Our Temporary Home Office Setup


As you all know by now, our basement flooded in September. Personally, I was rarely in the basement, but Finn spent most of his waking hours down there.

Finn's work station

Ever since the pandemic started, Finn has been working from home, which has worked out really well for our family. No commute time means more time spent with the kids. We’ll take it!

Our basement flood

Since our basement is currently a construction zone, he has been unable to work down there. That means we’ve been bunking together up in my home office!

My Office Before

I adore my home office. We DIY’ed the most gorgeous built-ins in here; I have a large spacious desk; and the room gets oodles of natural light. On my work days, I light a candle, turn on the tunes, and spend hours working away. It’s the ideal setup.

Our Temporary Home Office Setup

Our new temporary home office setup
Our new temporary home office setup

Well, now things have gotten a bit squishier and louder around here.

Our futon in the office

We ended up moving our faux fiddle tree to storage and we placed our futon underneath the window.

Finn's temporary work from home setup

In its place, Finn now has a temporary home office setup with a folding table and all of his monitors, headphones, and laptops. We tried out another folding table that we had and the weight of the monitors was too much for it! This one was an old Costco find and it’s been sturdy.

finn's new temporary home office setup

We were able to salvage his office chair from the flooding wreckage and I’m so happy we did because it wasn’t cheap and he sits in it all day long.

Finn enjoying our temporary home office setup

All in all, he really likes his little nook over by our office closet.

Our pretty home office

It’s a lot brighter in here and I think he enjoys being out of the dark and dingy basement.

Working In The Same Room

Our temporary home office setup

Many of you have inquired as to how it’s really going, working side-by-side. I’d give it a solid B. We have more than enough room in here, with our individual desks, and we both focus on our tasks and don’t goof off too much. The only problem is that Finn has a million meetings a day, so he is constantly on calls! I don’t know how corporate people get anything done when they have so many meetings all day. Now I understand why Finn often has to log in a few hours of work at night. That’s the only time he doesn’t have a scheduled meeting!

Finn on calls during the day

I don’t have too many calls throughout the week, so we’ve only run into a handful of times when we’re on the phone at the same time. In that case, it’s very loud in here and one of us will usually take our call elsewhere. It’s hard for me to remember what it used to be like in a noisy office with lots of people on the phone all at once! It seems like a million years ago!

The Status of The Basement

The status of the basement

As for the basement, it is still an empty construction zone. I’m planning a big blog post about what we’ve been doing since the flood. Mostly, we’ve had lots of experts out here to see what we should do in terms of the sewer backup prevention methods and waterproofing. We have multiple bids and estimates to get through before we can start to think about rebuilding.

The status of our basement

I’ll have a blog post that outlines all of our various options coming soon.

A New Office Space For Finn

Potenial new office space for finn

We are trying to see this as an opportunity to create an even nicer basement than we envisioned back in this blog post. Most notably, we hope to take a portion of a wall out and finish part of the storage room. That space would then be a dedicated home office for Finn. He is really excited about that idea, but it’s all still in the works!

Home Office Sources

Our home office setup

Hardwood Floors // Wall Color: Benjamin Moore โ€œBallet Whiteโ€ // Trim Color: Valspar โ€œSimply Whiteโ€ // Built-In Color: Valspar โ€œChimney Smokeโ€ // Built-in decor sources in this blog post // Drawer Hardware // Cabinet Hardware // Chandelier // Wall Mural // Rug // Floor Lamp  // Leather Pouf // Oak Desk // Office Chairs // Hanging Planter // Futon // Web Cam //  Monitors // Monitor Mount // Clip on Light // Desk Pad // Wireless Keyboard & Mouse // HDMI Splitter 

Wish Us Luck!

Our home office setup

In the meantime, wish us luck as we navigate our new temporary home office setup, working side-by-side. It certainly has made for a lot of bonding with my hubby…

Finn in our home office
I can’t leave this guy alone for 2 seconds with a camera and remote…

More Home Office Blog Posts

Casey


The Year of Casey

Hey there!

Iโ€™m Casey Finn, the voice behind The DIY Playbook. I’m a Chicago gal teaching you how to design, DIY, and maintain your home…by yourself! Learn more about me right here.