Best/right workflow for 'solo' use, with a remote site?

[Ben DJ]

I just got started with bzr.  I've got local repos setup,
check-ins/outs are working as expected.

Starting to explore distributed use (new to me; used to central-SVN server).

I'm not clear as to what the "best way" to manage my setup is -- and
whether I should treat it differently to take any/some advantage of
distributed features.

My setup's pretty simple (atm):

   One local box, with my entire dev environment on it.
   One remote box, user for a production website, with pre-existing website.

Until now, I've been developing ON the remote box's files.

Now, I want to create a working env on my local box, starting with a
copy/clone of the remote webserver's data files, do all dev and
version mgmt locally, and then push chosen versions into production on
the remote box.

I've seen steps for creating a bzr repo from scratch, and from a
preexisting local dir, but, again, am not clear how to best handle the
remote's files.

Should I create/maintain bzr repos on BOTH boxes, and somehow 'sync'
them using the distributed capabilities?
Or, instead, mount the remote locally via sshfs and treat its files as
local to my local dev env?

Any suggestions/pointers as to the right way to manage this would be
appreciated!

BenDJ