So in our last post we saw the hideous mess of my office and the prep work to get the office ready for painting and building. Friday night, I took a class on free motion quilting while the boy did the trimming around the windows and painted the ceiling. He’s really good at trimming and we figured that would give us a little bit of a head start for painting over the weekend. The paint color is Sherwin-Williams – Veiled Violet.
Saturday morning one of Chris’ friends from work came over and helped us get the first coat on the walls and build the four shelving units. We had to call it quits for the day after that since Chris and I had a pressing engagement – dinner with my parents to celebrate their birthdays!
Many moons ago – or possibly just three years ago – we painted the interior of my closet green when we built a bunch of shelves in there for fabric storage. We kept the green in the closet and here you can see where it matches up with the purple as well as the blue line we painted as a divider. haha 😉 The line once the painters’ tape was removed is quite sharp. I am pleased with myself on that one, since I hung the tape both times.
The outlets and fixtures in the room were an off white, beige-y color that I thought might not fit well with the yellow-y, off-white of the Ikea shelves. So we hunted around for new fixtures that wouldn’t break the bank and found these at Menards – I think they’re considered nickel. The neat thing is there are no visible screws so they have a seamless look to them.
We were also fortunate the next weekend to have more help in the form of my niece Fia. She had a great time helping her uncle and learned how to measure inches. He made sure the nail gun was never plugged in when he wasn’t in the room and she clearly was practicing proper safety by wearing eye protection. Oh and yes, I knit the sweater she’s wearing. It’s kind of awesome to have someone show up at your house for the day wearing something you made them. 😀
In the photo above you can see the trim we installed between each shelf to cover the gaps. Due to the width of the room (138.5″) and my need for symmetry the boards are all 3.5″ wide, 1/4″ thick, and 79″ tall. They don’t make boards that thin, wide and tall. So the boy used his table saw to cut 5.5″ boards down to the right width and then the router to basically tongue and groove together two shorter boards. Then we filled the seams, sanded it down, and repeated until the seams were no longer visible.
The boy’s friend from work came over again and helped figure out how to secure the side trim panels for the shelves. We didn’t want them flapping around without some support behind them to nail the trim into.
Then I ran away to Dallas for a week. haha. When I came home I saw the the lovely site below! The crown molding we purchased was attached at the top, the baseboard we cut from the wall was attached at the bottom, and the side panels were done. 🙂
Centsational Girl estimated their Billy built-ins project took about 7 hours to do. Ours took a bit longer because we had more steps to do and many more cuts. I love this project though and am very happy with how it turned out!
I got to spend that weekend filling up the shelves and clearing pathways in the guest rooms. It was nice to not feel like my office was taking over the entire house. And I was able to fit more things on the shelves than I thought I would. I was really pleased to figure out that the Rubbermaid bins that used to sit on the floor next to my filing cabinet would now fit neatly on the bottom shelves! One less thing that needs to be out on the floor causing clutter.
If you look to the right in the photo above you’ll see some wires coming out. After this picture was taken we put an internet jack in the right side panel so that we could easily access the wires running down to the modem in the basement.
I took Monday off since the carpet was being installed in the morning and I wanted to spend the rest of my day reloading the office. This is the state of the office that night. Not done but looking pretty good.
Filling this wall o’shelves up meant I was able to empty, a set of wire cube shelves, a 3-drawer stand, and a 3 shelf rack that we may end up using as an a/v rack in the basement. 🙂 The other now empty storage is headed to my sister’s home. I was also able to bring some of my fabric storage out of the closet so that we can use the steps in there to get up to the attic if needed.
Part of my goal with this total renovation of the office is to find a home for everything. Since everything had to be taken out of the office, I am trying to not bring anything back in to the office unless it has a home. I spent a portion of this past Sunday sifting through all the magazines that used to be on my bookcase and purging many of them. I don’t mind having a lot of craft supplies, or even having specialty craft supplies that are only used once every few years but the sheer volume of things in this office that weren’t being used was weighing on me. I love the idea of getting this all back to what I am using so I can feel free to get started on a project and have the work space to run with it.
I have several sewing, quilting, and knitting projects lined up for this year and I can’t wait to dive into all of them. First things first though, I have to get the guest rooms completely cleared out of crafty bits. And that has to be done before my brother shows up next month with his roommate for Rock on the Range. 🙂 It’s good to have a deadline cause I can push myself to work a little each day. And each day this office gets a little closer to what I was imagining.
The next project in here is to hang a pegboard opposite the window wall (like this one) for all my hanging crafty bits. We have most of the supplies for that already on hand, just need to cut it to size, paint it and find some pretty trim to go around it. Once that’s up I’ll hang up my other pictures, calendars and bulletin boards. I’ll be sure to post “final” pictures once all of that is done.
Do you have any big organizational plans for your home? Do you have any favorite artists/artwork that I should consider hanging in my office?
