The cheapest reno yet!

What do you do when you’re stuck at home with limited mobility?  Come up with home projects!  Much to Bryan’s chagrin, I’ve had too much time staring at things around the house, coming up with a myriad of ideas.  How can we make storage solutions work better for us?  Which room in the house needs a good purge?

Office nook with built-ins

One of the things that became extremely apparent through all of the time working from home is that our home office set up was okay but could be better.  We have a small nook off of our kitchen that the previous owners had turned into a home office, by way of adding shelves and a built in desk area.  I love the idea of the space, as the office is still part of the action of the house, and also has two large walls of windows.  However, the desk situation was a bit large (read: deep) for what we needed with our laptops and the built-ins weren’t used to their best advantage because of the large desktop in the way.  We had debated converting our still-empty bedroom into a home office that can be closed off from the rest of the house but decided, even though that has certain benefits during conference calls, we wouldn’t be using a home office as much (after the quarantine) that would merit the dedication of an entire room in the house.  The other easier choice was to update the layout of the current office.  We would remove the current desktop and raise the shelving on one side to desk height.  I toyed with using Ikea drawers and cabinets as a base for the table top to sit on but alas, the built-ins were purpose built and the new table top is too narrow.  Instead, we would take pieces of the existing desk and repurpose it into the legs and new shelves of the new desk.  That way, there wouldn’t be any new wood involved (meaning no sanding and trying to match the stain).

Another angle of the home office area

Last Saturday, we decided to get on with it and Bryan quickly and carefully took the old desk apart.  It opened up the nook so much that I was tempted to forgo the entire desk idea, put in an easy chair, and work from my laptop off my lap.  Bryan reminded me of our original objective and it was back to construction after a quick cleaning of everything.  Within five hours, he had cut out the legs and shelves for the new desk and reassembled them.  The next day, we fit and attached the trim, also from the old desk.  Voila!  Isn’t it crazy how much bigger and lighter the space looks?

After removing the old desk top and before we raised the top on the right hand side to desk height

After removing everything. Doesn't that look lovely? Maybe someday I'll come back to that open space

Final product!

Now the window the desk faces looks out the front of the house.  We even have room to fit a small wine fridge under the new home bar area.  Now all that remains to be done is get a comfy desk chair and settle in.

Lest you think Bryan is only acquiescing to my home projects, he also built shelves for our outdoor storage area.  This one took longer than the desk project and also required a trip to Home Depot.  I haven’t been much help with these projects as ones in the past and can’t wait until I can get back in the normal swing of things.