It’s been nearly a year since we finished the loft. Ahh, such minimal beginnings…things sure have changed!
The loft is now Studio Zerbey headquarters and where Kyle spends his days (and sometimes, nights). (In this post, I talked about the importance of having our own spaces.) Although I usually work from the dining room table, we try to keep all of our shared resources in the loft. And by resources, I mean stuff. Over the past few months we’ve accumulated office supplies, code books and building up our material samples library. The space was quickly becoming overcrowded and needed some serious organization.
So, even though I probably bad-mouthed the IKEA Expedits in an earlier post, we desperately needed some low shelving to hold books, building codes and our backlog of magazines. Of course, the Expedit was the perfect size and so I caved, overcoming my beef with its chunky proportions.
With the magazines relocated from the white IKEA Stolmen units, we freed up enough space for our material sample library. We’ve tried to go digital as much as possible, which primarily means forgoing physical product binders that are clunky and have to be updated frequently by product reps. But, there is something about being able to look at a physical sample of a tile or piece of wood siding that you just can’t get from a website or photograph. We often do mock-ups to try out different stains or paint colors and so having a collection of physical samples to share with clients is critical.
Besides, it looks pretty. (And boy, oh boy am I glad the loft is not Avery accessible! Samples go boom!)
Here’s a snapshot of Kyle’s workstation on any given day. We buy a metal paper tray for each new project – it’s getting a little Tower of Pisa, but I suppose that’s a good thing. 🙂
Ok, now let’s move downstairs.
Here’s a photo of our stair cabinet (aka fauxdenza) from two years ago. At the time, we used it as a bookshelf, mail holder and collector of random things. It has pretty much stayed in this configuration until a few months ago, when my “office” began to take over.
Here’s a typical Instagram snapshot of my work zone. (Yes, I’m rocking two laptops. As much as I wanted to fully switch to a Mac, I’m using our old Dell for Autocad. It’s not ideal, but I’m convinced switching back and forth between the two will help stave off dementia in my later years.)
During the process of organizing the loft, we moved most of our architecture resource books upstairs and did some major purging. Now all of our books fit in the fauxdenza. I have mixed feelings about this because I generally like to have books on display and am convinced that hidden behind closed doors, they will not get read. (A theory that has been proven mostly true so far.) Moving the books also freed up space for more work clutter, which wasn’t ideal either.
So, more purging and reorganizing. As part of our babyproofing efforts, we decided that it was probably not a good idea not to store our liquor in the fauxdenza. So I did some kitchen shuffling and carved out enough space for the booze in the cabinet above the pantry. (Having recently watched the last season of Mad Men, we also joked about how now that we’re self-employed we should totally have our own bar cart by the couch. But again, the idea didn’t seem to really mesh with creating a safe environment for our daughter. Avery, make me a gin and tonic!)
With the alcohol relocated, this allowed me to dedicate one shelf for my own office supplies, leaving only a few random items on the counter. Admittedly, it now feels too sparse. Functionally, the fauxdenza is a perfect catchall or temporary holder. Stuff to go up to the loft gets stacked by the ladder and items to go to the basement on the other end. The ceramic bowl serves as Kyle’s catchall for, well…everything that would typically go in a purse. Aesthetically though, the counter space is hard to style. The low height limits displaying anything too large, but it’s not quite tall or deep enough for records or larger books. (Looking back, it’s amusing to think that we thought we’d mostly use it for a buffet for dinner parties – a scenario that has yet to happen and probably won’t since it’s easier to just use the island.)
So, maybe I’ll move some of our design books back up and I’m on the lookout for something to replace Kyle’s bowl (preferably something with a lid!). I know it’s only a matter of time before Avery will be yanking things back off so maybe I don’t get too invested?
Organization! I took four boxes of books to a consignment store to get to this point. It was hard to let them go, but as we’ve been in a pattern of acquiring stuff these last several months I’ve been trying hard to also get rid of the things that were just taking up space.
So here’s my mini office cabinet. For now I’m sharing the space with my cookbook surplus (I’ve relocated my favorites or more frequently used ones to the open shelving in the kitchen). The two binders on the bottom left are filled with recipes torn from magazines that I’ve collected over the past ten years. Every once in a while I try to think of some genius system for organizing it all but that has yet to happen. (In my idealized fantasy world I would cook my way through every recipe, typing up a card (with beautifully shot images) for the ones that pass the test.)
Finally, I can’t leave you without an obligatory dog/baby photobomb. I took most of these photos yesterday afternoon and had to work around my little helpers.
Looking good! It seems like you will need to lease some office space soon.
Good luck with the materials library!
I work for a small architecture firm in LA (only 4 people, including me) and an entire wall of our office is dedicated to the library. It constantly overflows, and I spend many hours trying to wrangle everything within the shelves. You are so right though that architects need to keep physical samples on hand, but boggles the mind how quickly all that stuff multiplies!
What kind of baby jumper is that?
haha Kelly, Actually we’re toying around with the idea of purchasing or leasing a small commercial space in Seattle, and of course we’d want to remodel that too, chezoffice?
Hey Elana, it’s a Merry Muscles jumper (purchased through Amazon). We love it!
I know! And after awhile you get so many project-specific samples that are hard to let go of…it will be an ongoing challenge I’m sure. 🙂
What about replacing Kyle’s bowl with some kind of woven basket? That’s fairly baby safe (not breakable). This one is a little big, but nice lines – and a lid! http://www.tenthousandvillages.com/lidded-kaisa-basket
I’d put books up there again, I like to have my books out. I just wouldn’t put anything too precious out. Oh, and for the samples in the loft, maybe some sturdy shelves? Those babies look heavy! You could always store the “off season” samples in the basement…next to the Christmas decorations 🙂
Hi, love the site and what I seen of your work.
My wife and I had a similar issue with clipped recipes (really anything clipped from magazines).
I started scanning them all into Evernote, then tagging them appropriately.
When we cook something from the shared notebook we use in Evernote, it either gets deleted if it sucks (which is never our fault) or tagged with “keeper”.
The ramp up to scanning everything in was a bit time consuming, especially with 2 kids, but its definitely helped purge and organize things.
Dan
I like that the basket has a cover, allows me to hide all that junk;) thanks Emily
Thanks Dan, I experimented with Evernote a little a while back but hadn’t thought to use it for recipes. (Sometimes I’m relieved when a recipe sucks b/c one less thing to keep track of, right?) 😉
I think it’s definitely a project that would have to be tackled in chunks!
you could install some shelves for the books down in the basement?
I’m curious if you’ve tried Autocad on your Mac.
I went so far as to buy it for my macbook pro almost a year ago. Despite it’s lacking of certain tools and features, I don’t expect it would affect the way I use the program, but in the haste of a workday/week/month, I fall back to the familiarity of using it on my pc (a dell desktop for which I recently even bought a second monitor!).
Anyway, just curious if you’d given it a shot on your mac. I have REAL intentions to do so!
Love the gray expedit. Going to get one for holly’s play room… But have to get rid of the pool table first 🙂
Hi Brian, we use AutoCad architecture which is a much more robust package than regular AutoCad and it’s not available on mac, only PC. Tried running it on mac using VMware but too buggy for such and intense software package;) Really needs to run natively.
Oh, that photo of Bailey. “Just so you know, we dogs do not like change. We. Do. Not. Like. Change.”
Is it bad that I think it is kind of nice to see the occasional home office photo that isn’t perfectly styled and decluttered? Congratulations on the purging and good luck finding a solution for the sample-library. The fauxdenza does look rather sparse, how about using it for your cookbooks? Or would that introduce surface creep?
yeah, I like to keep my desk in a state of organized chaos, that photo is as clean as it gets;)
great home office space! my wife and I have always contemplated making our tall attic into a usable space, but couldn’t quite figure out how to make it easily accessible. Your ladder solution is fantastic, and it looks like it belongs with the rest of the interior. Ours is a 1909 brick 4-square with some inefficiencies that we are trying to remedy, but it is tough trying to figure out the best decisions for the place. Thanks for the inspiration and for sharing all of your progress.
This is what I do with my recipes ripped from magazines: I tear out the whole magazine article and staple it together, write a number on the front page and record all the recipe titles in an online index with the number beside them. Then I file the paper articles in numerical order in a couple of folders in my filing cabinet.
When I want to cook something, I search my index, then pull out the clipping and stick it in a clipboard to use it.
Ok, I know this is an old post…but I’m working my way through your archives. And perhaps you’ve already done this or something else, but have you ever thought of painting the back open part of the fauxdenza, perhaps in a aqua-grey or mustard yellow or something? you could even do a faux painted back that you just wedge in there, so you could easily remove it in the future. It would be a fun bit of colour in the space.
P.s. I LOVE your house.
Thanks Wilma, the back of the fauxdenza is actually unfinished cork tiles that we had leftover so it would be a little difficult to paint. The idea was that the stuff that went on the fauxdenza would be the color – just need to actually figure out what to put on there that is toddler friendly. 🙂