Our next home project

So, remember how we replaced the bifold doors in our office six years ago? Remember how that project took us about three months to complete from start to finish? And remember how I said the new doors made the rest of the office look kind of dingy by comparison, but considering that our usual M.O. when it comes to home repair is "good and cheap, but not fast," it would probably take us "months if not years" to renovate the rest of the room?

Turns out my prediction was a bit optimistic. In fact, in the six years since, we've made essentially no progress whatsoever on this room. Every so often I'd mention that we really should get to work on it, and Brian would agree that yes, we really should, and that would be the end of it.

In point of fact, we've been putting this project off much longer than six years. We've actually been putting it off for close to fifteen years, ever since we first bought this house. At the time we moved in, there were already lots of small but annoying problems with the room that we knew we'd have to fix "at some point." Like the ill-applied corner tape that had become visibly wrinkled under its layers of paint:

And the mismatched, paint-splattered outlets and cover plates:

And the numerous spots on the wall where the painters, rather than go to all the trouble of removing hardware and spackling up the holes, had simply painted over it:

But none of these problems was so large as to make the room unlivable, so for years we simply lived with them. And over the course of those years, we added numerous imperfections of our own, like crudely filled nail holes and one larger patch where we had to repair the wall after a "hit by doorknob" incident. None of which we'd actually bothered to paint over, because why go to the trouble of trying to match the existing wall paint when we knew we'd need to repaint the entire wall eventually?

So these little problems simply piled up until I finally realized that the only way we'd ever do anything about them would be for me to throw down the gauntlet and officially request it as a birthday present. So last month, I put Brian on notice that a repainted office was what I wanted for my birthday. And this week, we took the first steps toward making that happen.

Now, when I say "first steps," I mean just that. We haven't done anything so dramatic yet as covering the floors or taping the ceiling or even buying the paint. But we've begun what may be the hardest part of the process: rearranging our house so that we can still function in it while the painting is going on.

You see, one reason it's taken us to long to tackle this project is that, unlike our big downstairs room and our downstairs bath and even our upstairs guest room, the office is a space we actually use every day. In order to do any work on it, we'd have to find another place for me to work, and then transfer my desk and computer into that other room. And while the rest of the furniture in the room wouldn't need to be available for use during the project, it would still need to be moved out and stored somewhere. It was all this prep work, more than the painting itself, that we never could work up the gumption to face.

So the first step in getting the office ready for painting was to decide where the new temporary office should be. The bedroom and the kitchen are both fully occupied, so that left two possibilities: the big downstairs room or the small upstairs guest room. After some debate, we decided that the guest room, though smaller, was a better bet. Putting me in there during the renovations meant that we wouldn't have to heat the downstairs room every day, and it would also allow me to stay closer to the rest of the living space. (As for Brian, who is also working at home right now, he says he can set up his laptop pretty much anywhere.)

But in order to get my desk into the guest room, we first had to make room for it. So that's the step Brian took today, carrying the futon downstairs and cramming it into the big room between the gaming area and the sitting area. That leaves a nice big gap in the guest room where, if all goes well, we can transfer my desk and its accoutrements next weekend. 

We've also moved the large office bookcase and its contents into the living room temporarily. There's enough room for it, but it does make the room look rather cluttered — and, because the huge dark bookcase blocks one of the table lamps, rather dark as well. Brian commented that it now feels like a Victorian parlor. 

As for the rest of the stuff that's in the office now, well, Brian's desk (really a small table) and kneeling chair can probably fit in downstairs somewhere. Our homemade cat tree can squeeze into my new office in the guest room. And the filing cabinets, which are both heavy and bulky, can just move into the center of the room with a drop cloth draped over them, where they'll provide a good spot for setting things down.

That just leaves the futon to deal with. There's clearly no more space in the guest room, and the back storage room (which is also a laundry room, which is also Brian's workshop) is completely full already. I mean, completely. If not overfull. (Probably cleaning out and refurbishing that room will be my birthday present next year.) So I guess we'll just have to find room for that one in the big downstairs room along with the two futons that are already there.

So yes, this project will certainly make a mess of our house. I'm hoping that will give us an incentive to get it done quickly and not stretch it out over three months like we did with the guest room. I'm hoping the work on this room will go faster, since the walls don't need quite as much preliminary work. Maybe we can get it done by February?