by Rachel Smith
21 July 2017
I’ve renovated my home office in this house twice. Not because I didn’t love the first one – I adored it – but because the arrival of a baby meant our already small house needed a clever overhaul.
Years of writing about renovating for Inside Out magazine has helped me learn a lot. I’ve talked to builders and architects and interior designers. I’ve project managed my own renovation (while heavily pregnant; I don’t advise it) and dealt with warring tradies and reno disasters. But there is truly something magical about creating a space that works for you, and that you love. And for anyone who works form home, the office space is hugely important.
My first office was a simple space built on one side of a dining room – a sort of in-between room that became dual purpose out of necessity. The office had to be functional but unobtrusive, and I had a joiner come and build a long, wall-to-wall desk and book shelves above the desk that stretched right up to the high ceiling. The effect was stunning. This room was in the middle of the house so it had lots of light and a library-like feel. Then I got married and pregnant and we did what so many couples do: knocked out half the walls in the house in order to continue living in it comfortably.
We also switched the kitchen and the office. I was sad to lose my ‘library’, but it gave us a helluva lot more space (and the massive wooden desk I’d wanted for so long). It’s so important to think about how you work and design your work space around that. Here are some of the things I learned (and the mistakes I made) which might help you if you’re thinking about renovating your workspace.
I’ve had tiny desks and skinny desks and it wasn’t until we knocked out walls that I had the space for a big, long slab of a desk, built into a long nook near the back of the house. The other beautiful thing about this desk is it steps down into the kitchen and continues as the kitchen bench as well. In the ‘office’ area, it’s big enough to spread out notes, to have a desktop machine and a laptop, a printer – whatever I need, and has a whole separate section for my husband when he works from home. If you have space and you’re building in a desk, go as deep as you can – and don’t forget to test your chair under the desk to ensure you have enough room to move (we had to have ours fixed mid-reno because it was too low for our office chairs and our bent knees literally got stuck under the desk!).
Little things like this can make your day so much easier – I can’t have enough power sockets, personally. Your builder can easily cut in desk grommits so you can feed cords through to sockets below, saving on clutter. And ensure power points above the desk are installed high enough to take big chunky Apple chargers. If sockets are installed too close to the top of the desk, you’ll kick yourself later, trust me.
We ran out of money when we renovated and ended up cutting corners on shelving. Our thin little shelves are buckling under the weight of our books and it doesn’t just look bad; it’s dangerous! The first office shelves I put in were nice and thick and held hundreds of books no problem. Sadly, these shelves couldn’t be saved so we went for temporary shelving with ugly brackets. Take it from me: you’ll never regret investing in a joiner or builder to create really chunky shelves. They’ll hold the weight of anything you put on them, and it looks much neater and nicer.
Utilise all the wall space you can to get stuff off your desk – from calendars to wall filing systems or even customised pinboards that can take penholders and all the stuff you might normally have on your desk. There are some great wall filing systems that lay relatively flat on the wall and keep files off your desk. I love this kind of thing.
If you can afford it, built-in drawers (including a filing cabinet) are best. Filing cabinets with wheels can easily over-topple when filled with stuff and you pull out a heavy bottom drawer! (I speak from experience and currently have heaps of heavy books balancing the back of my filing cabinet to stop the whole thing toppling over and crushing my foot). Another thing for the to-do list.
Strip lighting under a shelf, good lighting overhead, a nice lamp for task lighting and ambiance… it’s worth it and it might help ward off eye strain or headaches (being a migraine sufferer myself, I know how important lighting can be).
Have you ever renovated a home office? What are your top tips?
Great article Rachel and so so true for me. Sturdy shelves and hidden storage .. a must. Big deep desks- not only to hold things but to mean you sit back far enough from large monitors.
Exactly! I currently have my husband’s monitor on my desk and I’m constantly pushing it back – so great to have a desk I can do that on instead of feeling I’m about 10cm from a screen. And the shelves… argh. Definitely on the list…