My family moved into a new house about 16 months ago. There’s an office on the ground floor where I set up my pc, my music stiff and a bunch of boxes (mostly filled with books and CDs). I never quite figured out what furniture to buy for the room, but in the end, it didn’t really matter. It turns out that my wife loves my computer (it’s a fanless, ultraquiet system with two 19” widescreen monitors on ergotron arms. She also fell in love with the room – it’s on the first floor, near the front door and kitchen – a perfect place to be if kids are in the yard, eating snacks, or playing around the house. I relinquished the room to her several months ago, but all of my crud was still in there because we never figured out where it should go.
Our house has a “bonus room” that we thought would be a kids play room or a TV room, but it didn’t work out well for either of those options. The room is on the second floor over the garage – far, far away from the kitchen and family room. When you have a four and five year old, you don’t necessarily want them playing (or watching tv!) so far away you can’t hear them. Sometime a few months ago, we decided that I could take over the room. It’s a pretty big room, but it will be fun to have a place for all of my book, cds and music stuff.
We had a bit of a moving day today, and I hauled about 20 boxes upstairs, and moved some shelves from the garage. Right now, it looks like a big storage room (because that’s what it is right now). I’ve been using the Ikea room planner to get an idea of how to set it up and threw this together:
The file cabinet in the corner is a stand-in for a 20-space raxxess rack where I keep most of my electronics. I have a few sets of studio monitors that I’ll put right on the bookshelf – not the best solution, but I think it will work fine. I’m not exactly sure where to put the desk, but that spot in front of the shelves is as good as any. The room is pretty big – not counting the entry hallway, it’s 13×17 (17’ left to right as you view this picture). I have 4 saxophones and 3 guitars that can go behind the chair somewhere, and a bunch of smaller instruments that I can put on shelves, or in the cabinets on the right. Acoustically, the room is a little bright now, but I’m hoping it deadens up a bit once I unpack everything. BTW – if any readers with better decorating skills than me have suggestions, please fire them away in the comments section.
For comparison, here’s my wife’s office (my old office).We’re going to put a foldout couch between the doors and have it double as a second guest room (with my office, I suppose, being a third). Until today, most of the floor space (including inside the closet) was piled with my boxes.I’m pretty sure most of the carpet in that room has never been walked on.
