Having my own office eludes me

Several years ago Robert started work on a basement office. It was mostly going to be my sanctuary. A place where I could pay bills, watch Hulu, exercise, nap, knit, and sew. Last fall we got to the point where it only needed carpeting and a closet door but we stopped the project to use money elsewhere. Meanwhile, Zoe decided she wanted the office to be her room so late this summer we spent a weekend moving her down there sans carpeting and closet door. It has a good layout for a bedroom but it has some huge flaws for a room you'd want to call a "bedroom".

1. Uninsulated ceiling. We left the ceiling open and painted it black. This means that anytime someone walks overhead you hear every creak. It also means that when anyone runs the dishwasher or turns on the water at the kitchen sink you get to hear all the water draining through the pipes that come down and across to the sewer.

2. The room's door has a huge glass panel. It's filtered glass, so you can't really see through it but you can see colors and movement. The intention was to keep the area as light as possible.

3. A leaking window. Old layers of paint have made the window nearly impossible to seal. We only found out about this after the rainy season started and every opportunity for Robert to put in a storm window has been cut short by another rainy day.

4. Huge. Fat. Spiders.

Needless to say, Zoe wants to move back to her old room. Aw, but it's not so simple. Once she moved out we made it a foster kitten room and when they left we made it Frasier's room. Frasier sleeps, eats, and poops in that room. We no longer fear stepping on cat diarrhea* on the way down the basement stairs. We let him out when we can watch him but mainly he's in the room with regular human visits. It's like his own little nursing home.

*He's currently on track to go on steroids and we hope this will remedy the problem. He's so very thin; I'd estimate that he weighs no more than 8 pounds. I can't believe he used to weigh more than 16 pounds!

Another issue is she wants to paint the room. The theme is hot pink and zebra prints. Fine. For furnishing. I can't deal with hot pink walls. What I'd like to do is paint it a light, light pink and hand her some black paint and have her do a bunch of her artwork.

A final issue is the closet. She doesn't like it. I think it's an adorable closet. One minor change would be to turn the shelves inside into open shelving in the room by removing some old lathe and plaster and a little carpentry magic ala Robert.

So, the task I intend to complete during the Thanksgiving weekend is to transfer Frasier out of his nursing home and back into regular household living (I'm just going to assume that the steroids work well for him), empty out the room and paint it light pink, have Zoe start some wall mural work, move Zoe's stuff back into the room (and little by little help her accumulate pieces that work for her "dream theme"), and finally, carpet the basement office and actually sit in there and pay bills, file files, and hide.

The office also serves as a guest room and we're having company for Christmas so that's another incentive to get the office back in order.

I think tearing out lathe and plaster is a project I'll just leave to Robert whenever he dares take it on (most likely when Zoe's out of the house; painting murals on someone else's walls).