Throwing Back to my first Office from the screened in Porch

I forget that this room was a porch once! Writing these once a month throwback posts, my ten year update posts as well as our current blog posts all at the same time has been really cool for me. We’re currently in the middle of working on this little room yet again. This is where it began and from there its transformed a number of times over the years. I think the current transformation in this room becoming Lodi’s den is the one that’s going to stick though I was so proud of this reveal post. I loved how my office turned out all those years ago!

Here is the Original post from April 2016

Before we can truly start in on my office reveal we have to start by going way way back to literally the day I started remodeling the house. This room used to be what was left of this old house’s screened in porch.

Back in the ’50s the other part of the screened in porch had been enclosed to create an entryway and my grandparents’ bedroom (so they could sleep on the first floor and their two girls could get the two bedrooms upstairs that is now my master suite).

This part though remained a screened in porch and one of my very favorite places in my child hood.

OMG I can’t believe its been three years since this post came out! This part of my home has gone through as many transformations as I have myself! I’m a single gal now and I can finally make this home exactly the best that it can be. This is no longer my Office but my new guest bedroom and now I moved my office to my entryway!

When my aunt and mom were little girls they would sleep out here throughout the Minnesota summers and both of them still recall it as being one of their very favorite things. I still pine a bit for the old screened in porch and now, from time to time, wish I had not had to enclose it.

However, this porch was only yards from the dirt road outside my house and I knew I would never be sitting out here to enjoy the dust and watching people drive by – not really what you would call a “scenic” view. And I needed an office!

I made the hard decision in the renovation to enclose the entire rest of the screened in porch and chose this corner for my future office reveal. Fifteen months later and I moved in!

You can see there on the left the ancient stained glass window that was once the front window on the house (until the screened in porch was added in 1925) it has seen better days but I were able to save it and managed to not break it during the renovation.

I had high hopes and dreams for this room and was absolutely stoked when I put my furniture in it and then, this happened:

It just wasn’t working. The book case was too small and I HATED that my back was to the door when I was working. There was no way I could part with more books and there was no way that I wasn’t going to be buying more. So, I scrapped the entire idea I had previously for the Office and went back to the drawing board.

First, I moved the book case you see in that picture into the closet along with my Ancient dresser for storage. I had built a really horrible shelf in the closet before and it just wasn’t working AT ALL.

One thing I did love about my office though was the decision I had made during the renovation to put a phone line and electrical hookups in the closet so my modem and printer could be hidden out of the way – AWESOME.

After that I built some serious barnwood book shelves that you guys saw in last week’s blog post: How to build easy barn wood book shelves. So, without further delay, My Office Reveal!

The wood floors out here had already been painted brown (over at least two other colors throughout the decades) so I just decided to clean them up and repaint them. I had leftover paint from painting my second floor Master Bedroom Suite so I just decided to use it on the floors out here.

It is a touch blue for my taste (for a floor) but something about these floors really makes me happy and they’ve totally grown on me. The color is called Sooty Lashes by Valspar. Yes, you’ve seen my old rocking chair before – to see what it looked like before check out my post about it: Eleonora’s Rocking Chair.

I don’t actually own a “desk” those two big tables my mom gave me for Christmas years ago and I love them, they had been a bit dinged up so I repainted them in black rustoleum and put a whole bunch of poly acrylic over them. I wish I had taken before pictures because they really turned out nice!

The ladder in the corner by the rocking chair was what I had leftover when I cut the ladder down that I’m using upstairs in my Master closet – to see how I did that you can check it out here: An old ladder into a shoe rack. I think I may hang it up on the wall eventually.

My dreams for this office were simple, I wanted lots and lots of book storage and a large enough work space that two people could sit across from each other and work without getting into each other’s way. The truth is I just dream in flat empty surfaces, I drool over craft rooms on Pinterest that offer big work tables.

I needed a place for my English saddles so I ran out to the barn and grabbed an old box my grandparents’ had made to catch saw dust under their table saw. I cleaned it up and put a coat of poly over it and viola! It also offers some extra storage. Is it kind of weird I have horse tack in my office? Yeah, I guess, but anyone who owns saddles (or leather anything) knows that a damp environment will destroy them and our barn is just not dry enough.

So, they have a home in my office. (And there is a perk to having them in here too that no one else has seemed to have noticed but me – they smell like my horses! So, every day I work in the office there’s just the lightest most wonderful smell of horse in here that I just love!)

The curtains are from my childhood (I believe I picked them out when I was about 14) I decided to nix the idea of curtains on the windows so I went to walmart and just bought a little white valance to go across the tops of each and then used my big curtains as closet doors.

I had agonized over the paint color for a week going through ten different samples until I finally lost my mind and forced myself to pick one. Then I hung my curtains, my artwork and brought my rocking chair in and I looked around and just busted out laughing.

I guess I now know that these are my favorite colors (I had no idea) and clearly I was planning for the last fifteen years for all of these random elements to come together in this room and match. Even my two pieces of artwork that I’ve had since I was at least as young as eleven share a color that is in the fabric I chose for my rocking chair just two years ago.

Its really funny how things work out.

I love my office now and hope you liked my office reveal 🙂 The big old stained glass window is breathing a sigh of relief, as it will not have to weather anymore Minnesota winters or summers, it is safe now, fully inside.

I hope it lasts another fifty years with me – personally I think it is absolutely gorgeous.

I have plans on decorating the closet a bit more, you can see I have a couple of art prints that need framing and hanging just sitting on my old dresser hiding the modem, so they will probably go up in there somehow.

Have a great day guys, if you enjoyed My Office Reveal please consider giving it a share!