When Dan and I moved into our house almost three years ago, we designated one of the bedrooms to be our joint office and my craft room. However, when we were moving in, we didn't have a lot of office furniture... all we owned a file cabinet and a super old wooden desk that I bought for $5 in college... so as we started unpacking, we had tons of stuff for the office/craft room and no where to really put it away.
Thus, the office/craft room became the office/CRAP room. It was a hideous embarrassment to anyone and everyone that we had over to our new house. We gave new house tours, and I secretly wanted to just pretend this room never existed.
We had PILES of things everywhere, and knew we had to fix it.
We got a folding table and I started to use that as a desk, but it just became a spot for more piles.
We bought a bookshelf at Ikea, and I thought, that will fix everything. It barely made a difference.
I bought Rubbermaid storage containers to organize all my crafty stuff... helped some, but it was still "pile central."
The truth was, we needed office furniture. Finally, in February of this year, we had a weekend that was completely open. I said to Dan, "Let's take this weekend, and GUT this room, take everything out of the room, move furniture in and sort through everything before we move it all back in."
So, we did it! On Saturday morning, we moved EVERYTHING out of the room, and literally I said, "Wow, I didn't realize how big this room really is!" It seemed as if it had doubled in size. We cleaned & vacuumed, took some measurements, and headed for Ikea. We bought a bookshelf with a connecting desk & components. We got home and Dan immediately started putting things together.
We also had another desk, that my parents gave us as well, so out went the little $5 desk from my days at Oregon State... sad to see it go, that was money well spent... and in came the larger, nicer desk from my parents, and Dan's new book case and desk from Ikea.
We made a giant garage sale pile and also threw away/shredded/recycled a lot of things we never should have been holding on to. We didn't put anything back in our room, unless there was a place for it to live permanently.
We made a second trip to Ikea on Sunday for a few more items, and headed home to finish the job.
Two days, two trips to Ikea, and ZERO marriage counseling sessions later... we worked together to create an awesome new room in our house. A room that I actually love to spend time in now. It feels so awesome!
It's somewhat mortifying to even post these before photos, but to really appreciate the drastic change, you have to see them...
View from the doorway...
The look on the dog's face clearly says, "I am a little worried I'll never find my way out of here!"
The original office furniture: white file cabinet & my $5 desk
Piles, piles, piles... notice the "trail" to the closet?
And now the beautiful after photos...
The NEW view from the doorway... Dan's new desk & work area
My desk & craft area
The organized closet! It's a work of art!
Look at all that carpet!
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