(Note: My good camera was left at my mother’s house and I wound up using one that was nearly 10 years old. I’m really sorry about the crappy pictures. -_-)
We have finally finished reorganizing the office. Actually, the part that took so long was waiting for the braces to dry (I painted them so they would blend in more). After I coated them in spray paint, we cleaned the room out completely. I vacuumed, we rearranged the furniture, and then began moving things back into the room…throwing out what we didn’t need (mostly USB cables to electronics that died or broke years ago…some of that crap was before we even got married).
I have tons of pictures.
This is what the room originally looked like. I didn’t even bother trying to clean it for the picture, because that would be lying. It looked like this for weeks. The problem was that I was bringing most of my projects into this room and there was really just no room for me to work. This was the result.
There was so much crap shoved underneath that bed. Weights, Halloween decorations that I forgot to put in the closet, shoes (not all of them belonged to us), books, the box filled with cables that I mentioned earlier. It was terrible.
So I went to my mother’s for a few days, came back, and informed Zach that the office was getting a make-over and he was going to help me because I needed the man power. My first rule of action: getting rid of the bed. And I didn’t care how.
First, I offered it to friends, which was a long shot. But friends and family take priority. When they didn’t need/want it, I turned to Craigslist. I put an ad up asking $20 for the whole thing. Really, I would have given it away, but Zach wanted to try and get something for it (not that I blame him). Within an hour, we had a taker. It turned out he only needed the mattresses, but since we didn’t have a vehicle big enough for the bed, he very kindly took it and donated it to charity for us. I was really glad we were able to give it someone who could use it, because I hate throwing things like that out if it’s still in good shape.
Once the bed was gone, I was left with this. Easy. Zach took care of the things that had been under the bed, and I started moving books and other items into the living room. Which means that for a few hours, this is what our living room looked like:
Ugh.
It was worth it, though. As I said, we moved the furniture to where we wanted it to make it easier when we put up the shelves and bought my new desk. (Yes! I got a new desk!) And this is what we lived with for a couple days:
Getting there!
Monday morning, I went to Target and bought this desk. We looked everywhere for something nice and this was my favorite, by far. It looks like something from Restoration Hardware, but without the price tag. 😀 Putting it together was extremely easy. I had more trouble getting it out of the box than I did building it. So I did that and then set it up under the window. Which the cats love.
For now, I’m using a metal chair as my desk chair. I have a chair that I left at my Mom’s house, but I’m going to see if I can fit it in my car the next time I visit her.
And then came the shelves. Finally. It took Zach five hours and yet another trip to Lowe’s (for a new power drill) to finish the shelves. But he got it done and it turned out really nice.
Working hard.
We decided to do braces on bottom and brackets on top for two reasons. First, floating shelves are gorgeous, but not strong enough to hold heavy books. So the braces are for that. The brackets are to help support (by anchoring up) and they serve as built-in bookends so the books don’t fall off the shelves. (And every “real” book end I’ve ever owned just slides from the pressure of the books. Useless.)
I am really happy with how it turned out.
The bracket book ends in action:
And now, the whole office.
The printer takes up a lot of room. Originally, it was on our bookcase. Zach suggested keeping it on his desk. But it just makes everything look so cluttered. So I decided, finally, to put it on the TV tray nightstand. It was perfect! It has its own little spot and it looks nice with the guitar shelf. The box underneath is filled with copies of our important files (so we don’t destroy the originals, which are kept in a place where I can easily grab them in case of an emergency). The basket, which in this picture is filled with highlighters and pens and stuff, now only contains extra staples and our USB cords (which are no longer tangled, but wrapped up neatly and separated). The basket is called a utensil basket (to hold eating utensils at picnics and stuff) and I got it at Wal-Mart years ago. It’s has played many roles in my organizing adventures. Most recently, it held deodorant and hair products in our bathroom.
We moved the metal shelves that I use for organizing my craft stuff to the opposite wall, which looks much nicer, for some reason.
The best part about the location of those metal shelves? They hide my vacuum cleaner! It’s finally not the first thing I see when I walk into the office, BUT it’s still easily accessible. SCORE!
I bought an over-the-door organizer at The Dollar Tree that I intended to use in the bathroom…but it was far too small. So I moved it to the office, where it now holds my glue, glitter, paint brushes, etc. It doesn’t look great, but I can finally find my small items.
Because Zach has two computers he works on (one of which is enormous), I gave him my old desk…because it is also enormous.
I threw away so much stuff that was on the shelves and in the cabinets. Now it’s just PC games (left cabinet), albums and blank CDs (right cabinet), printer paper, X-Acto blades, business cards, and cork pins (top shelf), and notebooks and pads of paper in the tray on the bottom shelf. Much more organized.
This is a letter organizer I got at Office Depot for $7.00 and loved. It has manilla envelopes, our address book, stamps, and two incredibly different sized envelopes that claimed to be the “standard” size. We also have a change collector (to the right of the letter organizer). That and the letter organizer are hiding our ugly modem and router.
I originally did not intend to put the calendar on top of the hutch. I put it there while I was cleaning, just to get it out of the way…and I loved it. So I decided to organize and decorate around it. In front of it is a business card holder (which I got at Office Depot for $1.50). In the lacy box between the clock and lamp are our jump drives. (They needed a special place because I keep losing them.)
Above the letter organizer is a Pittsburgh Penguins fathead that Zach’s godfather gave us.
The whole hutch…this picture was obviously taken the day after all of the others. =P
The only thing I really have left to do is change the lamp shade. I hate that lamp shade so much. (But you know which one I love? This one from Ikea.)
The whole desk, in all its glory. And a sneak peak at a little project I did that I’m going to talk about next week. See if you can guess what it is. 😛
I also took those cork boards that were surrounding my calendar and set them up as a back splash for Zach’s desk. It looks much nicer and it’s a lot more convenient.
In the corner between our two desks is Zach’s guitar stuff. He is really excited to finally have a place to put it again. I started storing all of his stuff under our bed last summer when his sister temporarily moved in with us after finishing college so she could find a job (which is why we had that extra bed that I sold). Once we had finished the office, I got his music stand out, set it up, and he immediately got to playing.
My desk again. Underneath is Kashka’s tent. She likes to sleep in there when I’m sitting at my desk.
This is all I keep on my desk: a lamp, a clock that my mother-in-law got me when I finished college (it also tells the date, temperature, and has a timer), a lacy box that holds extra staples, a Galileo thermometer (my grandfather collected them and I was given one after he died), a basket holding my pens and pencils, and a chai tea powder container that I wrapped cording around that holds my scissors and highlighters. And also my laptop. 😛
Cini loves that my desk is under the window, but he hates when I put the fan in the window. He has squirrels and birds to keep track of, after all (and then hide from when they get too close to the window).
I realized after all the space was cleared that I probably could have just gotten a larger bookshelf and left it at that. There’s still room. However, I’m glad I didn’t. It would have made the floor look a little more cluttered…plus I love the way the shelves look. They’re also really convenient for Zach, since he’s 6’2″. As soon as I finished putting the books on the shelves, he walked up to them, put his hand on the bottom-most shelf (which comes to his chest), and said, “I don’t have to crouch to find my books anymore.” That’s right. Those dark days are over, baby. 😛
One more look around the room:
It’s so much nicer, isn’t it? And sorry for the crappy pictures. This camera is really old (and, trust me, the panoramic pictures were worse when I turned the lights on -_-).
Next week, Zach is going to do a guest post explaining how he installed the shelves. 🙂
Oh! And that old bookcase? I have plans for that. We’ll get to it later, though. 😀
ETA: Go here to see the post on how Zach installed the shelves.