The Community Coworking Room, Design Choices and Where to Find Pieces

I found out in mid-April that an office space that I rent out to an entrepreneur was unexpectedly not getting renewed at the last minute. Typically I know what office spaces will be available to transition them and find new tenants a few months prior to their yearly April 1st renewal date. My lease is year to year so that’s how I structure my leases with coworkers too and I try to give a 30 day reminder ahead of time in early March. Needless to say, it began a game of private offices musical chairs and a lot of hustling to rent out the open offices to new coworkers as others moved into other open offices in the building. One of my tenants, a therapist, moved across the hall which meant this space (the only one suitable in the building for a dedicated classroom space) would be available starting May 15th.

I took a chance and decided to make this space both the classroom and new communal coworking space for women who didn’t need a private dedicated office but still wanted a space here. I got the keys to this office space on May 15th and worked quickly to get it painted, designed and assembled and worked tirelessly over the past 2ish weeks to tie up all the loose ends and manage a million tiny details and get it all done. Nothing like a crazy deadline to get that ADHD dopamine in the high gear needed to actually make it happen.

During that same time period I met with a dozen+ different women, most of who are all now coworking members of this space that will join the six others that have private offices here, all in rooms tucked away behind the gift shop.

Here are some photos I took of the finished, final results. If you scroll to the end you’ll see the before photo from two weeks ago. If you’re attending a future class you’ll get to see it in person. It’s been so fun running into new faces and learning more about each person here just in the two days this upstairs space has been activated and “open”. I also love to see existing coworkers making connections with new ones too. The gift shop will maintain its same hours of Wednesday-Sunday 11am-5pm, this is just another behind-the-scenes facet of the space that customers don’t get to see very often, if at all.

The Before of the Room:

Where to Find Some Of the Pieces From This Room:

I was on a limited time frame and budget so sourced a lot of my stuff from one spot and quicker than I would have in another scenario. Typically, I would add in vintage things and used pieces and more unique and special artwork, as well as source from a variety of big box and small businesses.