Office Redesign - Part 2

Desk is nearly complete! 

The new desk is coming along beautifully. In order to save money (a lot of money) as well as get the perfect amount of desk-space, size and layout, as you know I chose to build my new desk as opposed to buying one ready-made. All-in-all, the materials cost about $300 and it has seventeen feet of desktop space. You read me right - seventeen (17) feet of desktop. It's glorious!!
Simple in its design, the desk consists of three "module" bases, which both hold up the desktop as well as serve as spaces to hold up to seven 2-drawer file cabinets comfortably. This measurement was done on purpose, as I am in need of lots of file space and those grungy metal file cabinets make for excellent storage. But we'll get to those later.

The desk has a top that, although I would have preferred a solid hardwood, actually has an oak veneer top on a 1/2" of support material. I went this route for cost reasons only. Solid hardwood would have been beautiful and very sturdy, but since I needed 17' of it (at 29" deep), going the solid-wood route would have cost me around a grand. Tax write-off, I know, but I just can't shell out that kinda dough at the moment. Good news though? The oak veneer is really pretty and works just as well. The husband added some solid oak trim around the appropriate edges and affixed it with glue and nails for durability, and just today I added my 6th coat of Polyurethane to seal it all together. It shines like a newborn baby's tears. The final coat needs at least 24 hours to dry and set before install, so this bad boy is just about ready to go.

Creative Space

One of the things a "store bought" desk doesn't provide much of is storage and file space. Even in a module desk you'll be lucky to get 3 or 4 drawers worth of file space, and that just 'aint enough for all the crap I've got. So I came up with a cheap, fun and surprisingly simple solution for my new desk. As mentioned above, I measured out those standard 2-drawer metal file cabinets and had the modules built around those specifications. The next step was to get enough file cabinets to fill those spaces.
Buying them new, metal file cabinets weren't as cheap as I was hoping. They go for at least $60 to $100 a piece!! Hey, I know it's a tax writeoff, but for 6 new cabinets I could be dealing out up to $600. NO WAY. So I came up with a better solution. I'd look around at every thrift store and garage sale in town until I found what I needed. And just this weekend, I found 3 in decent condition averaging $14 a piece. What a steal!
Now for the creative part. I didn't mind buying mismatched file cabinets at the thrift store because of the next step in my plan: color. I now have a nearly-black accent wall, and nothing brings out black like bright, fun color.
Even as a designer, when it comes to my home, I've always been afraid of color. I was the girl with all white walls, wood furniture, and earth-tone accents. Then one day I met a person who was not only unafraid of color, but he used it in ways I had never seen before and it looked... AWESOME. So I started taking a risk and playing with color on my walls. Turns out it looked really good! So here I am again, this time with my black wall (which I never would have done 5 years ago) and now I'm going to liven it up by using brightly colored spray paint to re-coat the mismatched file cabinets.
Take a look at two of the originals:

As you can see they're completely different styles and colors, but that doesn't matter, because all it took was two cans of spray paint and voila!!

Completely transformed to fun, colorful and creative storage space. Okay I admit it makes me think of the golden arches at the moment, but I've got a can of green and a can of blue reserved for my next couple of great file-cabinet-finds. When it's all put together it'll be bright, colorful, and I think my chi will be happy.

That's it for now. I think I'll be doing the final install sometime later this week or next weekend, so look for my next update when everything is put together and I present to you my custom home office, done on the cheap, with both form and function (as well as a little inspiration) in mind.