New Home Office Coming Soon!

I am excited. Super-duper excited! If I could do back flips I would; I’m that excited.

(Did I tell you I was excited?)

We are going to redesign my home office over the next 3 months. It’s going to take some work but I am super-excited to finally have the wheels in motion. As you know by now, I am an organization freak and while my office is organized, it could be much better with some changes.

I live in a really nice area of Miami, an older suburb where the streets are quiet and you don’t hear car horns or sirens! What this means is, my house was originally constructed a long time ago and was “added to” over the years. So, my house has charm but the inside is like mixing various chinaware. My office was one of the additions and I believe it was actually a balcony and bedroom that were evidently merged. My office is supposed to be the second master bedroom (it has the master bath and a small walk-in closet). However, I face a few challenges:

1) Because it was an extra, the owners never put central air conditioning into this room and likewise the windows slide horizontally so a window A/C unit is not feasible. What do I have? A portable AC unit (you know; one of the ones where the tubes go out the window). This is not efficient by any means, even with the silver tape stuff that the A/C man did. I am sure that air is escaping and, likewise, my office could never get really cold.

2) Because part of the room was a balcony at one time, there are tons of windows on one side of the office (and I never bothered to put up curtains or shades!). This side of the office just happens to be facing east. That equals yucky mornings.

3) Since I have the portable A/C unit, it takes up valuable floor space.

4) I have 2 servers which I don’t use actively but are in my office and need to stay online for the company, so these take up space.

5) I don’t have enough desk space to add any more monitors (and I need more monitors).

6) My cables are a mess and not as organized as I would like them to be.

7) A bunch of other miscellaneous stuff.

So, over the next 3 months this is what we are going to do:

1) Install a ductless/split A/C unit in my office to get rid of the portable and to open up space.

2) Install curtains.

3) Get rid of my 3 desks that I have and have a complete built-in unit installed which will wrap three walls of my office (north, east and south) in a U shape (ooooh tons of desk space!).

4) Run my cables nice-and-neat throughout the office.

5) Upgrade my main pc from 2 monitors to 4 monitors (there is a technical challenge here and I am going to need to ask for help at the end of this post).

6) I was contemplating getting a Drobo Pro and replace my Drobo, but I think I am going to get a Drobo #2, to solely back up my Drobo #1. (Any comments, opinions or suggestions? I’d love to hear them.)

See, for me this is all super-exciting because there is nothing I like more than a clean and organized workspace. I feel more efficient every time I clean my office, so imagine having everything exactly as I want it!

Now, on to the technical challenges (and since I have a lot of “techie” friends, I am imagining they can help).

1) When I installed my second monitor, my brother was here and I forget exactly what he said but something along the lines of: “Thank God you were not upgrading to 4 monitors! This would be a nightmare” and then something about “dang video cards”. Now I know he installed a second video card when he installed my second monitor. What do I need to know/do/have before I bring in 2 more monitors? (Help welcome).

2) Does it make sense to have a Drobo #2 backing up a Drobo #1 (they would both be on Drobo Share’s) or is that stupid? (Is there maybe a better way to do it?)

3) One thing I have noticed about my monitors is everything is so small. I have played with settings and the zoom button on my keyboard and it works but some logos look distorted and having to zoom a page in every time I open a browser is painful. Also, I changed some settings where text on web pages show larger, but then it distorts how the website looks, so it’s very problematic when I am testing various sites. Yet at the same time, I am not getting younger and I need larger text so my eyes can last all day.

I welcome feedback and comments and I also welcome you to check back to follow my posts on the renovation. I will be posting before and after pictures (and in process pictures) as well.

Cheers,

Related posts:

1. Home Office: Post 3: 50% Done
2. Update on Home Office
3. Incorporating Outsource Staff into the Routine of Your Office