Home Office

Back in my hubbie's bachelor days he bought himself a desk and this little desk traveled with him when he moved and was even kept when we got married.  It even made the move with us from the apartment to our home.  As our home grew, so did the paper and all the files that go with it.  About a year and a half ago, the desk was finally seeing the end of its life, so this momma started searching for a new desk that would meet our needs.  I wasn't finding anything I was absolutely falling in love with, then I found the perfect inspiration photo on Pinterest.  I was even more psyched to find that the photo came from my favorite organizing blog that I had just recently discovered.  It was also around this time that I began my love affair with Ikea :)

For starters I showed my hubbie the desk I was visioning and luckily it didn't take much convincing!!       Sooo, I was able to make a trip to Ikea to make the initial purchases.  We first purchased two Expedit shelves along with the door and drawer inserts.  We put the shelves on each side of our existing desk and this is how it lived for almost a year.

Originally, our office was upstairs in the guest room and then after some long hard thinking we decided to move it downstairs.  There was only one problem with this decision...it was the home of our dining room.  As much as I loved my dining room, we realized it was the most unused room in our home.

So I listed our dining room set on craigslist and much to my delight it sold and has now found a new home!  We were able to use some of that money to purchase the other pieces that we used in our command center and to organize my scrapbook supplies.

The original plan was to deconstruct the desk and keep the table top, but the main problem/concern was how heavy the table top actually was and how to install this bad boy.  So we decided to purchase a simple table and we found the perfect one at Ikea.

( via )

We also decided to purchase a shelf to go between the Expedit shelves.  Then while on one of my numerous trips to Ikea, I saw something cool in the kitchen area.  It was a rod that had two buckets hanging from it and they had utensils in them.  It got me to thinking we could put that over the desk and put our writing utensils in them...genius I know :)   As ashamed as I am to show you the current state of our office desk...here it is in all its glory!!

Here is the budget breakdown of our desk:

• Expedit Shelves (2): $120
• Doors (4): $60
• Drawers (2): $40
• Floating Shelf: $25
• Table: $75
• Rail & Buckets: $30
• Hooks (for the buckets): $6

We purchased things a bit at a time and the sale of our dining room set helped with the purchase of a lot of our office pieces.  There are a few more things I would like for the office, but they are mainly aesthetic things.

• knobs for the doors and drawers
• plexi-glass for the table top
• paint the lower half of the room...not sure what color yet though :) 

In the meantime, I have thought about spray painting the knobs until I can find the perfect ones.  I did find some knobs recently at Hobby Lobby that were 50% off for our entertainment stand so I might start there!!

The current mission is to get this desk organized, organized, organized!!  We have been working on doing just this...slow and steady wins the race right??

With much love,

Kristin