Main St. Office Reveal Part 01

Today is the day! We finally have ALL of the details complete in the office - so much so that we could finally schedule our shoot with the fabulous ladies of Public 311. There are so many details and spaces to unpack, and today we are starting with the team's desk area and my office!

As a reminder, this is where we started. Gorgeous, right?

We took this space over from a hair salon, which, by nature, is typically very open in floor plan, and has an overabundance of plumbing. Our main concern was finding a bigger space that we had room to grow into, since we outgrew our first office within one year. Closing up the plumbing was going to be something to plan for, but the square footage and location really sealed the deal for us.

Shout out to the team for dealing with less than ideal working conditions through the renovation! Boxes were desks for a brief period, and construction was going on around us for months before we finally got to this point. Thank you for dealing with this ladies!!

And I don't want you to think we didn't run into any kind of hiccups. This is photo proof that I had to call in reinforcements (i.e. my husband, my father in law above, but plenty of other unphotographed others) to create the desk partitions instead of relying on the construction team when we were getting ready for our open house last fall. This helped me cut a few costs but still get the same look!

Last minute construction projects are good bonding experiences - just FYI if you ever are down to the wire ;)

It's hard to imagine now exactly how many hours I thought about where these desk stations would go in the new office. The window to the right of the stations is a street facing window, and there is a good amount of pedestrian traffic. I wondered if this would be distracting, or if the natural light would override that consideration.

I always came back to my own previous firm experience, where the owners also had retail space incorporated into their office. The desk stations were situated behind a curtain with no natural light, with simple desks, metal chairs, and concrete floors. I remember how uninspired I was working in that environment, and I didn't want that for the team.

Just as we believe well designed spaces enhance your every day experience of your home, we also believe that about your work place, and I'm infinitely happy we went with this experience.

We compromised a bit of the retail space by incorporating the desks into the open floor plan, but the benefits outweigh that for the team at this point. We're working through what retail hours will look like so they don't get distracted by people shopping.

We played with putting the desks in small groups rather than all along one wall, but that severely limited the retail space we could have, and the amount of furniture and vendors we could showcase in the office. This way, each station has its own storage drawer, a comfortable and beautiful leather office chair, and a bit of a partition to focus on their own work space.

If you want to see the floor plans we considered, have a look at this project progress post from last year!

We built to grow from the beginning, so half of the stations are open for people to come in and out if needed, while Kimberly, Tara, and Tia have permanent stations to themselves. We are in the process of hiring though, if you want to claim one of these open desks! Having monitors hung was a non-negotiable to have a larger screen to see plans and design boards, instead of hunching over a laptop for hours and hours a day. Save your posture people!

Those partitions turned out beautifully - thank you again to my family for hustling in the 11th hour to get those done. The painted arches are done in Benjamin Moore Stone Hearth.

Warm luxury vinyl plank flooring replaced the concrete floors to give the office a cozier, homey feel. I also wanted to incorporate arches into the space, and painting them at each station was an economical way to incorporate these softer curves into the space. My mom surprised me with an arched glass door into my private office, after I said I didn't need to splurge on that (thank you Mom!!), so they all really came together!

With this office, I knew that I needed a separate space, even though I love sitting out with the team. We waited for the permits to build this little space in for quite a long time, but it was absolutely worth it! I would find myself being distracted throughout the day being part of everything everyone was working on, rather than overseeing the big picture things I need to stay on top of in addition to client projects.

I will say having that space to take calls, work undisturbed, and close the door has helped so much with leaving work at the office and not having to take it home because I was distracted all day. I do appreciate that we have extra stations out in the open when I do want to be collaborative, but having the private office was 100% worth all of the waiting with the city.

Stay tuned in the next few weeks for the rest of the office reveal! What space are you most excited to see?