuclear Elephant

The Home Office HOWTO

The Home Office HOWTO

My Raggety Room
Up until Mid-October 2004, my home office consisted of nothing more than a 12x12 room with an open wall and a cheap OfficeMax desk with two drawers missing. I really wish I had some before pics, because it was quite pathetic. This, and a laptop, is pretty much all an IT geek really needs. I then realized that I spend about 1/3 or possibly 1/2 of my life in this room so I decided to spend a few bucks and renovate. It turns out there's a lot of inspiration in having good surroundings to work in, and being pleased with the results thought I'd write up a little how-to for those of us who are decoratively challenged, or too scared to admit we're not.

French Doors

The first thing I had to do (and we did this prior to October) was to install some doors on the office. I have four children, which can get somewhat distracting during the day. Due to an unfortunate fire, a set of cedar french doors is all that was left of a friend's house. He let me keep them as a replacement for the networking book I loaned him (and never read) which went up in smoke :). After a little paint and scraping, and $200 to some kid to install them, I no longer had to worry about noise.

The Paint
I repainted the entire room using Kilz one-coat. It goes on like pudding so you don't need to do much (IT geeks are prone to administrative laziness). I chose Dulce De Leche and Red Fox for those of you interested in the color scheme. Out of the entire painting experience, I found the most invaluable tool to be the $0.89 plastic paint guide, which helped me paint the chair rails and molding.

The Desk
The desk is an Ashley Glenn-Eagle leg desk in a nice antique cherry finish. Not knowing anything about furniture, I initially wanted one of those "red" cherry desks like most offices have. Come to find, red is synonymous with cheap crap. The desk runs about $420, which is a very reasonable price for a desk that comes in one piece, however I didn't realize there was an Ashley Furniture outlet in my area and ended up getting ripped at $549 from a local merchant. Many parts of the desk are solid wood - including the drawers (which is a lot nicer than the cheap cardboard OfficeMax uses in their desks). The top consists of furniture board with a Cherry inlay, which is technicall harder than solid wood. The only downfall to this desk is the little trim piece in the middle, which I kick my legs up against at least twice a day. I plan on removing it soon with a chainsaw if necessary.

The Slouching Chair
I found a slouching chair at a local Pier-1 wanna-be shop. It's one of those very comfortable chairs that you have to slouch to sit in, therefore it is perfect for most of the people that I know. The leather was gorgeous and what originally attracted me to it, but the manufacturer put a terrible eggshell blue finish on the solid teak body. I decided to strip it and refinish it. Unfortunately the teak was the same color as the leather, so I decided to paint it black and put a clear gloss coat of spray-on lacquer over it. There are a few mistakes, but it looks quite nice. Black covers a multitude of sins. If you ever decide to refinish a piece of furniture, just remember you _must_ use flat paint. Once you get the lacquer on, the gorgeous gloss comes back...but if you don't use flat paint, you'll end up with a lot of brush strokes and it won't look nearly as nice....plus some finishes make you sand the gloss off first anyway.

The Banker's Lamp
Being over budget on my office already, I went antique hunting for a lamp. I came across an old, scratched up banker's lamp at a local shop for $14. I cleaned the lense, replaced the electrical, and polished it up with some Brasso. All the old bankers lamps are solid brass, so the scratches came out and a shiny new layer emerged. Now that I've replenished my splurge fund, I've decided to keep my lamp as it's got some character.

Office Trinkets
I sent my wife out for office trinkets (since I have very litle decorative ability) and she brought me back a black... well... thingie... and some Hazelnut Cream candles. The candles add a nice ambiance and smell good. They're particularly useful when working at 2am and you need something to stare off into space with. We kept the Matchstick blinds I already had, but we did replace all of the wall sockets and switches with some uppity covers from Lowe's.

Final Touches
A few pictures of my kids on the desk and one wall. The other wall contains a few prints from my favorite photographer, Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii who, in 1900, invented a way to take color photographs using different colored filters and glass plates. His photography is the only known representation of what the world looked like in color in 1900. You can check him out here. All in all, I'm very pleased with how the office has turned out. I feel a bit out-of-place sometimes as I'm not really as fancy a person as my office looks, but it's delivered a good bit of inspiration and all within a good budget of around $1500.

The only thing I haven't decided on yet is a good desk chair. I'm trying to find a nice leather high-back chair on casters, but with a somewhat-matching finish to the desk. So far all I've been able to find too gaudy or in Vinyl. Who would pay $500 for a Vinyl chair? They can keep their vinyl.

Think Differently

Unreal tournament just looks stunning on a 17" LCD screen in full resolution. My new Powerbook is the real star of the office. Aside from the creativity my office inspires, the Powerbook is what actually allows me to get my job done. It was quite an easy migration from Linux.

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