After the New Year, we realized that working out of the corner of Abby’s room was, well…not working out. The problem with houses that are over 100 years old (at least ours) doesn’t lend itself to a lot of bonus rooms like closets, crafts, caves for men, exercise studios and home offices. You pretty much have to make the space with an addition or multi-purpose rooms, which is basically what we were doing with my daughter’s room. It was her sleeping quarters at night and my workspace during the day.
Ken made the call and suggested that I move somewhere else in the house to work. I laughed. There was NO where on the first floor that wouldn’t be exposing me to the kids during the day. I could just picture them climbing on the back of my chair, beating me with dolls while I was on an conference call.
All the bedrooms upstairs are taken. The basement is too hazmat and the back porch only serves us during 3 Seasons. Seemed like a dead-end idea for about 3 minutes. Then we came up with a little outside the box idea that ended up working really well.
You remember the Office Nook we set up for the family computer last year? It’s pretty exposed and right off the family room’s open concept.
In order for me to have office space, we had to get some creative thinking going, which meant, we’d have to put a wall up. The biggest challenge was that the house is “skinny” (narrow), so putting in a swing door would have eaten up too much space. A pocket door seemed a little too involved. I’d been salivating on Pinterest looking at pictures of those “Sliding Barn” doors, but the hardware was WAY out of our budget. To put in a track, wheels and all the right stuff sells for $300 or more. Why does my taste always have to be so expensive??
We shared our idea with my Father in Law. Have you met Russ? He’s the magic sorcerer behind many of my home project ideas and not only can help us dream up these wild and crazy schemes, but he loves to figure out how to do things in a tasteful, but inexpensive way.
Russ installed a wall to separate the space. As for the sliding door here? He took an old brown, dusty door that the previous owners stored in the rafters of our garage, painted it white and added the wainscoting and the trim to make it look like a barn door. He also figured out what pieces of hardware were needed to make the sliding functionality.
And guess what? It didn’t cost us $300 for the hardware. He figured out how to make the track and it’s parts for UNDER $20 using materials you can get at Home Depot or Menards. And it works just as good for our needs as the fancy ones we’ve seen. I’m so happy how it turned out and how we were able to make use of old door in the garage too.
What’s behind Door #1?
With a little imagination and flexibility, it came together.
Carmamma 