This Old Office - Column

Home Office Computing, June, 2000 by Marilyn Zelinsky Syarto

A Victorian homeowner brings his home office into the present

ONE OF THE JOYS OF LIVING IN A CLASSIC Victorian house is the abundance of rooms, nooks, and crannies that would make great home offices. The catch: updating an antiquated room to handle everyday office functions. That was the challenge Victor Gulotta faced in 1995 when he bought his Newton, Mass., Italianate Victorian home, circa 1871.

"The house just radiated happiness," Gulotta recalls. After moving in, Gulotta and his wife discovered the property was originally owned by a publisher of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the couple's favorite 19th-century poet.

"Although nothing had been modified since the late 19th century, the house was in good shape for its age," Gulotta explains. Still, he chose the least updated room as headquarters for his book publicity firm, Gulotta Communications Inc.

Privacy, he knew, was the biggest requirement for a home office, and the room that was the most private was the least fit for duty--the 14 by 15-foot former storage closet with old wallpaper peeling off the walls. "The room had no electrical outlets, no heat, no phone jack, and only two wall lights converted from gas lamps," he recalls.

While running his business from the living room, Gulotta hired a contractor and began planning a functional workspace that wouldn't compromise the room's original details. He had the ceiling replaced, the wallpaper removed, and the plaster walls skim-coated and painted.

Next, Gulotta had the wood-planked floor painted, then covered with wall-to-wall, commercial-grade carpeting. The bare, slanted floor--a common characteristic of many floors in old homes--had begun gathering too much dust. "Someone should invent a desk chair with brakes on the casters," says Gulotta. "Because my floor is pitched, I tend to roll backward in my chair and crash into my fax machine!"

Next came the installation of a separate dedicated circuit breaker panel. "If the electrical system is not fully updated, all kinds of strange things can happen," he explains. "You can trip the circuit breaker by turning on an iron while the air conditioner is running, for instance."

Gulotta kept the two ancient wall lamps, but added floor and desk lamps to enhance the lighting. Last came the installation of two business phone lines and a third, personal line. Gulotta also had a cable modem installed to free up his fax line.

At that point, the office was ready for business, except for one thing: Because the room had originally been used for storage, it had never been heated. "The thought of installing a separately zoned system was overwhelming and complex," says Gulotta, who worked in the office without heat through the long winter of 1996. "I used an enclosed oil space heater, wore heavy flannel shirts under a jacket, kept my feet covered, and took frequent breaks from typing because my fingers were numb."

But by the winter of 1997, a heating system was installed. The only drawback is aesthetic: The office has a standard heating baseboard, while the rest of the house has elegant and efficient cast-iron baseboards.

Though old houses are known for inexplicable creaks and groans, Gulotta reports very few noise problems. The old, thick plaster walls are well insulated, so sound doesn't travel much from room to room. Perhaps the spirits of Longfellow and his publisher are keeping Gulotta company during the workday in his large, bewitching house.

SNAPSHOT: Victor Gulotta

Profession: Owner of Gulotta Communications Inc., a Newton, Mass.-based book publicity firm

Hardware: 266MHz Hewlett-Packard Pavilion 8180 Pentium II desktop, 500MHz Sony Vaio F450 Pentium III notebook, HP LaserJet 5000 and Epson Stylus Photo 700 printers, Umax Astra 2400S scanner, WebGear Aviator 2.4GHz wireless network

Software: Microsoft Office 2000, Lotus SmartSuite, Adobe PhotoDeluxe Business Edition, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere LE 5.10, Presto PageManager Deluxe

Design Mission: To update and transform into a home office a neglected room in an 1871 Victorian house