my new “office”

I don’t consider my blog a decorating/home improvement type website by any means, but we just finished up a project that I thought would be interesting to share, especially for those of you with small houses that can’t sacrifice an entire room for a home office. I posted a long time ago about my plans to convert our closet into an office (or “cloffice”). Well, it took a long time, but my husband really pulled through for me. This was a lot of work for him, and I appreciate it so, so much. In fact, I feel a little undeserving.

It is beautiful.

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The photos don’t do it justice. It looks so small, but when you are working at the desktop it actually feels quite spacious (the closet is about 2 ft. deep x 4 ft. wide x 8 ft. tall). Damian used 2×2 pine ledgers which we topped with poplar board shelves (they are very solid and will probably take longer to bend than pine under all those books). The desktop is a piece of 3/4 inch thick plywood custom cut for me by Damian and is supported by 1×4 ledges on three sides (back, right side, and the front on either side of the doorway). We had to do this crazy setup because our bathroom shower access is on the left side of the closet, and we wanted to be able to reach it easily and quickly. It works out really nicely, though, because the gap on the left side allows me to run cords up between the wall and the desktop. Underneath the desk I have my printer on the left side, and a cart with all of my writing supplies and stationery on the right side. It is so wonderful to have a place for all of my things.

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I added our college diplomas on the wall behind the bedroom door just for fun (you can only see them from inside the room with the door closed, so I don’t feel like I’m showing off). I also have a few more things I’d like to add, like a corkboard and some wall-mounted file storage, but I’m enjoying it just the way it is for now. I plan to do a lot of research from this space, as I seem to have become obsessed with genealogy again! I’d also like to try writing some poetry…it will all be terrible, I’m sure, but at least I have a nice space in which to write it!

Lastly, I owe a big thank you to my wonderful husband, Damian, who made this dream (and many others) come true. I feel so loved.

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a project // cloffice for lillia

I haven’t blogged in ages, and I apologize. A couple of weeks ago I started my last undergraduate course, and I have been spending all of my free time reading for my independent study — Women in Culture & Society in Medieval Scandinavia.

I just wanted to share this amusing little anecdote. As I mentioned, I am working on turning our closet into an office for myself. But, of course, anything that mommy has, Lillia has to have, too. So, I made her a cloffice!

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Her closet was easy to transform because it has just one shelf, and we already had the desk. Now she has somewhere to do her schoolwork and play WolfQuest in privacy (a.k.a. without her little brother).

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a project // cloffice

I am planning to create a super-amazingly-awesome craft area for me and the kids in the basement but, at the speed that renovations happen around here, the kids will probably be in college before that happens. Enter: the cloffice.

If you’ve spent any time browsing blogs or Pinterest, you probably know what a cloffice is. But, for those of you who don’t, it’s basically a closet that has been transformed into an office area. There are many varieties of cloffices out there, and I’ve decided that I want/need one of my own.

Last year we installed two IKEA Botne wardrobes (weirdly enough, a HUGE amount of the traffic to my blog comes from people searching for info about the Botne). That freed up our regular closet, which has been used to store everything from sewing supplies, to homeschooling materials, to paper towels and the vacuum cleaner. Here it is in its current state:

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Wouldn’t it make an excellent cloffice? I think so! All it needs is a little paint, some sturdy shelves, and a desk. I can’t wait to blog, work on homeschool plans, and do some serious research for my last(!) undergraduate course in my own little space.

Here are a few examples of really nice cloffices that I will be referring to for inspiration:

From Shoestring:

From IHeart Organizing:

And, from The Mustard Ceiling Blog:

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