Home Improvement

A den, study or home office should be protected from house hold noise and traffic. Just how you protected you want it to be depends on the work you’ll be doing and on your powers concentration. Some people need tomblike silence and blank brick walls to get their thoughts flowing; others prefer a bit of background babble and a window with a view. If you plan to bang away at a typewriter until dawn you’ll want to protect the rest of the house hold from your racket, either by distance or by sound absorbent materials like insulation or acoustical tiles. A wall of books will help deaden sound too and all you need is home improvement. (more…)

As comfortable as an old shoe, as handsome as a leather chesterfield-that’s the essence of a den.

More casual than a study, more private than the family room, the den depends on décor and furnishings to create the right atmosphere. The room should cater to your comfort. Overstuffed chairs, recliners, ottomans to prop up your feet, warm pools of light reflecting off (more…)

“What I really want for an office,” confided one home owner “is the world’s largest roll top desk. One of those old fashioned. Aristotelian type affairs with a pigeon hole for every conceivable category of office chore. Then I could let the desk systematize my work and I could roll down the top when I couldn’t stand looking at it. Maybe it would do my bookkeeping for me.” (more…)