Goodbye Screen Porch

Aaahhh, the screen porch.  Conjures up images of lounging around with a glass of lemonade.  Reading a thick book.  Lit votives on a summer table.  We had high hopes for our little screen porch.  Unfortunately, it became a dumping ground as soon as we moved into our house.  Boxes, excess furniture and firewood got thrown in there.  I would periodically get inspired, clean the whole thing out, yelling at anyone and everyone in my path during the process.  Once cleaned, it would sit there staring at me until stuff started piling up again.

“Office” dining room table in family room

It took eight years of feeling guilty about this unused space before we did anything about it.  Office, office, office I chanted!  My office was an old dining room table in the family room.  Loud, no privacy.  An ancient Dell desktop used by all of us sat on the table.  I frequently found Justin Bieber and Glee songs on my playlists because of the communal family  iTunes account.

Beginning of the new office

My husband and I could really use a room of our own, so we finally ripped off our little screen porch.  The footprint was not big, so our goal was to maximize the space as an office and a small sitting room.  We opted for a 10′ long and 24″ wide desk space where two of use could sit together and work, plus an area where we could watch TV when 800,000 teenagers were in the other room.

I wanted something other than a traditional wood desk, so for the top, I found remnant pieces of Carrera Marble (two 5′ long x 24″ wide pieces put together) which was about 1/3 of the cost of a custom 10′ x 24″ piece.  The view (above) from the two windows in front of the desk looked over our backyard, very pretty and private.  I had two old Parsons chairs that were not being used (stored on the screen porch!) that became our new desk chairs.  The office was coming along nicely.  Now I had to figure out how to pull it all together on the inside!

Our new office behind the lilacs on left

the wry home