Turning a formal living room into a home office.

I used blue painters tape to mark off the space to get a sense of the size. The ceilings are 9.5 feet, but notice the slope in the front (that turned out to be an interesting challenge)

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Since I’ve never done anything like this before, I took my time to model out everything in Autodesk Fusion 360. This was incredibly useful, as I knew all measurements beforehand

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I bought 2×4 lumber at a local lumberyard in 8, 10, and 14 foot sizes. I also purchased the plywood I needed for the desks and upper cabinets (the latter which I still have to build)

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After cutting everything on my new miter saw, I laid out the large wall on the floor before facing my fears and use a framing nailer to fasten it all

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This is where math comes in. Thanks to the Pythagorean theorem, I couldn’t get the wall upright after framing. So I took off the top plate and clamped it off to the side and hoisted the wall up

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Getting the wall in place was quite a chore, and my friendly neighbor helped me out. Took a lot of brute force, but we got it in place eventually and then squared it up

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The smaller wall was much more manageable in size, but the sloped ceiling took a lot of measurements and trial/error to get perfect

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After the framing, I bought 8 sheets of drywall at a local lumber yard (of which I only needed 5) and cut it up before screwing it in place

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Drywall was another first for me, so I probably cut it into smaller pieces than I should have

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After recutting the top piece at the sloped ceiling to go the full height, everything looked very clean…

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…But then the drywall mudding began and everything turned into a huge mess again. A friend helped out with the taping and first layer, which is probably why it looks decent in the end

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Drywall was definitely my least favorite part of this project. A lot of sanding and layering on the mud made a huge mess. Lesson learned for next time: cover the floor first

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This is after a few days and 4 layers. Everything was smooth and square

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The little wall was a bit more of a challenge to mud completely smooth, as the existing wall wasn’t 100% square to the exterior wall. I had to compensate with more mud. Next up, the door in the background!

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Installing the door was quite easy, except for pushing it in place. We went with 8 foot high french doors, which are super heavy

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The drywall cleaned up nicely with just some warm water and rags. Starting to look more and more like a room!

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Before painting, I actually took the time to lay down plastic drop cloth. This is after the coat of primer

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Two coats of white paint later, everything was neat again. It turns out we didn’t have any of the existing ceiling paint, so I improvised with something that was close enough

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I looked at the existing trim and figured it was simple to recreate. A quick trip to the hardware store and some standard MDF trim later, I got everything to match

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Now that the wall is done, on to the desks. As per the design, I made 3 cabinets underneath each desk out of 3/4 inch plywood

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Here you can see all 6 cabinets. The one without the middle shelf is the cabinet for my full tower PC

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For the top, I laminated a 3/4 inch sheet of walnut plywood to a cheaper one to create a 1-1/2 inch sturdy desk top

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I applied iron-on walnut edge banding to hide the plywood edges. The notches in each top are so the curtains can hang down without bending around the desk top

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I applied 4 coats of satin polyurethane to the tops (1 coat on the bottom) with some light sanding in between each coat for a super smooth and durable finish

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I primed and painted the cabinets white. I used an enamel paint, which was self-leveling. The end result is a very smooth and hard surface, but it took about a week to fully cure

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Here is my wife’s desk installed. I retro-fitted some toe-kicks underneath to raise her desk a bit, as the initial height was too low for her

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At this point we started moving everything down. One problem remained: not being able to close off the space

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I cut some 3/4 by 1/2 inch strips from left over 2x4s to become the window trim. Here you see the difference between big-box 2×4 (right) and the quality 2×4 from the lumber yard

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After cutting everything to length and mitering the corners, everything was ready for paint (after more sanding)

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I bought an HVLP sprayer, as I had more things to spray for the nursery in the end. This saved a lot of time and got a very smooth coat on everything. Here you see the primer on the framing strips

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I glued and nailed in the strips on 3 sides and then cut the 4th strip to exact length to fit in snugly

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Here you see the 4th strip installed, and nail holes filled with wood putty

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And after the 1/4 inch glass panes were in, this project was a wrap! My wife just had her baby shower and I’m excited about finishing this before the baby arrives

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There’s a lot of light from the big window in the home office and all the interior windows and french doors really let that light through to the dining space

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I added RGB LED strips to the back of each desk for some subtle lighting while in the office

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Here’s how it looks

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Here you can see my wife’s smaller PC allowing for more storage. I also swapped the chair casters with rollerblade style rubber ones to preserve the floor

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While the walls are not insulated, the thick glass and strips underneath the doors isolate the room plenty for our purposes

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Ta-da!

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Thanks for following along! Feel free to ask questions or leave other comments!

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