Monday, January 9, 2012

I *heart* Kijiji!!

The office.  Also known as: the computer room, the study, the library, the abyss and the catch all.

Like a delinquent child, this is not what i want for this room.  Here, let me paint the picture of my vision....

Open the modern 5 pane french doors, into a boldly coloured room. To the left there is a funky, retro looking arm chair in a daring print next to a dark wood sideboard.  To the right, an L-shaped glass top desk, with an amazingly clean and clutter free desk top.  Beautiful and functional built-ins flank the window on the back wall with some drawers for files and cupboards to hide the crap...errr i mean...to hold the printer and neatly stacked piles of paper sorted by type...ok you get the picture.

I want the office to be bold, colourful, and organized (or least have the appearance of such).

First thing I wanted was to tackle the built-ins.  Inspiration hit me the other day watching Sarah's house...instead of hiring a cabinet maker to make my built ins, i will go to Ikea and use their kitchen cupboards!!  Well that was a short lived dream...my vision was going to cost over $2000.  Don't get me wrong, I see the value in paying a carpenter to craft some custom shelves built but i am not going to pay Ikea that amount for kitchen cupboards...clearly i needed to think this through a little better.  I can't put built-ins on carpet now can i??

Yes, this is the only place on the main level of our house where there is carpet.  We did it because it was too expensive an upgrade with the builder and because we thought we were going to hate the flooring we did choose and rip it out even before we moved in.  But alas, the standard hardwood flooring was not that bad and we decided to let the boys destroy it before we replaced it with a maple floor.  So that left the office in carpet.  After a few weeks of scouring the flyers and calling around to a few places, by chance i was hunting on kijiji one day (i got a new iPhone 4S and it has been glued to my palm since discovering there is a kijiji app) i found someone selling leftover flooring from their reno and luckily it the exact amount we needed.  YAY!!  We negotiated with them, and got the 193 sq ft of flooring for $325.  Its a gorgeous floor - 5.5" wide plank bamboo.  My dad came over with his flooring nail gun and it was installed in only 2 days.  Not bad for a rookie floor installer!

As i was carrying all the junk back into the room, i realized it was time to figure out the built-ins again.  So i put my thinking cap on...that's when it hit me!  We were going to mount the TV in the family room on the wall and so the cabinet that the TV had been sitting on was going to go the 2nd abyss in our house: the basement or get sold on kijiji so why not buy another one and build some kind of book shelf to go on top!!!
Only one problem, Ikea doesn't sell them any more.  So once again i hop on the kijiji app and lo and behold there were 2 for sale (funnily enough they had both gone up for sale that day).  Sweet.  So i emailed both of them and waited a week and didn't get any response.  BOO.  I kept searching...and just yesterday, two more people put one up for sale - one being just down the street.  My dad and i went last night and picked it up for $30!!  Its in pretty rough shape but what does one expect for $30?  I think with a little TLC no one will ever know.

Next on the agenda is to paint it white and replace the hardware.  The current hardware is a lock that required a 3/4" hole in the door.

 But with some googling, i found that you can use spray foam insulation and some poly-filla to fill the holes and no one should be the wiser.
Essentially, i am going to fill the holes with the foam, then use a serrated knife to cut off the excess, and then spackle it smooth.  We'll see how it goes...
 I am going to paint them white using a paint called Cabinet Coat, that i purchased at Benjamin Moore.  I had used it previously on chair and it seemed to work really well covering up the wood grain and minimizing any brush strokes.  Since these are mostly flat pieces, i am using a foam roller to make the job a little easier and quicker. 

Next step is to figure out a bookshelf to go on top!

2 comments:

  1. Oooo can't wait to see the after pic!

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  2. SOOOOO is this what we are working on this weekend?? or have you got it all figured out??

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