Two things first:

1. We updated yesterday’s door-painting post with further-away exterior shots for everyone who requested those, and we also refreshed the header.
2. Sherry knows she owes you a door hardware post (she’s editing photos and writing it up for tomorrow). For now, we’re switching gears to talk about our home office — because apparently we’re juggling a lot these days.

After our recent nursery furniture shuffle, we decided it was time to tackle the office. The space has been essentially unchanged for eight months and has never felt truly functional or comfortable. The first small improvement was adding a file cabinet, but the new house’s office is different in shape and window placement from our old 10′ x 10.5′ room. Our current room is 13′ x 10.5′, but with two doorways and two windows in awkward spots, efficient furniture layout has been a challenge. To explain the situation simply: there are only two usable walls and a couple of corners, which limited our initial furniture setup.

Our old long desk that once spanned nearly an entire wall now looks small in this new room. Because it was our largest piece of office furniture, we placed it on the longest wall so we could at least have a window to look out while working (even if that window faces the carport). We tried a few quick layouts on move-in day and kept the one that felt best at the time, and that arrangement stayed for the past eight months.

We also have a small green sleeper sofa centered as best we could on one window without crowding Sherry’s chair. In the remaining corner sits an Effektiv file cabinet and an ottoman that’s full of toys — a reality of sharing the workspace with a toddler. That mix of office furniture and play-area pieces has been practical but not ideal.

Recently we decided to experiment by swapping the sofa and desk positions. The thinking was twofold: first, moving the desk under the front window would upgrade our view from the carport to the front yard greenery; second, the sofa’s blue-green color palette coordinates with the dining room and might create a more cohesive sightline through the large opening between the rooms. The idea was that the sofa would read as a living-room element rather than an office piece when viewed from the dining room.

We quickly discovered that the swapped layout created new problems. Accessing my desk chair became awkward because of the sofa arm and, more importantly, the chair would not slide smoothly over the rug — it was essentially stuck. Scooting the chair out felt like a major hassle. Shifting the couch and rug slightly could have improved the clearance, but doing so made the setup look off-center and didn’t address a bigger issue: an AC vent located right where our feet would rest with the desk in that position. That would make our feet uncomfortably cold in summer and possibly overly warm in winter.

We’ve long dreamed of installing a built-in desk made from base kitchen cabinets with a continuous countertop. That solution would give us significantly more workspace and a lot more storage below the work surface — which is ideal for two people who work from home full time. We initially thought the front-window desk would be a good test before committing to a built-in, but after trying it we realize it would worsen the sofa-cramping and rug/slide problems and leave us with the vent-temperature issue.

Because of the experiment, we’re now certain we want the built-in desk along the original long wall. That placement would provide a generous, uninterrupted workspace and ample storage, and it would photograph nicely through the dining room doorway. Yes, the view from that desk would be back to the carport, but the trade-off feels worth it: more functional workspace, better storage, and no extreme temperature problems from sitting over a vent. We spend most of our time focused on laptops and toddler logistics, so a nicer view is less important than comfort and productivity.

The sofa is still problematic in any of these arrangements. It’s large and pushes the room toward awkward balance, so we’re considering replacing it with a smaller armchair and ottoman to better suit the office’s priorities: (1) a productive workspace for both of us and (2) a play area for Clara. Making the room function for work and play is more important than keeping a sleeper sofa, since we now have a dedicated guest room for overnight visitors.

Next steps: we’ll start shopping for built-in solutions. Ideally we’ll find cabinets to retrofit at a Habitat ReStore, Craigslist, or another secondhand source to avoid the cost of custom built-ins while giving pre-owned cabinets a new life. That approach would keep costs lower and reduce waste while delivering the functionality we need.

For now we’ve left the furniture in place so the mild discomfort of a wonky rug and chilly toes keeps us motivated to get the built-in project started before we fall back into an arrangement that could stick for another eight months.

Why are the rooms we use most always the last to get figured out?

How’s your home office set up? Do you work from home full time or just part-time? Any favorite desk or built-in solutions you’d recommend, or are you dealing with a layout you can’t wait to change? We’d love to hear about what worked for you — especially if it solved a freezing-toes problem like ours.

Psst – We experienced slow loading and site crashes from 10–11am for the third morning in a row. It felt a bit like Groundhog Day. We’re still troubleshooting this and appreciate your patience as we work on a fix.