OUT-OF-OFFICE EXPERIENCES : Setting Up Shop at Home

You can pet the dog, hug your kid, listen to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony as loud as you want. Because you’re in charge, master of the universe, the boss. Sound like a dream? To more than 43 million Americans working at home in 1994, it’s the new reality. And roughly 66 million people--or nearly half of the adult work force--are expected to be doing the same, either full or part time, by the end of the century.

A byproduct of the recession and corporate downsizing, the rise of the home office has also been fueled by technological innovation: Portable computers, fax machines, cellular phones and answering devices substitute for staff. “The technology allows individuals to be as productive from home as they are in their office,” says Santa Monica radio personality Sarah Edwards, who co-authored the prescient “Working from Home” with her husband, Paul, nine years ago. “Today you can have a Fortune 500-equivalent office in your closet.” Design-wise, the home office offers endless possibilities, from elaborate to makeshift, from Old World to contemporary. Some people make it the focal point of the house, while others transform laundry rooms and garages into work space. Still others, short on square footage, carve out hybrid rooms that can serve more than one function. But whatever it looks like, the home office is rapidly redefining the workplace, allowing more and more Californians to do business surrounded by high-tech equipment and their favorite things.

FAMILY AFFAIR

Perhaps the biggest advantage of having a home office is the freedom it affords. Says Brentwood real estate agent Deborah Bremner, mother of two, with a third child due next month: “You can do all the work you normally do at the office at home, still be a family person and have a life.” Bremner and her husband, James, also a real estate agent, set up their office in a central location, the spot they had originally planned as the dining room, in fact. They sit at a spacious “buddy desk,” created by Los Angeles furniture designer Nick Berman with a teal-leather and sandblasted-glass top. A wall cabinet holds a shared desktop computer monitor (although she prefers using her laptop), TV, stereo and CD/ROM player. Each side of the desk has space for files and separate keyboards. “You might think it would be distracting, but at the Jon Douglas Co. in Brentwood, we work in a bullpen of 40 people. This is much quieter,” Deborah says. And at night, the Bremners’ 11-year-old, Ben, can do his homework at the round end of the desk, and the family dog, Piri, can curl up nearby. As James puts it: “Most people’s lives revolve around the kitchen; in our home, all the activity is in the office.”

BEHIND THE BAR

Los Angeles furniture and interior designer Nick Berman closed his Santa Monica office last year to work out of his Inglewood factory and his Bel-Air house. “I never liked the impersonal space of a corporate office. Being at home is more comfortable,” he says. And besides, the move enables clients to see his furniture in an actual home setting. Berman’s new work space, fashioned out of a wet bar in a downstairs family room, provides peace and privacy, away from the rest of the house, as well as a spectacular view of the Pacific. The original space had been much smaller, but he extended the back bar five feet into the basement area under the house and raised the bar floor 12 inches to take advantage of the view. While the counter remains 42 inches high so that he and clients can look at fabric samples there, behind it are two 29-inch-high built-in desk and drawing areas. To store plans, catalogs and swatches, aniline-dyed shelves were added to a blank wall and a maple cabinet was stationed next to the fireplace. The best thing about working at home for Berman: “The freedom. If you’re in a creative phase of a job, it allows you to go there anytime--whenever inspiration calls.”

IN A BEDROOM

“In a house with four children, one dog, a staff of four and my mother, I sometimes need to escape,” says Rebecka Belldegrun, president of Intertech Corp., an investmentcompany specializing in residential and commercial real estate and hotels. Belldegrun travels on business nearly half the year and balances busy social and home schedules with her husband, so she considers the beige-and-black bedroom office in her Brentwood ouse an oasis of calm. Designed by Beverly Hills architect Frank Israel, it features a massive 6-by-8-foot desk of bird’s-eye maple wrapped in leather. A long exterior wall of windows was built to provide tranquil views of a large eucalyptus grove. On cold days, a free-standing fireplace-entertainment center glows with flames and seems to float in the middle of the room like a giant sculpture. And when Belldegrun wants to get away from it all, including work, she says, “I disconnect the phones.”

OUT OF A CLOSET

Los Angeles furniture designer Sally Sirkin Lewis, president and chief executive officer of the J. Robert Scott & Associates furniture and textile showroom in West Hollywood, created her home office from a 6-by-8-foot walk-in closet adjacent to her gym. Lewis removed the closet door and return walls, then enlarged the space by installing a mirror on the back wall and raising the ceiling to 10 feet. Finally, she added black-lacquer built-in shelves, files and a desk area. Lewis has designed interiors for the rich and famous for more than three decades, and her work frequently appears in Architectural Digest. “If the space is well-thought-out,” she says, “you don’t need that large a room for an office.” A self-proclaimed workaholic whose main office is in Culver City, she works at home in Beverly Hills mornings, evenings and on weekends. “I like to do my textile design here because it’s so quiet and free from interruptions,” she says. And if she wants to get in a little exercise, Lewis has all the equipment just steps away. “I can do the treadmill and read reports at the same time, so I don’t waste a minute.”

SOUTHWESTERN

Furniture designer Thomas Callaway’s idyllic second-floor home office in Brentwood is nestled by giant sycamores and overlooks a waterfall that spills into a courtyard pool below. “The whole concept of the house office for me was to combine an early California rancho with some of the Taos artists’ studios from the ‘30s and their kiva fireplaces and viga-style beams,” he says. “I wanted to create a coziness and a sense of history that has appealed to me for many years.” Callaway, who maintains a traditional business office and showroom for his collection of upholstered pieces, says the Santa Monica showroom is an open-space, group-oriented office with ringing phones and little privacy. “When I get home at night, I have this wonderful personal space surrounded by things that mean something to me. I find I do some of my best designs here.”

CONTINENTAL COUNTRY

Brindell Roberts, owner of The Blue House in Santa Monica and West Hollywood, specializes in continental country furnishings and accessories, so decorating her Holmby Hills office with the same blue-and-white English transferware, Chinese ginger jars and vintage baskets was a natural. An English bamboo armoire from the turn-ofthe-century stores bookkeeping supplies, a wicker basket contains files and a six-tiered Chinese box is used to organize stamps, rubber bands, note pads and pens. Using the office in the early morning and each evening, Roberts updates business records and mailing lists on the computer. “I can’t get any paperwork done at the store,” she says. “There’s too much activity.” The only downside about working at her Holmby Hills house: “My husband, Milton, sometimes has another agenda for me--’Call the exterminator, talk to the gardener ...’ ”

MODERN

Attorney Doug Ring, former president of the L.A. Public Library Commission, has offices in Marina del Rey and West Los Angeles, but the sleekly modern office at his house in Brentwood is his workplace of choice. Architect Tracey Loeb of Forma Architects in Santa Moncia designed the space, knowing that Ring needed a larger-than-average desk and wanted something made of granite. So the former sculptor created a three-piece, U-shaped desk of stainless steel topped with Ring’s favorite stone. “The trick was to make something big that doesn’t look like it consumes the space,” Loeb says. Now Ring can spread out files at will: “I can be as comfortable as I want to be without offending anybody. It’s 100% my space.” As a lawyer, he says, working at home makes sense. “If I’m doing research on Lexis, the legal database, whether I’m sitting at home or in the law library doesn’t really matter to the client.”

VICTORIAN

Bryn Bridenthal, vice president of media and artist relations at Geffen Records, worked 12- to 16-hour days at the company’s West Hollywood headquarters until she set up a home office. “I cut the time by being fully equipped at home. Here, I can at least have the illusion that I’m having a personal life,” she says. Her office technology inclues a laptop computer with a modem to tie her into work, a fax, a printer and an electronic organizer which keeps track of her appointments, as well as several phone lines. Laid out by Bobi Leonard Interiors to do double duty as both home office and dining room, the space is furnished with an old oak table from her husband’s family. When Bridenthal is in work mode, the table serves as her desk and a vintage armoire that belonged to her aunt holds office supplies. Turn-of-the-century reproduction Vienna art plates decorate the walls; a lawyer’s cabinet to the right of the desk is filled with Russian lacquer boxes and antique silver. Says Bridenthal about her Mar Vista home office: “I like to have the things I love around me.”