Tag: setting up a home office

Setting up a home office: the desk arrives

by Karen, posted in Work from Home
Finally! The desk.

We got the call that the desk had arrived at the furniture warehouse and was ready to be picked up. They offered one more time to deliver it and assemble it in our home for the low, low price of $75. We had already turned this down once, but on this particular day my husband (who also happened to be the picker upper and assembler) was busy in the garden.
“When can you do it?” he asked the guy. The answer was “Today,” so he said, “Okay, see you soon.”

Well, “soon” turned out to be an hour and a half later, a small truck bearing two men and the two parts of my desk arrived. This in itself was kind of confusing, since the warehouse was only 20 minutes away, but it soon became clear what had taken them so long, After coming in the house to announce their arrival and to see where the desk was going, they went back out to the truck and reappeared carrying the already assembled first half of the desk. Hmmm, recalling that the man had said it would cost $75 (first) to deliver the desk and (then) to assemble it, I naturally assumed he meant assemble it in my home. When the first piece was pushed up against the wall, I decided to just wait and see what happened next.
They disappeared again, then after a loud crash and much whispering, came back with the second half of the desk It soon became evident that something wasn’t right. My husband finally figured out that because they put the desk together elsewhere, they didn’t realize that it was supposed to be a “left return” and not (the more common)  “right return” and they put it together backwards.

Long story short, we got a replacement (they fortunately had a correct version in the warehouse) the same day and we didn’t pay the $75 delivery/set up charge (okay, so this last part was my idea~comp for pain and suffering). What was that about anyway? I mean. Sears only charges, what, $30 or $35 dollars to deliver a major appliance and will even take the old one with them when they leave ! Just sayin’.

P.S. I didn’t mean to make them cry!

P.P.S. The loud crash? That was our wreathe that was hanging intact on the front door when they arrived, and was lying in pieces on the coffee table in the living room after they left. They never said a word of apology (or anything else) to either me or my husband about breaking the wreathe…true professionals? Not!

Setting up a home office, continued: the purge

by Karen, posted in books, my one word, Work from Home

I’ve been reading Mary Carlomango’s book Live More, Want Less slowly over a period of months. It’s organized into 52 chapters and my initial intent was to read a chapter a week (as the author suggested), then implement the “action items”  listed at the end of each chapter to help pare down my belongings, hopefully simplifying my life in the process. I started off okay, but then lost track of which week I was ‘supposed’ to be on, so now I’m picking it up occasionally and reading at random.

The chapter about books came at exactly the moment that I most needed it.  Currently I have books in many locations throughout the house. Now I am emptying out the room to use as an office that contained the bookcase and about half of our (okay, mostly my) books.  In our first home, we added on a room (not just for the books!)  and my husband had a bookcase built to fit on a wall that was very tall and very wide and accommodated all of my books: past, present, and future.  When we moved the big bookcase wouldn’t fit anywhere in the new house, so we found a smaller one at a yard sale which I am still using.

At first I thought I”d be able to reduce my collection and make it fit the space I had available,  and I did that. Unfortunately, over the years I have amassed books. I’ve been sort of stuck for the past few days as I tried to decide about what to do with not only the bookcase (where to put it in the now empty room) but also the books on it, on top of it, and in the basket along side it (full disclosure: there are more in my closet, under my bed, and in the built-in bookcase in the bedroom…oh, and in the kitchen!). When I posed this question to my husband, he said, “Maybe you don’t put the bookcase back in at all…”

That brought me up short.

Maybe I was asking the wrong question! What if I don’t put the bookcase back at all? In that case I would have (at least)one different question: What to do with the books?

To be continued…

Setting up my home office, Part Three: Paint

by Karen, posted in Life in the cube, no fear, Work from Home

The walls and ceiling of the office-to-be are white, so at least it will be easy to cover. Earlier this month I went paint color shopping with my husband at Lowe’s. I spent an hour browsing through all of the paint samples. My favorite color is yellow so that’s where I started out, but then gravitated toward the lilacs (my favorite flower), the blues (my second favorite color)…I could have made a day of it. My husband (wisely) left me to go look at some tools or something while I basked in paint heaven.

When he came back, I roused myself from my stupor as he said, “Have any luck?” I proudly displayed the dozen or so paint chips that I had chosen, fanned out like a hand of cards. He looked at them briefly then pulled one lonely paint sample from his back pocket.

“How about this?” he said, and showed me a foresty green color. “Oh. That’s nice too,” I offered. “Well, you don’t have to decide today,” he said, so I put my paint samples into my bag to be revisited at a later date.

So I never did revisit the paint samples because day to day life got in the way. Then I talked to my husband on the phone from work one morning and innocently asked “Whatcha doin’?” and he said, “Painting”.

Whaaaaaa…? I thought, but did not say. “Oh,” I said. “What color?” I asked, feigning nonchalance. “Eggshell,” he said.

Whaaaaaa…? “What happened to the foresty green?” I managed. “I saw this and liked it better,” he said.  It really is just that easy for him.  My husband is spatially talented; he can look at a stick, plant it in the ground, and know what it will look like in five years; he can literally see the tree it will be. 🙂 I, on the other hand, look at the stick and see only the stick, in all it’s “Charlie Brown Christmas Tree” glory. Bill’s talent that translates well to interior design. He can sort through those millions of little paint chips and find THE  little paint chip of my dreams. More importantly, he can know what the entire room will look like when the painting is done.

It looks amazing. I totally love it. “Eggshell” turned out to be a pale yellow color, the pale yellow color that I was hoping for but unable to locate on my own.

🙂

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Next up: the flooring. To be continued…