Designing A Dream Home Office

smSmallBiz.com:

As more and more Americans work from home — be it running a business or telecommuting for a job — the home office, which was once relegated to a small corner in a kitchen or perhaps a dank basement, is finally receiving some well-deserved attention.

This week, we’ll take a look at how four crafty business owners are taking their work home:

Joseph Marek — landscape architect and owner of Joseph Marek Landscape Architecture in Santa Monica, Calif.

Design is hardly a foreign concept to Joseph Marek. However, fluorescent lights and sterile white walls certainly are. Seven years ago, shortly after starting up his own landscape architecture firm, Joseph Marek Landscape Architecture, Marek quickly went to work on his own home office — formerly, a 400-square-foot concrete garage.

Despite doing much of the design work himself — namely, the outdoor seating and other garden areas — the project still rang in at around $20,000. That amount, says Marek, included laying dry wall, painting, installing a skylight and windows, building custom desks and shelves, and furnishing the space. To keep costs in perspective, he notes that “renting a comparable-size place would [cost] about $1,600 a month.”

While Marek still jokingly calls his home office the “garage,” the name is just about the only remnant of its dingy former self. Back when it was a garage, “I didn’t want to work; I didn’t want to come out here and do anything,” he says. Today, the paprika-colored stucco structure is not only a fully functional home office with electricity and Internet access, but also “a testing ground for my work,” the architect says.

Tomorrow: John Patrick’s Dream Office

Photo by William Wright.

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