Desk Top Redo

I've started to spruce up my guest room. I decided when decorating this room, to limit myself to only using the things I already have. More details on that challenge later when I post my finished (and free!) guest room, but for now here's one of the projects I did for the room.

Remember, I'm not using anything I don't already own. The problem was I needed some large scale art, and didn't have any. So instead, I pulled out this IKEA desk that has been collecting dust for awhile.



First, I unscrewed the legs leaving only the table top - which was going to be my "canvas". Next I printed out several butterflies from the free images available at Vintageprintable.com.



I printed out the butterflies in various sizes on regular ol' printer paper and cut them out. I adhered the butterflies to the desk top using Mod Podge. Then I simply attached wire to the back of the desk top and hung. Free art!

Octopus Decor

What is the plural form of octopus? Octopuses? Octopi?


Shower curtain


Salad Plate


Entryway


Shelf decor


Art


Pillow


Glass octopus

Before and After : The Office

For the last couple of weeks I've been obsessed with getting the office together. The goal was to make it pretty and functional, instead of beige and gross; while spending as little cash money as possible.

Before:


After:


I made the desk, with help from Zach, using two doors, a small bookshelf that I already had, and two table legs. I'll expound on this project in another post.

Before:


After:

The wicker chair is from a thrift store, it was twelve buckaroos. I threw a couple of pillows that I already had on it. The yellow stool is from HomeGoods.

I didn't spend any money on the artwork. I already owned all the frames. All of the art consists of things I already had (fabric and giftwrap) or things I printed on my home printer. I used three sources for printing artwork: Vintage Printable, a disk of clipart images I had, and Dafont.com. The pear, bicycle and tree sihouettes are all Dingbat fonts I downloaded from Dafont.


The paint color is from Valspar, called Plum Passion (which is weird because it's not purple). The roman shades I made from the existing faux wood blinds that we had using Jenny's tutorial from Little Green Notebook. I was a little nervous, but they turned out okay. I think I will go back and add a liner to each of them. I used an old Ikea curtain for the fabric, and glued on black grosgain ribbon.


I replaced the black plastic pulls on the file cabinet with new brushed nickel hardware. The shelves and the containers I already had, and most of them are from Ikea. The silver wall flowers are from Target and were on clearance for about a dollar. Target and Ikea hold the answers to all of life's problems.




I eventually want to get a bigger bookshelf, but for now this one will work. I put my gift wrap in a big vase that I got forever ago, I think at Ross.


The desk chair I also got at a thrift store for $15. It was in pretty good shape so I just recovered the upholstery with some fabric from Joann's.



And there you have it, my new office! When all was said and done I spent about $200 benjamins.

Family Circle

No new posts for over a week!? Who's running this blog anyway?

My co-worker gave me a magazine today that I've never read, Family Circle. Well turns out they have some great design articles.

I grabbed these colorful images off their website.

Craigslist

My next post is up over at I Heart Mesa featuring local Craigslist finds!

I almost snatched this chair up for myself, it's screaming to be painted and recovered. The swirl detail is killing me.

Bad Blogger

Have you ever had that feeling of being so over-inspired that you're actually left under-inspired? Makes no sense? Well sometimes it's like there is so much great decor stuff out there in the blog world that I feel drained and over-stimulated just from looking at what everyone else is posting, and then I've got no juice left to post on my own blog. Plus, I've been busy. That Halloween candy wasn't going to eat itself.

Enough crazy talk. I'll try to be a better blogger. And if you've e-mailed me and I haven't written back, I'm sorry; I promise to respond soon.

For now, let's look at french doors. Because I have an ugly sliding glass door and I've been dreaming of shattering it with a sledge hammer and replacing it with beautiful french doors.













All photos via Decorpad

DIY : Door Desk

So what do you do when you want an "L" shaped desk but you are cheap? You make one out of two doors. Here is how I made mine.

Here are the supplies I used and about how much I spent.


(2) 24"x80" interior doors - $20/each = $40

(2) 29" table legs - $12/each = $24

White interior latex paint = $10

Wipe-on polyurethane (clear gloss) = $10

29" high bookshelf = free
(Make sure the bookshelf is the same height as your table legs.)

(4) "L" brackets and (1) flat bracket = about $4

Piece of lumber sized 1"x2"x96" = $8
(The wood board needs to be about the same length as long side of a door + short side of door, which for me was 80" + 24" = 104", but 96" was plenty long enough to support it.)

TOTAL for entire desk = about $96


The first step is mounting the wood board to the wall. This is going to support one side of the desk, like this:

My bookshelf and table legs were all 29" tall, so we obviously mounted the board so that the top of it was at a height of 29".

Before you start to put together the rest of the components, paint everything white.

Next attach the two table legs to one side of a door. I didn't take a picture but it looked like this, thanks Google.












Then it's simply a matter of setting the doors onto their various supporting elements. One door is supported by the bookshelf on one end, and the wood board on the other.


The other door is supported by the two legs on one side, and the board on the other.


We used a little wood glue on top of the wall board and on top of the bookshelf to keep the doors from sliding. Then connect everything together with the brackets and drill a hole where you want your computer cord. Finally I wiped on two coats of clear polyurethane after it was all put together.

Done and done my friends.

Now you're all very sick of my office. I'll talk about something else tomorrow I prom prom promise.