I have been working on our office for SIX MONTHS now. That’s right, half a year! Having a clingy spazzy puppy around doesn’t help. The moment you try to get some work done, he wants to play, or is hungry, or wants to go for a walk, or chew on the baseboard, or just wants so sit there and whine until you stop doing work and pay attention to him.
If having a puppy is this bad, I have no idea how people with babies eat, go pee or bathe. If I ever have kids, I just know I am going to be one of those mothers who puts the baby in the crib screaming and goes downstairs and has a glass of wine.
Where was I? Oh yes the office.
Wrangling the puppy was especially difficult when we were painting, or doing things that he could in no way be near. We would take turns working while the other watched the dog, or built a dog play area in the hallway. Needless to say the simplest task ended up taking days or weeks. I am still finishing a few things up, and a few projects are still incomplete, but it’s finally gotten to a point where I may actually let someone see it.
As for furniture; in our last office we built in a custom desk so when we moved to the storefront the desk stayed behind. We also owned a crappy old office chair, that I happily pushed to the curb before we carried away our last moving box.
So coming into the office in the new house, we owned:
- A filing cabinet covered in El Granto’s music and snowboarding stickers, which is missing the rails to actually hang files on
- A cheap Ikea drawer unit
- LOTS AND LOTS of books, antique cameras and crap.
That is not a lot to work from…Try as hard as I did, you just cant make a desk out of crap. It topples over…
So for the first six months of living in the house we used my Grandmother’s 50 year old Ikea card table as a desk, and a folding chair. More often than not we ended up working with the laptop on the sofa downstairs.
Before I post pictures of all our office projects, here is some insight on what we had planned
My Pinterest Office Inspiration Board
This board is giving away a ton of hints of what we were up to, so stay tuned for the results!
And here is our great big office plan/project to do list.
TO DO:
- Build wall of built in bookshelves
- Add Chair Rail
- Modify and paint Ikea Ingo dining table to use as desk
- Give a facelift to an old Ikea Goliat drawer unit
- Move (ugly) filing cabinet to closet, and add shelves and clothing rod
- Paint the walls
- Change light fixture for one that does not rattle when a truck drives by
- Source old bankers chair for desk (update here)
- Find the perfect reading chair & ottoman
- Find or build side table for reading chair
- Build custom crates for bookshelves
- Hide router, modem and phone gateway, and curb rogue cables
- Hang art
- Shove all our books, antique camera collection and misc crap into the bookcase in some sort of visually pleasing order
- Source interesting reclaimed object as trash can
UGH…I am tired just looking at the list…wheres my drink?
