Transforming the Office - Part One

About a month ago, my mom came to visit. I specifically requested that she come to stage an "office intervention." Our office had lost all semblance of control. Both desk surfaces were completely covered with junk. There were boxes of stuff on the floor that needed to be files. It was complete chaos, and neither one of us wanted to spend much time in there.

We use the room for a lot. Aside from office tasks, it's also where I keep most of my craft supplies. If you don't have a clean surface to work, then it doesn't inspire much use of said craft supplies. We also have our ironing board in there. I tend to fold most of the laundry in there with the company of the TV. (Yes, I'm a TV person, sue me. We don't have one in the bedroom, so the office gets the laundry sorting, aside from the fact that our cats spend a lot of time on the bed, and the last thing I want to so is dump a pile of clean clothes on top of the hair they leave behind. And since many of my clothes are housed next to the office, it's a good place to start.

Anyway, my mom arrived in the afternoon. Greg was already home, and the two of them came up with a plan which involved going to IKEA. I was a little resistant at first. (Shocker!) I'd had it in my head that we should try to make the office work with what we already had. We had two 5x3 tables that we got for a few bucks from a friend closing a business. They were very worn, white laminate. While they provided good space, they were just dirty, and worn, and almost too deep for the room. It was hard to reach something at the wall side the the table while seated.

I apologize for not having many before pictures of the true state of the mess that had taken over. Here are a few shots from what it looked like the first week we lived here. You at least get a sense for the various furniture items we are working with before they were completely taken over with stuff.

Eventually, I came around to the idea of making a small investment, especially in a new file cabinet. (Oh how I hated that rusty, gray metal cabinet!) My mom offered to pitch in as an early Christmas present as well. How could I say no to that?!

We ended up with two new desks, two new rolling drawer cabinets, three wall shelves, a file cabinet, and an open shelf to go next to the file cabinet. We also wanted to get some wall mounted cabinets, but they were out of stock. Eventually, we plan to add a couch to this room as well. (I told you we do a lot in here), to serve as additional guest space. Currently, the couch is in my mom's basement. It also functions as a twin bed when you take the cushions off the back, or folds open to be a queen on the floor. The wall cabinets will serve as storage above the couch.

It might have been a good thing that the wall cabinets were out of stock. We pretty much filled the truck, and then spent the next several hours assembling furniture. I went work on the file cabinets and rolling drawers in the living room, while Greg broke down the old tables, installed the wall shelves, and assembled the desks in place in the office. By the way, I love how easily the casters on the coffee table allowed me to move it out of the way to create a nice open work area.

  

We still have a lot to do in the room, like painting. I'm thinking  a green color, similar to, but lighter than the coffee table. And I really don't have a good shot to share yet of the furniture we bought in place (cause I still haven't managed to stage the room yet to get a nice one!) So, you will have to wait patiently for that! But, the room already feels a million times better, as evidenced by the fact that I am actually sitting at my desk while typing this, instead of on the couch in the living room.

Back up at the top, you can see Ziggy enjoying the new hutch shelf in front of the window. Yes, we pretty much bought this as a cat shelf, so they can have a place to look out the window, while we still have space for office supplies. You can also see the birch color of the desks we bought. We're doing a mix of white and birch, which is coming out quite nicely, and will look even better when we obliterate the yellow, which is currently way to close to the color of the birch items.

When I get around to taking more shots, you will see the white and birch mix on the new filing cabinet, which has also created yet another cat perch in front of a window. I'll tell you more about all the great features of what we got then too.

Yeah, so soon, I promise, I will clean up the room and take some nice pictures. Really.