Office space

I clearly haven't been on top of the family blog. Facebook and my iPhone have made sharing of pictures so much easier than sitting down and putting together a story and picking the right pictures, which takes me a lot more time than one might think. As a good example, I started this blog below in like December of last year. Granted it's probably the longest blog post I've ever put together, but either way, I'm finally finishing it now...


When we bought our house five years ago we had thought we'd only live here for about five years and by then we'd be ready to get something a little bigger for our growing family. Five years later, a terrible housing market, and there is no way to sell our house. With two additional family members, we've had to get creative in expanding our space.

Our house is about 980 sq ft, three (very small) bedrooms, and one bathroom. Brandon and I shared an office for the first few years, which was ok because we commuted to work into Portland. When we both started working from home, sitting next to each other in a little room was no bueno. That was when we built Brandon's office in the garage. See post here...

The inside office became my office space. The kids were sharing a room at that point but as Leo has gotten a little older they've accumulated more crap toys, and it began to spill into my office space. Leo was a light sleeper so after 8:00pm I had to be quiet. Then I was sharing Hunter's bed with my space, which just really wasn't ideal. I decided I needed an office in the backyard.

At first my idea wasn't taken seriously, but I knew I had to dream big to make this happen. Our house is on a large lot, I could take up a small corner of it... No big deal...

These pictures below show me "laying out the land" so to speak. I did some measuring and figured it wouldn't take up that much space, so I set the plan in motion.

Initially I tossed around the idea of us building the office ourselves. But then I remembered we had two young children, we still haven't even finished our bathroom remodel, so maybe we should spend the money to have someone else do it. I spent many hours looking through buildings I would want, researched local companies and found a local shed company that would build what I had in mind. It's pretty much a pre-fab shed kit but with the windows we picked out and a cute little covered porch.

Three guys built the shed in one day! That was in May of 2012.

At the same time, I spent many hours planning and executing an enclosed area for the chickens. We've been talking about doing that for the few years we've had chickens, because chicken poop all over the backyard is also no bueno. (Brandon hated the chicken poop the most, but I was happy with having happy free range chickens so it didn't bother me at the time) Mark had some horse fence laying around at the farm not being used as well as many large posts so I was able to build the fenced area for a minimal amount of money. And I've actually enjoyed the confined chicken poo. Brandon's complaining suddenly made sense. When I let the ladies free range through the yard I am still reminded why the hard work on this fence was needed.

Back to the office...

After the building was built, we needed electricity. I was naive to think initially we could dig out a trench (with a shovel!) from the corner of our house out to the building (which is about 30 feet). I was smart enough to know we needed an electrician to complete this work though. We were referred to a family member of one of the shed builders (keeping it local!) and he gave us a good deal, but we had to dig out the trench. A trench!  Not a puny little shovel trench.

Thankfully Brandon is amazing and was on top of this task. A trenching machine is no small task. And even these pictures don't convey the sheer size and amount of work it took the many hours to dig the trench even using this beast machine we rented for a day.

After the trench was dug, our electrician came back out and installed electrical connected from our house. He wired two outlets, my inside light fixture and the porch light.

You can barely see the porch light wiring in this picture below, but I wanted to add it so you can see I was eager to put down a Welcome mat and a dog bed on the porch.

Once the electrician was done, we had Comcast cable come out. We setup a separate line than the one to our house and they were happy to lay that line in the trench we had already dug. Two internet connections ended up being the smartest way to go. And I don't have to be on the same connection as bandwidth hog Brandon.

We then put all the insulation up by ourselves. We couldn't mess that up!

But then I was naive again... I thought since I've done drywall work before and we did the drywall for Brandon's garage office (well, the inside walls), we could easily drywall my new office ourselves. After a few months I realized that we weren't able to do this on our own. (oh, btw, it's August before I realize this) I had a few estimates and we picked an awesome local contractor and the drywall was all up by end of August.

The contractor did an amazing job! Especially since the shed builders didn't really set it up to have an easy drywall install. (That is a whole other story!)

After drywall was up, we had to primer the walls. 

Which it still sits at today. White primer. I seriously can't decide on a paint color! Eventually I will. White works for now.

Then the flooring had to go in. I did a ton of research and realized that I could definitely do this part by myself in a day. I got the flooring and tools, took a day off work and put down the laminate wood floor. Lots of work, but worth the cost savings and to be proud of actually putting some real sweat (and swearing) into the building.

I am still so pleased at how this turned out, I love it.

Then it was time to move in. By this time it was the end of September and I was VERY ready to move in! Here is a shot from my initial moving day. The office is 10x12 so I can fit quite a bit in here. I have my work desk, my sewing desk and a book shelf and a few other odds and ends.

I thought I could do without AC or heating for awhile at first. But with a very hot late September and now a very hot April, I have to figure out some sort of AC. Omg, it gets hot in here! For winter though, a small space heater has worked out great.

I started to build a walkway from the back porch to the office but still need to get more flat rocks to finish it up.

It's pretty cute!?

On free range chicken days, my ladies like to hang out on my porch and they come running to me as I walk up to my office.

One thing I still need to work through is the flooding. When we have large amounts of rain (which is much of winter in Oregon), the front of my office floods.

It is still a work in progress, almost a whole year later, but I love having my own space!

On a side note... baby monitors and walkie talkies make this external building actually work with the kids and communicating with Brandon. Who, by the way, wishes he had held out for the outside office instead of jumping into the garage office. :) 

I have settled in more in the last many months, but still have a ways to go before it's completed. I'll snap some more pictures soon. But for now, I'm done with this post. More to come!