Tuesday, October 6, 2009

My New Office

For this room, Josh gave me the green light to do whatever I wanted.

We don't always agree on colors, but for all other rooms were able to work out compromises.

This one was all me. Josh never would have gone for the orange/aqua combination. But I wanted something bright and cheery and a little off-beat.

My biggest need, however, was storage. Since I work from home, I have a lot of work-related equipment and supplies. I'm also into paper crafts (scrapbooking and card making, mostly) and have mountains of supplies and tools related to that hobby as well. I find that I'm much more crafty if my supplies are organized and easily accessible. As in, not stuck in a dark, overflowing closet.

For both work and crafts, ample work space was also pretty important to me.

Enter Ikea. Ikea has great mix-and-match office furniture (not to mention great prices, of course!) However, the limitless possibilities were a bit overwhelming to me. Which shelf? how many tables? Which table legs? How many drawer units? How should I configure everything, based on my room size? Which color?

Enter Ikea Hacker - a fabulous blog for ideas on how to configure Ikea products to fit your needs. I was especially inspired by this post.

So one weekend, two trips to the Ikea in Cincinnati, many hours spent with screwdrivers in-hand, and multiple trips to a local hardware store later, we had it all put together.
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On the left - work-y stuff.
On the right - crafty stuff.

The drawers are organized like that, too.

Business on one side.
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Party on the other side. Like a mullet for my room.
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Let me assure you the office is rarely this neat. I'm a big believer in spreading out (which is where the extra work space comes in handy) and there are usually papers everywhere. For your benefit, I tidied things up before I started snapping pictures.
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I was a bit concerned that this would be too tall for the room. But it fit - just barely!
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And all of these orange boxes? Also from Ikea. They're great for storing and organizing my assorted stickers, craft magazines, glue pens, ribbons, and envelopes. And at like $4 each, the boxes fit nicely into my price range.
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One of the biggest challenges we faced was the fact that the drawer units weren't tall enough to match the table legs. But we eventually figured it out. I bought a 2 1/2 x 2 1/2 inch piece of wood, asked my neighbor to cut it into 3 inch chunks, and then spray painted each block orange. I attached them to the drawer unit and table top using a combination of wood glue and very long screws. And now that it is all set up I think the effect is kind of fun. Again, it's a little off-beat. And I like that.
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I'm not finished with the room yet. It could use some curtains. And a second chair. I have a couple of plan wood pieces in there (one of which didn't make it into any pictures) and I'd like to paint them to match. One of these days I want to get some artwork or something for the wall. Oh, and a matching bed for Riley - of course!

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He loves the chocolate brown one you see here, but I've been searching all over the place for an orange one. But orange dog beds are a little difficult to find - no surprises there!

Enter AllModernPet.com. I'd actually browsed around on this website and some of its' sister websites in the past, and I think they have a great selection of attractive pet beds. More than that, they sell all kinds of nice, reasonably priced modern furniture, bedding, artwork, etc. We're pretty interested in a couple of beds (the kind for people, that is) they have for sale, since we're still on a mattress on the floor.

Somehow the folks at All Modern Pet found me and this blog, and asked if I'd review a dog bed (that they'd send me for free!) on this blog. UM YES PLEASE. They even let me pick out any bed I wanted withing a certain (generous) price range. I picked this one (which is orange, of course) and I'm totally excited to receive it in the mail sometime soon. Stay tuned.


Disclaimer:
I know that there are many opinions about bloggers partnering with companies in such a way. This isn't something I plan to do often, but when a great opportunity to get for free something I'd been looking for all summer presented itself, I jumped at the chance. And in my correspondence with this company I made it clear that I'd be up front with you, Internet, about where I got my dog bed. They, of course, agreed. I also plan to be as objective and honest as possible in my review.

10 comments:

Tanya Searle said...

I love it!!! Do you want to come and help me decorate?

Tom, Beth, and Ainsley said...

Wow, that room looks amazing. When I finally get a house, I will call you to come decorate it! I love it! Great job!

Short Stop said...

WOO HOO! I love it.

And, I LOVE the color scheme - one of the reasons I chose it for my blog. It's light and fresh and I think it encourages productivity and creativity! :)

You did an awesome job!

Jenni S. said...

That color scheme is awesome Jess. I totally agree with Sarah -- light, airy and creative. Well done!

Erika said...

I like it, Jess, you definitely have an eye for that type of thing. You're very creative :)

Unknown said...

Jess, I love your new office! How creative. It's totally you. By the way, I'm going to be in the home town next weekend - do you have any meetings then? I'd love to see you. :)

Lynn said...

So fun! How nice to have a room that you WANT to be in to do your work.

Kristen said...

i LOVE it! i really like the orange boxes... i need some of those!

can't wait to see riley's new bed.

Chrispy Critter said...

Love it!!!

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