Ron’s Office

This room was the last one in the house to get a make-over. When we moved into the house 14 years ago, all we did was stabilize this room by plastering the obvious damage to the walls, then painting over the wallpaper. You should know that painting over wallpaper is always only a temporary fix. All wallpaper peels eventually. That’s what happened here: it started peeling off in long ugly strips.

My office was in the smaller room right next to this one. In fact, this room had become our junk room — we had boxes of yard-sale stuff stacked up here. But once we cleared that out, I realized I could use the room as my office. It’s a great space. For some reason, I had never considered it. So we got to work. First we had to strip the wallpaper. It was everywhere, including the ceiling. Yuck!


Then I had to wire the room because the little electricity it had was knob and tube.

Next, we plastered it.

Primed it.

Refinished the woodwork and floor. The radiator too.

Here it is furnished. We still have to complete the walnut mantel and some more decoration. The bay brings in great light all day long. At last I have an office to rival Jill’s!

The room houses my tin toy robot collection.

I made a built-in from silverware drawers taken from a dismantled mansion’s butler’s pantry.

Here’s a Victorian magazine stand we mounted on the wall

A little desktop world on my work bench

We installed some cool lighting. We love a big project like this because it calls for all of our skills and resources — and it’s so much fun putting a room together!