For about 12 years, I worked across three offices shared with freelancers: we started with a really beat-up space, upgraded to a slightly nicer one, and finished out with a high-quality location. But my fellow independent workers started getting jobs and/or upgrading their houses to have a nice home office, and Seattle office-rental prices went through the roof.

For the last decade, I’ve been in a day-lit basement office—ground level with indirect lighting on my side of the basement—that I’ve slowly expanded the footprint of through reorganization. It currently fits my desktop computer, a Glowforge laser cutter, a 3D printer, a vintage printing press (tiny), a packed bookshelf, and lots of shelving.

But for most of this time, the walls have been pretty grotty looking and my visual environment has been a clutter. I had put opaque film over some of the windows, but not all; some old fabric covered one set and let through less light. I mostly blocked it out because of the amount of work it would take to prep the space and paint it.

It took me until a year into the pandemic, in early 2021, before I’d had enough! I had enough time and energy to do the hard work of pulling everything away from the walls, cleaning them, putting down multiple coats of primer, and multiple coats of paint. (The color scheme had nothing to do with Ukraine, but are two of my favorite contrasting colors.) I also hung a couple dozen photos, original works of arts, and prints that I’ve wanted to have up around me for many years.

I was nearly there last year, but not quite. I wanted to have part of my office set up to record videos and as a pleasant and enjoyable background for videoconferencing sessions and events. This took a bit longer, even though I had many of the pieces. I wound up getting a pull-down green screen (visible in some photos) to work at my desk and obscure the background there. Near the bookshelf, I added an inexpensive controllable LCD panel that clamps to my desk and provides good illumination. I bought a VESA mount for a tiny display I already had—to aid with object photography—with a clamp that let me attach it to a tripod. I also got a laptop tripod so I could work with a laptop in front of me in addition to a monitor.

Now I can record videos in a well-lit environment, have a rich background behind me, and a control center in front of me. You can see the results in these two videos: one, a 10-minute rundown on USB-C and Thunderbolt cables; the other, a live Q&A on a similar topic.

Of course, the reverse view isn’t quite as pretty, just like in most video studios!

The strange additional advantage of having this corner setup is that I can use it as a virtual background. I shot a slightly out of focus picture of this backdrop and use it with a green screen.

It was so effective, I confused the folks at TWiT.tv when I appeared a few weeks ago on This Week in Google—they thought it was my real environment, having seen it previously on video.

It only took 10 years to get here, but I now walk downstairs to my office with a greater spring in my step!

Bonus pic: The secret of my success—child office labor. This is my last great office in the early 2010s.