Office Redesign - Conclusion (for now, wink wink)

Ready for the master reveal? Those of you who've been following my path to a better home office have seen some of the before pictures and progress along the way, but now I'm happy to say that the new office is 95% complete (still need to make a few tweaks, but they're mostly cosmetic) and more importantly I'm SO MUCH HAPPIER with the finished space! Before moving on, here's the "before" office after I painted my wall:

You can see I had a fairly small amount of actual desk space. My chair, although nice to look at, was so uncomfortable that I kept it loaded with blankets. My desk was overflowing with paperwork and I had no space to spread out or do sketches (those were sometimes done at the kitchen table or after a reasonable shoving-aside of desk top items).

So as a re-cap, I decided to custom-build my desk (with the help of my dear husband). After all, purchasing a desk that I felt would be an adequate size was definitely not in the budget (we're talking thousands of dollars here), but for @$300 I could have a desktop that would rival that of any corporate executive. And here's the final product of that vision!

Now you can't tell me that's not simply glorious! Let me explain some of what's going on here. First, we have the desktop: made of three pine base "modular" pieces, measured to fit two standard-sized metal file cabinets in each as well as support the desktop. The actual desktop is made of Oak veneer over plywood, edged with oak trim and has no less than 7 coats of polyurethane encompassing the entire top. This was done to give it a maximum finish and prevent any problems should something spill. It's a breeze to clean as well, with such a smooth finish.

Underneath the desktop you'll see my uber-thriftiness at work with 5 file cabinets I hunted down and purchased from the local Goodwill and thrift shops. To bring some color into my office and keep things organized, I picked up any old file cabinets I could find, a few cans of spray paint, checked my bagua map (feng shui - I'll go into that a bit more later) and painted away. I LOVE how they turned out! Okay, so I skipped the wood one and I know more than one of you will point that out, but I didn't mind the wood so much and wasn't sure how the paint would do coating it, so give me a break there. But I think these are WAY better than the dingy old gray and beige these cabinets originated in. Plus I know that all my backup files are stored in the green cabinet, current files are in yellow, business files are in red, etc. Easy to remember when you color code (at least for me!). And of course I couldn't forget my best friend in this venture, so I left space and got a new bed for my little girl Tullia. This little Schnauzer can't be more than a few feet away from me at any given time, so now instead of sitting on my feet or getting rolled over by my chair, she has a lovely little spot of her own.

I've mentioned Feng Shui in this and previous posts. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, Feng Shui is the art of organizing your environment for better health, success, etc. It involves placing certain types of items and colors in certain areas based on direction, as well as harmonizing your life by removing clutter. If you've never tried it, I highly recommend it. Not only is it fun to have a sort of "guide" on how you should design your room or space, but it really gives you that excuse to finally clean out the clutter that's gathered in the dark corners. I guarantee you'll feel good once it's done.

So my first step with the office was to get out my bagua map. This is a map that tells you where certain items should be located in order to maximize your goals. Since I'm a graphic designer, I created a little layout of my office and superimposed my bagua map over it, so I could move and place things in advance and know exactly where everything should be. It didn't all turn out exactly as I show on the map, but it really did serve as a fundamental guide and ultimately made the moving-in process much faster. You'll see my map displayed to the right. Since it might be too small to see I'll break it down for you. From left to right, top to bottom, the nine squared colors represent Wealth & Prosperity (red/blue/purple), Fame & Reputation (FIRE elements, red), Love & Marriage (pink/red/white), Health & Family (WOOD elements, blue/green), Center (Chi, EARTH elements, yellow), Children & Creativity (WIND elements, pastel colors), Wisdom & Knowledge (black/blue/green), Career (WATER elements, black/blue/brown) and Helpful People & Travel (white/gray/black).

You can see now why I chose certain colors for my file cabinets... red/purple in the wealth section, pastel green and blue in my creativity and children section, etc. I probably should have painted my yellow cabinet pink or white in order to align with the map more accurately, but hey, we're not all perfect and I really like yellow! I did place all of my plants on top of a wooden chest firmly in the "WOOD" area (Health & Family), I'm still on the lookout for a mirror for my Career section and of course my main working area is smack-dab in the Fame and Reputation area. After all, a business is nothing without a good reputation, right? I have a couple of candles spread around in the Fire section, and since I'm not a fan of the color pink I thought a nice compromise would be to add a pink African Violet to my Love & Marriage area (that way I only have to see pink when it blooms). It is a lovely plant though and a nice balance for my deskspace.

Last, I replaced my chair. Comfort when you're sitting for 5 or more hours per day is an absolute must, and thanks to a good friend of mine I was pointed toward the chair you see here. As it so happens the chair was on sale and a coupon code saved me even more, otherwise the chair could likely have cost me more than the desk. But it was well worth the investment and let me tell you I couldn't be happier with it! I've only had it for a few days (hence the delay in getting this article written -- I wanted to get the chair before posting this), but it's heaven on my back and shoulders. I still have blankets around my desk, but now they're actually used for warmth instead of back and tushy adjustments. I did design my desk to sit about an inch-and-a-half lower than my old one and now I can actually rest my feet on the floor. I swear desks were not built for short or even average-height women.

If you have it in your head to build yourself a better workspace, PLEASE do it! My "Chi" flows better, I'm much more organized, I have space to spread out and my office actually feels more like an office instead of just a place I put my desk. It helps creativity, it helps workflow, and it just makes me feel more satisfied when I'm forced to be in it for the majority of my day. I hope your new space does the same for you.

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.