American’s adapt to change in new and inventive ways.
And Coronavirus has changed the American landscape.
Out are big office buildings and cube farms full of people busy working in their workspace.
In are home offices and virtual learning spaces where families work through the day connected by broadband and Wi-Fi to jobs and schools.
American’s have realized this COVID-19 thing is going to be around awhile and it’s time to get off the kitchen table and for the kids to have a place to concentrate on learning that’s not the front room.
One of the top people locally is Paul LaGrange, a home renovation and energy consultant and creator and host of the Home Improvement Show on WWL.
“Back in March when COVID-19 started, a lot of people were repurposing spaces in their house for work stations for themselves. And then as summer is nearing the end, they’re doing the same things for children for the purpose of educating their kids.”
The need to streamline homes into conducive live-work environments is driving a home improvement and renovation boom never seen before.
LaGrange says home office/learning space conversions run the gamut in size and intricacy.
Most are determined by need and budget.
“If you have a spare room, or even a cubby hole and you’re converting that to a work space, really all you just need is a workstation as most folks are working off of a laptop—not necessarily desktops so you don’t need a lot of space,” LaGrange says. “If it’s just a matter of your child needing a place to put down a laptop and a headset, it really doesn’t require a lot of retrofit, and can certainly be done for a reasonable price.”
Paul says “[Some people] are either adding a room onto their home or they are renovating their house to accommodate the new purpose for different spaces.”
Still, he emphasizes creating a workstation doesn’t need to entail busting down walls or pouring new concrete floors: “The furniture industry is probably going to get a big demand for taking a traditional space—which, sometimes I see people taking their formal dining rooms—and they’re converting that to school rooms to accommodate the need.”
Paul concludes, “It’s more common than you think, a lot of the appointments that I’m going to, you’re always seeing one or two parents working out of their home and multiple kids starting school as well.”