spruced by marlene

Well, obviously the biggest advantage of working from home is that I can eat unlimited bowls of Honey Smacks – and nobody can judge me!

Another advantage is that I get to work in this room from now on. I thought I should give you a little tour of the place before the table gets too cluttered with empty cereal bowls, I mean: with tons of work. When I decided to move out of the office space I had rented for the past six months to save on expenses, I knew that I wanted an actual office in my home instead of a small desk behind the couch in the living room where I had previously sat and written. The desk was fine. It was just that the couch was always calling for naps after cereal. I wanted a space that would hopefully motivate me to procrastinate less and not head straight for the couch even on those days when I’d have to catch up on filing, with a big table that would double as a dinner table.

Behold! The table.

I can’t believe I built it myself. Sure, with some expert help from my dad. But still, I drilled, I sanded, I varnished. As much as I enjoyed that work, as much as I love the result, I can’t pretend that I always knew I had the required craftsmanship in me. It was a matter of necessity. Do you have any idea how much a proper table costs? I didn’t, until I started looking for one. After about the fifth time of standing in a shop and thinking “Did that guy just quote me the price for a table or for the down payment for a house?”, I decided to go DIY. I was motivated by seeing that my friends Ari and Rainer had built their own dining room table. They recommended Holz Possling for sourcing the wood, now my favourite shop in all of Berlin. My design guru Steffi spotted some metal table legs at Hay that were just what I had been looking for. All that was left for me to do was come up with the design, buy the supplies and call home: So, dad, how would you feel about a trip to Berlin to build a table? Without his help, this wouldn’t have happened. Thank you, Papa.

The table was actually the last thing that moved into the office.

First came some chairs from vintage furniture shop Magasin that I bought for a surprisingly decent price. Then I matched the old Danish chairs with a new print from Sweden that I found on eBay.

I framed pictures, a mixture of magazine rip outs and my own photographs, like this one I took in Paris a few years ago.

I found good use for that ridiculously large collection of small vases I own.

I still need to put up some shelving for my camera equipment – this is an old Mamiya I inherited from my dad –, two tons of books and all the paper work I don’t want to look at every day.

What else? Ah yes, I’ll have to hang the new copper lamps from Bolia. But apart from that, the office is done. Wanna look at that table again? I do. And since it’s Monday, I should sit down at it and do some work now. Have a good week.