Office Before

Although we loved this house when we first saw it online, we were concerned that was only two bedrooms. In fact, we think that’s why it was on the market for as long as it was—two bedrooms are not always enough, even for small families. We could easily have turned a bedroom into a joint office but I hated the idea of sacrificing a guest bedroom. Not only would we have been forced to get rid of one of our beds, we’d be scrambling for alternatives every time someone came to visit. Given that, you can imagine how pleased we were to see this little office right off the kitchen.

I’ve been looking through old house plans but have had no luck finding any that match our floor plan. However, it’s given me some ideas about how our house was originally laid out. The two bedrooms connected by a Jack and Jill bathroom was very common, so we’re thinking there was no modification there. Although the bedroom closets seem large for the era, the inside of both is river sand plaster so they are likely original as well.

Many older homes had a sleeping porch or a utility porch on the back of the house, either as part of the original plan or added on later. Our basement doesn’t extend under either the office or the dining area so they are likely a later addition. It was also much more common to have a dining room directly adjacent to the living room, with the kitchen the the back of the house, rather than a set up like ours with a large kitchen and dining area. Oh, and did I mention? There are no heating or air conditioning vents in the back section of the house. Given all that, the office and dining area appear to be an addition, although not a very recent one since the walls are the same river sand plaster and the wood floors extend seamlessly from the back bedroom into the office.

It’s possible then that a porch was enclosed at some point. (In fact, in talking with a more recent owner, we learned that our office was actually used as a sleeping porch—it was leased out as a makeshift bedroom to a college student.)

As useful as this room is, it’s still very small and we could never manage to fit more than one traditional desk in it.  The trick then becomes fitting two people and two workstations into one tiny room.