Office Redo

You may remember in my recent post where I painted a mid-century modern dresser that I am redoing my basement. Last year when I detailed a home tour, I never included our basement office because it was so cluttered, dark, and boring. It is still a little dark, but I finally got in there and organized things, adding better furniture arrangement and a pop of color. Unfortunately I never snapped a before picture, so let’s pretend this room was a blank slate.

]The room is rather small, 9 by 10 ft, and one thing we absolutely had to keep in there is the chest freezer. There is not space in our utility room for the freezer and that’s really the only storage we have in our house. It’s bad for the freezer to keep it outside with the extreme weather in Minnesota, so I had to plan around it. My husband likes to be in enclosed spaces anyways. The fact that the freezer blocks his chair/desk area into a corner of the room is comforting to him. He also prefers the curtains drawn and loves how cold it is in the basement. There’s a reason they call them “man caves.”

One of the things I created to give this boring room some life is the green abstract painting. It’s title is “Energy” and is supposed to give a little boost to my husband when he is staring at it lost in thought. He sometimes works from home in this room so if he comes across a difficult to solve coding issue, he paces and swivels in his chair looking at random things a lot.

I also added an orchid to bring a little life to the room. Basements feel so much better with plants. Unfortunately this one is fake because no plant could survive the conditions in this room (dark & cold).

This shelf was an IKEA shelf I bought from a garage sale for $5. I painted it lime green to match the accent color in the office (and throughout the whole basement). The white files were also from IKEA, I think they were $2 for a set of five. I organized a ton of our documents and books and belongings into them.

Anything left, I filed in the filing cabinet drawer of the desk. It feels so good to get all of that organized. Being an adult sure includes a lot of paperwork – insurance, expenses, manuals, taxes, etc!

You might be wondering why I have the desk jutting out into the middle of the room. I did this particular furniture arrangements for a couple reasons.

• The desk is spacious enough Stephen and I can both work on it, directly opposite of each other. The middle of room allows enough space for two chairs to pull up and use the desk.
• It is lined up perpendicular to the window so that light floods the desk when the curtains are drawn and the person working can easily look outside.
• Stephen’s spot looks directly at the office door so he can see if someone is about to come in and bother him. He can also look at it and remind himself not to stay in his man cave all day.

We used the have a desk pushed up against the wall. Although it made the room seem bigger, it was not as functional.

So lastly, let’s get to this office’s cost.

Desk – Craigslist – $30
Leather office chair – Craigslist – $20Desktop computer – Craigslist – $300
Wireless all in one printer – Craigslist – $15
Curtains – my mom made – $0
IKEA shelf – garage sale – $5
Filing cubbies – IKEA – $4
Orchid – garage sale – $2
Canvas for painting – gift – $0
Chest freezer – Coborns – $180 (they gave us $180 worth of free food coupons for buying it; we thought it was a great deal!)

The total for this room comes to $556

Without the freezer and computer (which we bought both years ago and were not added to achieve this makeover), the total comes to $76. Once again I accomplished something great for very little money by utilizing used furniture and items. Secondhand is the man.

What is your office like? Do you struggle to keep your office organized and highly functional?