Room Of The Week
Popular Houzz Series
Popular Houzz Series
Appears in
See also
Fun HouzzFrom The ProsHouzz Around The WorldProject Of The WeekStickybeak Of The WeekQuizzesCreatives At HomeAt Home With...Best Of The WeekRoom Of The WeekDesigner Profiles3 Things I Wish My Clients KnewHow Do I...Buyer's GuidesExpert EyeInnovation AlertSo Your Style Is...Spotted!Picture PerfectBefore & AfterBudget BreakdownHome TimeMade Local
Before & After
Before & After: A Clever Concealed Office for a Couple Who WFH
A couple working from home, with different tastes in decorating and in a limited-size apartment. What's not to love?
In a Q&A format, we talk to the designers – and examine the creative thinking – behind some of Houzz’s most loveable rooms.
The wall in the dining area before works.
Brief
- The challenge for this newlywed couple was to fit a home office into their two-bedroom apartment, where both bedrooms were in full use.
- Both Anna and Tom work from home and required separate desk space.
- Anna is a strict minimalist, other than her cookbooks; Tom, on the other hand, is a lover of knick-knacks and memorabilia who has numerous china figurines, a radiogram and records.
- They needed storage space for Tom’s bits and pieces and the office to be out-of-sight within the living space.
Starting point
To create a beautiful dining room with a sense of arrival into the apartment, and workspaces for two people with three computer screens.
To create a beautiful dining room with a sense of arrival into the apartment, and workspaces for two people with three computer screens.
The couple’s first step was to exchange ideas with their designer, Sally Hart, using Houzz Ideabooks. Both Tom and Anna showed Sally projects that inspired them or solutions they thought could work as well as comments on each other’s style and priorities. It also helped them remember what they wanted and why. Sally responded within the Ideabook so they could track all of the requests and ideas.
The dining room, shown here before works.
Key design aspects
Colour palette:
Colour palette:
- Dulux Whisper White.
- White doors are in a satin-finish two-pack polyurethane.
- Desk constructed from solid oak.
What were the challenges you worked around?
- The limitations and constraints of door/hardware weight tolerances and spans made it very difficult to have tall, heavy doors that open wide enough for a desk without inserting a floor track. We didn’t want a floor track as it would hinder the desk chairs from sliding forwards and backwards.
- A solution was achieved using a clever combination of hardware and design.
- Scott Zeller of Zellers, a company that specialises in custom-made cabinetry, designed a system where a track was laid underneath the desk, which guides the bi-fold doors closed and allows for alignment (see next image).
- This bi-fold door solution ensures perfect closure and alignment of the doors, despite the lack of a floor track.
- The desk depth needed to be sufficient for a full-leg stretch if many hours at the desk were likely (pushing the chair outwards means neither person could then reach the keyboard).
- This required at least 650 millimetres, but preferably 700 millimetres of depth. However, the dining area couldn’t sacrifice much space. Therefore, extendable keyboards were used to supplement the depth with the added bonus of an ergonomic typing position.
- They are designed to fit away under the desk. They pull out beyond the 650-millimetre-deep desk to approximately 800 millimetres, then retract back completely to the underside of the desk so the bi-fold doors can close.
- Anna wanted to completely maximise storage, so under-bench shelves and mobile drawer units fill the under-desk space. Being mobile, the drawer units can be tucked away from the bi-fold doors for more leg room, or moved out to double as a seat if Tom and Anna want to sit together for joint tasks.
- Additional storage was factored into the consideration, with the depth of the overall cabinet weighed against the loss of space in the dining room. An overall depth of 680 millimetres gave enough head clearance to have a good quantity of useful overhead shelves, plus additional shelves extending down to the desk on the left and right ends.
- The requirement for no wasted space called for an additional bookshelf to make use of the dead space behind the 300-millimetre-deep display shelves on the left side. It seemed a perfect place for Anna’s cookbook collection since it adjoins the kitchen.
- Finding a place for Tom’s knick-knacks without offending Anna’s minimalist taste was the reason for the open sections at each end of the cloffice. These open sections de-emphasise the ‘display’ aspect of the joinery and subtly compress the vast collection to a curated minimum of similarly sized singular objects. This achieves a sense of Anna’s calm, with Tom’s personal touches.
- These objects are lit by dimmable LED strip lighting and give a museum-quality glowing backdrop.
- The dining table is then centred near the backdrop of ‘panelling’ (which is actually the doors that conceal the work stations). The ‘panelling’ reflects the front-door detail to achieve a stately sense of arrival.
Lack of natural light required task lighting with cable-free switching, so integrated dimmable LED strips with a local switch ensure flexible and convenient illumination.
Why do you think this room works?
Your turn
How clever is this bespoke solution? Tell us what you love in the Comments below. And don’t forget to save your favourite images for inspiration, like this story and join the conversation.
More
Love before and afters? See another clever transformation here with this dramatic Before & After: A Warehouse Apartment Gets a Dramatic Redo
- Both Tom and Anna now have functional, ergonomic, comfortable and durable separate workspaces.
- The office can be completely concealed.
- It makes a beautiful backdrop for the dining space and enhances the living room, while effectively creating the functionality of an entire study – but only taking up 680 millimetres of dining space.
- There is plenty of storage.
- The materials and style harmonises so well with the room’s architecture that the concealed office is almost invisible… yet it boosts the dining-table setting so it’s centre stage for spectacular dinner parties.
Your turn
How clever is this bespoke solution? Tell us what you love in the Comments below. And don’t forget to save your favourite images for inspiration, like this story and join the conversation.
More
Love before and afters? See another clever transformation here with this dramatic Before & After: A Warehouse Apartment Gets a Dramatic Redo
Location: Bellevue Hill, NSW
Who lives here: Tom and Anna, a recently married couple with a young adult son.
Room purpose and size: A concealed home office, known as a ‘cloffice’, measuring around 5.78 x 9 metres
Budget: About AU$30,000