Ask DJ Lyons: Home Office Renovations Completed

Phew! A job that was originally only supposed to take 3 or 4 days took nearly 4 weeks. Finally, the home office renovations in our little log cabin has been completed. Thank goodness for that!

Should this be the first hub you have seen on the topic, here is the overview.

The room that doubles as my office and dressing room bowed toward the center. My husband and I figured this was because the ground had shifted underneath this particular part of the house. I would sit down in my rolling computer chair and roll down a mini hill away from the computer desk. Then I would have to use my hands and feet and kind of climb back up this hill with my chair so that I could be situated in front of the computer desk.

Another big challenge in this room was that there were two built-in chest of drawers in the room. Mice and wooly caterpillars would find their way into the drawers leaving me souvenirs of holes in some of my clothes and mice droppings, etc. I finally had to put all the clothes into rubbermaid bins inside the drawers. Later, I would find mice droppings all over the lids of these containers. Plus, even though I put multiple dryer sheets inside each bin, the clothes would come out smelling all musty.

To get to my tiny clothes closet, I would have to walk sideways and almost stand on tiptoe to get to the clothes. Putting laundry away was not very much fun as a result.

To make matters worse, when I first moved in this house the fall of 2008, I noticed that there was a horrible stench in the room like a critter had died underneath the house. Once the floor was torn up, that suspicion was confirmed. We found a dead squirrel carcass underneath the floor. That was sad and quite mysterious. If the squirrel could find his way in, why could he not get back out?

You probably get the idea that I did not care for this room very much. I left my desktop computer in this room and took my laptop into the den and mostly worked in there. My husband was not thrilled about that as my paperwork would pile up in there as well.

We were thrilled when we found out that Tommy and Dal, two people who have done a lot of work on our house, were willing to tear up the floor and redo the room for an extremely reasonable price. Originally, they were going to do this late in the summer of 2010. Since I was scheduled for a double mastectomy on August 11th and was not supposed to lift anything heavier than 5 pounds for a few weeks, we decided to wait until mid-fall. Then Tommy got caught up in a constuction job that lasted him until past Christmas. They were finally ready to start in early February 2011 when he got a full-time job that has no days off until April. It starts at 2 p.m. in the afternoon. So they only could work 1 1/2 hours to 2 1/2 hours per day.

FYI - I am completely cured from the Stage 3A Breast Cancer. I thank God, my doctors, my family and friends, and all the people who prayed for me for that.

To the right, you can see the before pictures. The guest bed was built-in as well. You could not make the bed on one side. The few times I slept in this bed when my husband had a bronchial condition that I did not wish to catch, I would wake up with the covers on the floor. I was happy that part of this job would consist of the two built-in chest of drawers and the bed to be taken out of there permanently. Woo-hoo!

So you and I both can appreciate the after look even more, here are some of the highlight pictures of the during process. They are pretty self-explanatory, especially if you read the picture captions.

The one thing that might not be self-explanatory is the first picture. It turns out that the reason why the room bowed toward the center is that there were broken tree limbs holding up the floor. I might have walked in one day and fallen through. Thank goodness we got all of this taken care of before that had a chance to happen.

Here is my completed room. It doesn't even look like the same place.

I realize it is a very busy room. You can probably see that I am a lover of room organizers of all type. One of the things I love is being able to have all my eclectic interests spread out in a neat and organized way. This room is now probably my favorite room in the house. I teased my husband that he will have to lay a trail of Dove Dark Chocolate pieces to get me out of this room. I absolutely adore it! I feel like a proud parent presenting my child to the world.

Here are some of the features:

1. My laptop computer that I use to type my hubs and other writing pieces.

2. A desktop PC that I have had for several years that I use for my websites and when using Photoshop, etc.

3. A very old Macintosh that takes 3x5 floppy disks. It does NOT have internet access; however, it has a lot of my family history photos and conflict resolution curriculum stored there. I have an extension I can attach so that I can transfer files from the Mac to my PC as needed.

4. The shawl on the back of my computer chair is a prayer shawl made for me by my cousin-in-law. She sent it to me before I went through my first chemo treatment.

5. The scarf on the front of my computer desk came from Egypt. It was sent to me by a dear friend who was teaching over there for a couple of years. She is back in the states now.

6. As you can see, I am a big fan of angels.

7. I am also a Tigger fan. I got that in Disneyland when I was 20. He's my buddy who has gotten me through a lot of things.

Thanks for taking this journey with me. I have loved the whole process. I glory in being able to work in such a pretty room that truly does reflect my personality.

Have a wonderful day! I hope your dreams come true. I know this particular dream has definitely come true for me.