Our New Desk Arrangement

This desk project has been on my list of things to do for a very long time. It took me about a year to convince Wayne of the idea and get him to say yes to building a custom desk and turning his office into a functional man room/guest bedroom. 

I wanted him to come into the room feeling like it was OUR office so I painted the room from Devine Steamer back to the neutral house color and did an accent wall from Devine Trillium. We picked the color out together.

Devine Steamer.  This is the cleanest my office ever was. 

After the paint job. Devine Trillium.

We got someone to haul the desk out for us, they scrapped it. 

We purchased all of the cabinets from Ikea. The MACKE drawer cabinets had rolling legs that I hated but were necessary for the file cabinet to slide out easily. There were the same height as the other storage cabinet when the rolling legs were off so we decided to added wooden legs to all of them, plus Wayne needed the table to be higher anyways. 

We bought pine boards. Sanded, used a wood conditioner because pine doesn't take stain very well. Stained it a walnut finish and then added polyurethane to seal the top. We allowed 18 hours for the stain to dry after the last coat. The polyurethane dried in the garage for 30 hours and about another 12 in the house. It is about 35 degrees outside so we knew it would take much longer than the label stated. But it turned out great. Patience is worth it.  

Ignore the off center wood. We will be mounting the wood together today and attaching it to the desk. 

The next stage for this room:

• Mount top to cabinets
• Drawer organizers for pens/etc.
• Computer cord organizer. 
• Purchase wall art from Etsy. I have several picked out for the wall behind the desk. 
• For the opposite wall we have decided to save up our money and purchase a double wood book shelf from a local oak furniture store. They have a walnut finish that will match well. It will be an expensive purchase but worth it in the end. 
• Purchase mousepads. 
• A new chair to replace the old green one. 
• Purchase a new paper shredder.

Then who knows what else will come to mind. I am sure I will find something. 

So the total cost of redoing the room so far?

Paint and supplies: $85.00

Ikea cabinets: $169.00

Home Depot wood and supplies for desk top: $97

Total $351

Not to shabby for a custom desk for two. But the best part is that used hardly any of my own money to do this project. Last month we went through our garage and have sold countless items on a For Sale facebook page for our town. To date I have used $80.00 of my own money. WINNER!

My plan is to continue to sell items we don't need and save that money for the wall art. The bookcase we will have to save up on our own. We're pretty much out of big ticket items to sell. I'll post more when there is progress. 

| Heather & Wayne |