Back in January, we were stuck in the house for a weekend, so Ian could have an 48-hour EEG. Sure that the test would come back negative for epilepsy, we were completely unstressed and looking for activities for a full TWO DAYS (ha!) of home confinement.
I chose to use that time to pull down wallpaper in our bedroom and office. I imagined that we could finish off that job easy-peasy in two days. It turned out to be a much bigger process than I imagined. I already showed before and after pictures of the bedroom, so let me talk about the office.
The office was designed solely for function, and we had to work around various problems and needs:
- It had to be as visually calming as possible. I sell used books, so sometimes the room has a riot of books in a corner. I need a blank slate for those projects.
- It had to increase lighting. It’s a ground floor room, but there are tiny windows to accommodate the concrete foundation that goes halfway up the wall. The room needed some inset lights to replace some IKEA shades that we hung from the ceiling, which cluttered up the space.
- The foundation is hidden behind some wood paneling. We went back and forth about keeping it v. painting it; decided to keep it for the time being.
- I needed a good backdrop for Skype meetings and interviews. (I had to worry about this even before the lockdown.) I hung our PhDs behind me.
- The room also has to function as a guest room, so furniture arrangements had to accommodate a daybed with a trundle. Also, marital harmony demands that Steve and I cannot work side-by-side for weeks at a time.
So, here’s are the before and during pictures. The first image is the original real estate pictures of the room.
Here are the after shots:
Apt. 11d 