Working from home has become as ordinary as having a job in the first place. No one blinks at a request to go remote part time, because traditional separations between work and home are softening.

But what if you must live and work under the same roof full time?

Jerry Zremski, bureau chief for the Buffalo News and a former National Press Club president, confronted this reality.

“For years, we had a two-reporter, plus intern, bureau in the National Press Building, but in March 2010, I started working at home. My employers felt it made financial sense,” he said, sitting behind his spacious white desk.

“It was a big sacrifice. This was a guest bedroom,” he said gesturing around the 10-by-12-foot bright and airy room. “Now I give up my bedroom for guests.”

Years ago, Zremski had renovated his two-bedroom Washington condo in Logan Circle. So he brought back Natalya Mumzhiu with NM Design Studio and asked her to rethink the second bedroom.

“I wanted it to look like an office, because if it was just me and my laptop at the kitchen table, it wouldn’t feel like work,” he said.

Mumzhiu placed the desk perpendicular to the windows “so he could look outside all the time with just a turn of his head,” she said.

“I told her I needed a lot of room for files, and she said, ‘I’ll invent something,’” Zremski said.

She made a desk from an Ikea kitchen countertop and set it over three file cabinets. She built wood shelves onto the walls and covered cabinets with frosted glass doors. “Glass creates a peaceful atmosphere and tricks the eye, making the space look bigger than it really is,” she said.

“This is an office 100 percent. If you looked just at this room, you’d see an office and never guess it was in a condo,” he said.

Artist Larry Kirkland designs monumental site-specific installations for institutions around the world. His 40-foot-high bronze doors, etched in Latin verse from the first page of Genesis in the Gutenberg Bible, form the entrance to the new Museum of the Bible in Washington.

He conceives these works in a light-filled double-garage-sized studio — designed by architect Michael Lee Beidler — that joins his Washington house with translucent glass pocket doors. “So I keep the light between the two spaces,” Kirkland said.

“The space is magnificent for my private working world and our home life,” he said. Kirkland lives with his partner, Brendan Doyle. “We transform it for dinner parties and holiday meals,” he said.

Roommates, partners, even spouses can sometimes be problematic. “I think if one works at home, you have to separate your places and be disciplined. Now that Brendan is home more often, he’ll barge in and say, ‘Let’s have lunch.’ But I don’t want lunch. My idea of lunch is to stand at the kitchen sink, eat half a sandwich and not dirty any utensils so I don’t have to worry about cleaning up.”

Edmond van der Bijl, an entrepreneur, innovator and artist who paints, sculpts and creates video, also contends with family at home.

Occasionally, he rents a studio, but mostly he works from the Washington house he shares with his wife, Arianna, and two small children.

“I try to set up a little corner in a room that’s dedicated to me, where I can lock the door. But it’s not a private office or a cocoon. People walk through,” he said.

“As we speak, I can hear my son crying, and it’s killing me. Parenthood makes your life less comfortable, but artistry isn’t about being comfortable. It’s about stretching your creativity and powers of observation and getting comfortable with things not being perfect.”

Some people don’t even try to separate work from home. Ann Lauer, who works in the basement of her Baltimore house, is one of them.

“My work is always around. Customers call me all the time, evenings, weekends, holidays and occasionally at 7:30 in the morning,” said Lauer, who has been weaving, caning and repairing antique chairs for 40 years. “I’m super-disciplined. I get up and start working. But I like my work, so it doesn’t bother me. And I have an active social life.”

Zremski tries to demarcate the end of a working day with a distinct break. He goes to the gym or meets friends. “It’s difficult to really make the separation between work and home, especially when the commute between my bedroom and desk is 10 seconds. The unavoidable result is that the personal blends with the work,” he said.

Van der Bijl said: “The entrepreneurial nature of working out of the house forces you to make the most of situations that aren’t always ideal, but hustling to be creative elicits the best of people.”

Audrey Hoffer is a freelancer.