Since I started my new company, OTS Management (Link to website) we have been operating out of Suite 7, 88 Walters Drive, the suite next door to the office of my former partnership King, Oh & Partners.
The office was a typical 1980's office, plasterboard walls, fluoros, grey walls, blue-grey carpet.
It did it's job in the first year of the new company (we commenced on 1st July 2004) but I had always had a strong vision of what I wanted the office to look like, to reflect the vision and values of the company.
In November we briefed a company of shopfitters who had been recommended to me by a client, himself a luxury home builder. Amanda and I chose wall colours, designs and built-in concepts.
For anyone who has ever been involved in renovations, they will sympathise when I ask, "Does anything go right?"
From the start there were delays, but finally we were at a stage where those parts of the office we were renovating were emptied.
The renovations did not encompass the whole office space, but only the front part. We had been operating without a proper reception area as until then, we had shared the reception next door with my previous partners. The front of our office, as you walked in, was simply a large space not unlike a hall.
The renovations covered this entrance "space", an office to the left of it, which was being converted into a meeting room, and a kitchen space to the left of that.
We wanted to split up the large hall, making a smaller reception and waiting area in front, a corridor behind that which in future I plan to install a staircase so that we can access a loft area available in the suite, shut off the kitchen and toilets while putting in new units, and replacing the carpets with floorboards.
The ideas seemd daunting, especially as we were going to continue to work in the office while all this was going on.
Once the furniture was taken out of the space and the bamboo floorboards laid, it started looking as if the plans were going to work out fine.
Then of course, renovation devastation starts. Firstly, the bamboo floorboards looked great - they made the whole space look sleeker and lighter - except that there were great big glue footsteps all the way up and down the stairs outside (for which I am still getting grief from the neighbours, my ex partners). Then I had to leave for Broome on a job so Amanda looked over the work being carried on for a substantial part of the time.
Each tradesman decided that the plans must have been wrong and tried to adjust their part of it. The cabinet makers decided the shelves attached to the built in front desk must have been facing the wrong way (outwards) and should be facing inwards, so they installed it the wrong way round.
The kitchen cabinets were 3 or 4 centimetres too short, and had to be taken away to be completely remade.
The taps had to be shut off while the cabinets were being fixed so we had no water.
The glazier fitting the floor to ceiling glass wall dividing the front space decided we had drawn the plans too short so tried to lengthen the wall - until Amanda pointed out he was walling in the future staircase!
Promised that completion would take a week, the last trade, the painters, were finally out at the end of the third week just before Christmas!
However, the 
end result is great. It is exactly how I pictured it would look, cool, calm, quiet and professional. You expect people to speak in hushed voices and glide through. Our profession can be a stressful one and the choice of lighting and colour of feature walls makes you feel excited, enervated, yet calm.
Now, when you walk into the reception area from the front, you walk into a bamboo timber-floored area that reflects the low wattage downlights and the feature lamp on the reception desk. The reception desk itself is in modern grey and mini-orb fronted. The waiting area has a cafe table and chairs for you to enjoy brewed coffee or tea while you wait. Behind the desk is a frosted grey wall on which you can see a mysterious shadow from the other side.
When you walk past reception (your heels clicking on the bamboo!) you round the glass wall and see what the shadow is from - an antique Chinese horse and rider!
You walk between that and an orange feature wall to my office, or past my office to the meeting room. This room has a chocolate feature wall on which a large Aboriginal painting is framed. The boardroom table is a square chrome and frosted glass affair with white cafe style chairs.
The staff spent the first few weeks standing at the front, admiring the colours and the modern materials - it works!
I love it. I think it provides a real link between our physical space and the way we do business - modern, calm, clean, efficient, yet warm and compassionate.
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