Our office was in need of some attention. For years we had ignored the unsightly room with its purple walls, peeling wall paper, old dirty windows and huge holes in the wall left behind from when we had the house rewired. Our office is attached to the main washroom and the plan one day is to completely gut and renovate the washroom and office at the same time. I was hoping it would have happened sooner but right now the basement is the current project so I decided I would do exactly what I did to our washroom to the office; A temporary makeover.
My husband was away on a trip for ten days which was the perfect time to jump in for the kill. I wanted to keep this project as cheap as possible and succeeded by spending only $175. So here’s what I did.
1) I went through all the paint cans we had in the basement and found a gallon of cloud white paint. Bingo-hit the jackpot. I took everything off the walls and painted the room including the window trim and the doors. I didn’t peel off any of the loose wall paper because I was afraid of what can of worms I may open so I just painted over it. The walls will be ripped out eventually so I didn’t want to spend too much time with that.
2) I replaced my husband’s old desk which was an Ikea dining room table. My neighbor had an office desk in his garage that he didn’t want and gave it me. So that cost me a big fat zero.
3) I replaced the white laminate wall shelves with three floating shelves from Rona which were only $11.99 each. I also put all my husband’s files in proper filing containers. As you can see, my husband is a little messy.
4) I kept one of the white laminate shelves for the printer/fax machine but it also serves as a work station for myself for when I need to use the printer or scanner. The legs I used for this shelf was a big part of the expense. Four legs from Home Depot cost about $45.
5) I cleared everything off the book shelf and kept only what I knew my husband would want. Doing that alone make a huge difference as the book shelf was really messy and cluttered with a lot of nick knacks that we never looked at. I put all the items that I cleared off the book shelf into boxes for the time being.
6) I went shopping. Where else but Ikea for office supplies. I bought a lot of filing units and when I checked out at the self serve checkout I thought I made mistake. How could it only be $70? I recounted my items to make sure I didn’t miss anything-no mistake. On a side note here I have to mention what happened with one of the Ikea shelves I bought. When I was putting the unit together there were plastic push screws used for the drawers that slide in and out of the unit. Once you push the screws through there’s no going back, they’re permanent. I was almost finished putting the screws in the last drawer when I realized I had folded the sides in the wrong way with the lip on the inside and not the out which meant it couldn’t slide the shelf in the unit. Arrrgggg. I was rushing and sure enough nothing good ever comes from that. I went to our local hardware store to see if they had any similar screws but no luck so I had to go back to Ikea to find out if they had these screws in stock. They did not. As I desperately tried to think of other items that they sold that would have similar screws the nice fellow working at the counter said he would pull another unit of the stock, open it and give me replacement screws. I was shocked. I reiterated to him that I made the mistake not Ikea.He said it didn’t matter and gave me the screws. So when I get fantastic customer service like that I have to say Kuddos to Ikea.
7) One of the boxes that I bought from Ikea was used as a cable hider for all the computer cables and wires. The wires were just a tangled mess and quite an eye sore. I cut holes in the back of the box and pulled the cables through them. It looks much better now.
This project did take me a while. It was a lot of work for one person but I am so glad I did it. This room was a bit of an embarrassment so now I don’t have to keep the door closed when we have company. I can certainly live with this until we are ready for the big renovation.
