Bedroom Community - setting up a home office

Home Office Computing, May, 2000 by Marilyn Zelinsky Syarto

To create a home office suite, Joanne Bray kicked herself and her husband out of the master bedroom

JOANNE BRAY IS KNOWN FOR THINKING outside of the box. As an international workshop leader, speaker, activist, and counselor on subjects such as women's roles in Catholicism and community-level racial diversity, Bray is usually the first to put a spin on convention--even when it comes to choosing a place for her home office.

Most home-based workers tend to relegate the home office to a small spare bedroom. Bray chose instead to make over the master bedroom suite of the three-bedroom penthouse in Stamford, Conn., that she and her husband moved into in 1999.

"I spend 85 percent of my waking hours in my office, so there was never any question when I saw the apartment which room we would put the office in," Bray explains. "I began to have fun coming up with unusual ways to use a space that was meant for something more traditional, like a bedroom."

Did her husband, Michael Markovits, object to using the luxurious master bedroom, with attached full bathroom, as office space? No, because the 24 by 31-foot room provides space enough for desks, bookcases, and files for both Bray and Markovits (who brings his own work home evenings and weekends).

As a tour of Bray's office space begins, you can't help becoming envious as you notice two things: the abundance of closet space at her fingertips (an added benefit of transforming a master bedroom into a full-scale office) and the never-ending view.

The entrance to the office--an 8-foot-long, 3-foot-wide hallway--features a long closet with bifold doors on one side meant for housing sweaters and clothing. Bray turned that closet into storage space for books and supplies. Once inside the main office area, there's another supply closet with bifold doors, plus a large walk-in closet that's well hidden by a wall in the back of the room.

"The only minor logistical problem of our arrangement is that we have to put most of our clothing in the back closet," says Bray.

But the views from the room's double windows and from the sliding doors that lead to an oversized balcony are what really sold Bray on using the space for an office. The twin vistas supported her need for a place in which she could look out the windows to dream, think, and create ideas and concepts for her workshops and writings.

Master bedroom suites like Bray's typically have more windows than the average bedroom, therefore more natural daylight, which Bray sees as an added bonus. In the summer, she hopes to put a table and chairs on the sky-high, 20-foot-long balcony so she can hold meetings there while taking advantage of her view toward Long Island Sound.

"When I sit in my office, I look out the window and feel like I'm working on the top of a mountain" says Bray. "If we used this room for a bedroom, the views would be wasted, because we don't spend our daylight hours sitting in a bedroom."

The office is simply furnished with a suite of ready-to-assemble, walnut-finished furniture from Sauder that includes two desks, three bookcases, and two vertical files. The local Office Depot charged Bray about $1,500 for the furniture and another $400 for on-site assembly. A row of simple rolling files across the main closet span help keep her supplies neat and orderly.

With this spacious suite Bray achieved her goal in that she didn't add her home office to a bedroom, nor is her bed relegated to a corner of an office. So where do Bray and Markovits actually sleep at night? Right down the hall--in a spare 12 by 13-foot bedroom with two windows and one closet.

SNAPSHOT: Joanne Bray

Profession: Workshop leader, speaker, writer on Catholic issues, and support group leader of New Perspectives, a workshop on racial diversity issues in Stamford, Conn.

Hardware: Apple Power Macintosh 63, Epson Stylus Color 740 printer, Sharp UX-177A fax machine

Software: Microsoft Word, AOL 4.0

Design Mission: To turn a master bedroom suite into an office in order to take advantage of extra storage space, an abundance of natural daylight, and spectacular views