Remember my 'library'? In my goal to maximize the usability of my house, I compressed the 3 bookshelves of books into 2 and moved them into my guest bedroom. The guest bedroom now functions as a reading and nap room as well as housing guests. With that project over, it was time to move to phase 2 of Operation Use Space Wisely. One of the things I dislike about our home is that the main entrance is a small laundry/office space. It is ALWAYS a mess and is the first thing to greet our guests. We are revamping the whole thing. Phase 2 involves moving the office to the old library. I wanted to get rid of the giant ancient desk in our office- it's uncool 60's flavor and inappropriately huge size needed to give way to some nice streamlined built ins. Here's how it went:
I first self tinted some paint and tried it on the walls. It looked like skin. Moving on. The desk was going to be one long plank of wood running down one wall. For the support structure, I started with a long 1"x2" and cut it the right length and then screwed it into the wall.
Then I cut another 1"x2" into 12" lengths and screwed those into the wall underneath the long strip. At this point I was going to cut more 12" lengths of the 1"x2" on 45 degree angles, screw them into the vertical supports and then lay the plank on top, but I found these metal "L" brackets in the shed. They don't look as nice as the wood, but if we want to move along our desk our knees will have room and won't bang against the supports. So I screwed those in and went to the hardware store. Lo and behold, they had this shelving that was 16" wide-perfect! It was pretreated in a smooth white finish and they cut it right there to the right length. Even better? It was only 25 bucks!
We had our desktop. Now, our house is OLD. Like built in 1900 to be the first school house in our town. That means nothing is straight or square. I decided I would cut some quarter round to trim out the desk and cover the gaps between wall and desktop. Also, I needed to settle on a paint color. I was thinking tan to tone down the room. This room will be primarily used by Ron and he liked the tan color in the bathroom so away we went. I got a satin finish which I am REALLY liking in here. To my surprise, in this light the color turned out a steely grey. There is just a hint of cool undertones that look fantastic with the cream trim. I couldn't bear to paint all that trim again, so I am so glad the wall color looked so great with it.
This is a new favorite color combo! So serene! In the below pic the quarter round hasn't been nailed down yet, but you get the idea of how it will finish off the desktop. I also like how the hickory cabinet that we hung plays off the floor and quarter round.
Up next is to hang two long shelves above the desk and move the filing cabinet in, then transfer all the desk stuff, but I feel great about how this room is coming along! I'll be taking more pics as we go so you can see the complete transformation.
