The Great Office Changearound – Part 1

I have had something of a frantic week, each day has been a series of appointment after appointment of both a personal and professional nature.  Blogging has taken something of a back seat, with only my Twitter feed(s) getting regular updates.  Review fans will be pleased to hear that I have a review of the long awaited Ghostbusters Blu-ray coming next week.

Regular readers will be aware that I am in the midst of expanding my business, and I’m very pleased to say that everything is going well so far.  I’m busy every day, and money is coming in and you can’t ask for much more than that!
I have had two major projects on the go for the last few months, one to get the business web site fully operational (this is currently in a state of flux as I’ve been so busy with work that I haven’t been able to update it), and the other is redecorating and refitting the office at home.

As you can see from this photo, there is an awful lot of equipment crammed into a very confined space.  When it’s just me working on my own it isn’t too bad, but when I have equipment coming in for customers to be configured before going out again it is a little like being in a crowded lift and you can’t move until someone gets out.

Hardly ideal.  So a few weeks ago we made serious preparations for the rather massive task of getting the room sorted out.  Like many fellow geeks I have a lot of stuff.  An awful lot of stuff, and when the room is cleared out everything literally fills up the entire house.  There are cupboards and shelves crammed full of computer media, DVDs and games.  If it can be pressed onto a disc, chances are I have dozens, if not hundreds of them.

The key factor in reclaiming space that would mean I could actually work would be to get rid of one of the desks.  I’ve had the current ones for many years, but they are just too wide and bulky, and trying to squeeze in multiple PCs, a Mac and the games consoles has simply become unworkable.

We took a trip to Ikea and decided on a single, large desk that will be placed under the window.  This would be large enough to house the 2 24″ Samsung TFT monitors, and if we are really lucky the iMac as well.  If the Mac can’t be fitted in, it will be offered up for sale.  Where that sits in the pantheon of things at the moment is unknown.

The games consoles would then move to their own dedicated TV stand, separating the room for work and pleasure. I did toy with the idea of moving the consoles up into the loft with the retro kit, and having a couple of Velux windows installed up there.  As with all loft/attic spaces it gets unbelievably hot up there during the roughly five minutes of summer we get each year.  The failing with that plan was it would cost several hundred pounds to do this.  So that was an obvious no.
I wanted to create an environment that I would be happy to do both work and rest in.  At the moment the green walls feel like they are coming in on me, and I don’t feel at all happy or creative when I am in there.

We decided on Caramel Cream paint from Homebase, got the supplies in and ordered the furniture from Ikea.  This is due to be delivered next Wednesday, so it was time to leap, or perhaps gently saunter into action.

On Thursday evening we stripped the room entirely.  All told it took just under three hours, and by the time we were done the entire house was filled with clutter.  There was so much stuff that we couldn’t even sit down on a sofa.  The picture above is how the lounge looked halfway through.

By the end of the evening, Cullen IT was running off this lonely Sonicwall and Netgear wireless access point!  With only my laptop propped on the window ledge as I gave e-mail support to a customer with internet connectivity problems!

Fortunately by the time I got home from work on Friday afternoon, Sally being the gem that she is had already done all the prep work and cutting in.  All I had to do was bust out the paint roller and get cracking.  Thanks to it being such a warm day as soon as one wall was finished, it was already dry.  Good job as well because covering green with cream doesn’t work too well, even for a supposedly one coat paint.  But I had two coats of paint on the walls by five o’clock!  Then all that was left was for us both to cut in a second time and stop for dinner.

Then the really difficult task began.  The one of trying to fit everything back in, or at least some of it on a temporary basis.  Due to new furniture being delivered in under a weeks time, I needed a temporary “lash up” with at least one PC, the NAS box and a couple of screens.  Not being a massive fan is spending out a lot of money, Sally hit upon a brainwave for the entertainment unit, rather than buy a new one from Ikea we had one in the loft that was hardly ever used with all the old consoles on it.  It was bought for when we had a widescreen CRT TV (the bad old days – pre-HD!) but was perfect for what I wanted.  There is enough shelf space for the Denon amp, PS3 and Xbox 360 and it was sat a few feet above us.

Very wearily we dismantled the stand and brought it down, and did a temporary placement check to make sure everything worked.  This is the net result (this photo was taken the day after).  Everything works just fine, but my rear speaker cables weren’t long enough.
That was it for Friday, we collapsed in an exhausted heap at this point.

On Saturday morning we were up bright and early (well perhaps not so bright) and after bacon sandwiches, headed out to Boscombe and our nearest branch of Richer Sounds.  These guys are great, quality merchandise at great prices.  They can’t always beat the online pricing but if you need something AV related in a hurry they are always my go to guys.  Richer is also one of the busiest shops you will ever see.  At 10am when we walked in seconds after the shop opened they already had perhaps half a dozen customers, and the phone was ringing off the hook.

We swiftly exited with 25 metres of Cambridge Audio cable and I soon had the rear speakers sat on the floor, cabled up and tested just right.  Really we need new stands for the front and rear speakers, how that will play out this week I don’t quite know.  But for now they are sat here like this!

The last thing we did on Saturday was to get the main desktop PC up and running once again.  I had to image my old SBS 2008 server which is being sold next week, do a little customer tech support and then find a home for all my stuff.  Fortunately we managed to clear 40% of the trouble right away, relocating a storage cupboard into the hallway so several hundred DVDs didn’t have to find a new home!

And this is where part 1 of the office story ends.  Next Wednesday we will take delivery of the new furniture and when everything is finished, I will report back.  There is also a set of Flickr photos available showing the whole nightmare in far more depth that is right and proper.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Category: General, Personal, Site News