#other than where the laundry nook currently is under the stairs to the second floor

[victorluvsalice]

Welcome to Summer Saturday in the Chill Valicer Save, where my original plan was to do a "store day," but like so many plans, it didn’t survive contact with “the enemy” (aka me getting distracted trying to get through a bunch of other stuff in the game). But the trio did still get out and about, and they did still have a good Summer Saturday.

But we'll get to that in a minute, because first – house update! Yes, before I started playing, I made a few updates to the gang's house, and I am here to share them with you. So here we go –

-->After doing a quick check of my mods (couple of things to update from Lumpinou) and making back-ups and all that other fun stuff, I popped into the game, looked at the crafting barn, and went “well, I can’t figure out how to add a basement to the MAIN HOUSE, but HERE…” So I drew out a room under it, added some nice slat stairs with one of the new Horse Ranch railings going down (under the ones going up to Smiler’s party barn area), gave it a solid wooden floor and some nice stone walls (also both from Horse Ranch – that pack has some solid Build/Buy stuff, I must say), sold the woodworking bench that got kicked into the household inventory when I added in the new stairs (I wasn’t using it anyhow, honestly – Alice’s jewelry-making bench is now in its place) and voila – one barn basement! It’s rather sparsely furnished at the moment – kind of hard to furnish a room when you don’t have any working lights in it (the farmhouse is set up so the lights only go on when someone is in the room to conserve power, and my attempt to get Victor to turn on the ceiling lights I scattered in there only worked until I actually moved an object in there, whereupon they went right out again), but I also wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to put down there, beyond the nectar maker and a few nectar storage racks to help with aging. Ended up moving Victor’s cauldron down there as well, since that way I could free up the middle of the barn again – I could move the SimsCo canning factory down there too, I suppose, and make it for food and drink production? Kind of like the basement processing center at the store? I will ponder this. But yeah, currently what’s down there is the nectar-maker, the nectar storage racks (with the nectar Smiler’s already made inside one), Victor’s cauldron (and the cool stone circle underneath), and the yellow couch from the back porch. Why is THAT down there, you ask?

-->Well, because I ended up putting their new chess table in its spot! :D Yes, remember how Smiler actually successfully hosted a gold-tier Weenie Roast over in Copperdale last update, and thus got a nice wooden chess table (the one where the top is a partially-unfinished slice of a log) as a reward? I decided that it should go on the back porch because that’s where the chess lights were. :) I used the special camping chair (the one with the fish pattern) that they unlocked with their Silver Weenie Roast a while back for the seats, then moved the VIP bucket that was sitting on the side table next to the couch over to the counters by the barbecue, and the candy jar that was on that counter over to the side table. Because that felt more logical now. :P I also ended up moving the cooler they got for the original Weenie Roast here at the house over to the porch near the barbecue as well, then deleted the campfire in the yard entirely. Because they don’t really use it, and thanks to fun with “Simple Living,” they can’t even use it to roast weenies. *shakehead* I love that lot challenge but it comes with some BIZARRE restrictions.

I also BRIEFLY experimented with pulling the porch forward so I could make the kitchen a bit wider, in an attempt to fit more stuff into it – but then I realized “oh shit, that means I’m going to have to pull out the side of the house upstairs too, and that is going to be a whole thing and – yeah, that’s more than I want to deal with right now.” So everything went back to the way it was before. *sigh* Damn kitchen restrictions – though I suppose I could try widening it the OTHER way? Be a little less of a ballache, and all it would do is make the spot for the pet obstacle course a bit smaller, and they don’t use that much…we’ll see what I decide later!

-->And the final bit of Build/Buy fun before I started the playsession proper – getting a sign for the farm! :D Because while I was going through all the Horse Ranch stuff, vaguely looking for anything relating to mini-sheep/goats (I thought they had a special bed or something like how chickens have coops and cows and llamas have sheds – appears not), I suddenly remembered this pack came with ranch entrance signs and that I’d wanted to put one over the front path to the Van Liddelton farmhouse. So I found the one whose aesthetic matched the farmhouse the best and plopped it over the front path, then decorated it with some metal signs for a cow, a chicken, a cowplant, and a freezer bunny. Oh, and a longhorn skull for the center. XD It looked really cool –

But while I was looking for those entrance signs, I found ANOTHER beautiful entrance archway that was included with the pack, made of wooden beams with flowers (I believe morning glories) and string lights wrapped around it. I was like “!!! I can’t NOT use this,” but at the same time, I really wanted the “official” sign –

And then I decided “screw it, I’ll put this in front of the greenhouse.” So that’s what I did, moving over the wheelbarrow with the gnome and the little cart currently there and putting the new archway in front of the door, with the dark wood and yellow flowers since I liked that swatch best. :) It looks really nice! I like it as an extra bit of detailing for the front. Lots of good stuff in this pack, glad I got it!

[truereviewpage]

Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201

I know, I know – the idea of adding a little DIY office area at a vacation home seems borderline ridiculous, but back when we were debating what to add to the other side of the pantry, a bunch of people said a little desk area for email or writing or reading quietly would be nice to have in a rental. We definitely considered it, but went with more cabinets for general storage in there (you can see it here). But we kept the idea of adding a little desk nook somewhere else in the back of our mind.

And if you get our email newsletter, you already know that we ended up opting to add a desk and some extra shelving to the small little upstairs front room – which also has room for a Pack & Play. It’s a small room, but man it’s packed with function. So we’re here to share exactly how easy the whole adding-a-desk-and-shelves thing was. Literally anyone can turn some unused wall space into a functional workspace that looks polished and built-in. And it doesn’t have to cost a lot or require a lot of complicated tools or building methods.

The room we’re talking about sits near the top of the stairs at the beach house and since it’s only about the size of a queen mattress itself, it never would have worked as a proper bedroom. I don’t really have any “before” photos of the room, but here’s the view into it when we first bought the house in fall of 2016:

Below is the current view of it. We still can’t get over what a difference the refinished floors made (yes, the floors below are the same floors as the ones above – we just sanded them down and clear sealed them). It also probably helps that the walls and ceiling are no longer crumbling.

We’ve considered a ton of options for that room, including making it into a little reading/game nook or a spot to stash a Pack & Play for a sleeping baby (Sherry’s original votes) or a super practical storage closet (my vote) but until recently it had sort of just been a holding room for junk. But when Sherry’s brother visited in July, it finally proved that it was the perfect small sleeping space for a baby in a Pack & Play (the room darkening blinds definitely helped, along with having just the right amount of floor space).

We just move the chair and side table into the front bedroom and plop in a Pack & Play. You can read more about that in this past newsletter (and see a picture of it all set up in there).

Putting the Pack & Play in there temporarily also made us realize we would still have PLENTY OF SPACE on the inside wall for storage (again, my vote) AND a little desk so we’d no longer have to plop our laptop in the middle of the dining table. And the best part is that it only cost us $201. Here’s how we did it:

Materials & Budget

Two 1″ x 18″ x 72″ planks of pine shelving – $40 (these are showing as $25 each online, but ours were $19 in store)

Two 1″ x 12″ X 72″ common boards – $30

One 1″ x 2″ x 72″ select pine board – $4

Two 16″ heavy duty white shelf brackets & screws– $19

Six decorative 12″ iron shelf brackets – $108

Wall anchors (if needed)

Wood stain, conditioner, and sealer – they’d be $24 but we already had ’em from the bunk beds

TOTAL SPENT: $201 (or $225 to buy everything)

You may notice that the decorative iron brackets were more than half of our budget, so if you’re looking to do this for less – that’s a great place to save money. We chose these for consistency since we have them in our laundry room and love them, but these similar ones would save you about $30. And these slightly smaller ones would save you $45.

Making The Desk

The desk is actually hung on some basic heavy duty white brackets that we picked up in Home Depot. They aren’t intended to be a decorative element (we wanted them to visually disappear) so we mostly just chose them since they’d give us a nice deep desk space while being strong and easy to install. The 16″ depth was perfect for the 18″ shelving boards that we found to use for the desktop (actual width = 17.25″ because wood is never the size it says it is – seriously, a 2 x 4″ board is only 3.5″ wide!).

I used my stud finder to make sure I could go directly into the studs for the strongest hold. Because of that, they’re not exactly equidistant from the side walls, but they’re only a few inches off, and in a room this small you’ll never be standing straight on or far back enough to notice. You could use anchors though if bracket placement was more important for your project.

I hung them so the top of the bracket was 29″ from the floor, making the final desktop a hair over 30″ – which is pretty standard for most desks. Then, after cutting each of my boards to the right length, I laid them both on top of the brackets.

I used two pieces so that the desk would appear thicker than just 3/4″ – which is the actual thickness of each piece of shelving. Once everything was stained (which I’ll get to in a minute) I screwed the boards together from the bottom and then secured them to the brackets. And to cover the seam along the front edge, I nailed in a 1 x 2″ piece of pine that we stained to match.

It blends PERFECTLY with the rest of the top because the shelving already appears to be made of several smaller planks. So it gives the whole desk a really finished look (and makes it a smidge wider too – bonus!). My only tip is to sand the outside edges of this face piece before you stain it. The rounded edge will be much nicer on your wrists and forearms as you type… like I’m doing right now for this post.

Hanging The Shelves

The reason for the shelving above the desk area was to inject that added storage element we wanted. We still have random junk around (extra bed sheets and towels, repair stuff like spackle and caulk, a few faucets we’re storing for the duplex, and instruction manuals/warranties for all the beach house appliances, etc) that we wanted a spot for. So we ordered more of the same iron shelf brackets that you may remember from our laundry room makeover (more on that room update here).

We hung the first shelf 26″ above the desk, which was somewhat arbitrary. It looked good and felt high enough that we wouldn’t knock our faces into it when we stood up. To secure it, I once again located the studs – one in the exact middle of the room (thank goodness!) and two at the outer edge. Then I used my laser level to mark level across the three locations.

When hanging brackets like these, don’t forget to also level the bracket itself. Even on things like a robe hook in the bathroom, if you don’t take the time to level the spots where your screws enter the wall, you could end up with a twisted looking piece of hardware in the end.

The Etsy seller that we bought the brackets from included the screws, which is super helpful. You’ll need a ratchet or hex screw head to attach them, but they’re super sturdy. Just don’t forget to make pilot holes first, which will help ensure that your screws go into the exact right spot.

Then we repeated the process for the second shelf, which we placed 18″ above the first one. That’s a fairly standard distance for shelves when you plan to put large baskets, boxes, or decorative objects on them. However if you’re just putting things like small paperback books or games, you might want to go with 12-14″ spacing.

Another thing we love about these brackets is that the wood shelves just rest in them – no permanent attachment or anything. So this is where we were after a couple hours of work (and where some of you saw things in our email newsletter).

Staining The Shelves

I know we’ve probably talked about staining a billion times, but I want to point out a couple of quick things. One: we highly recommend that you use some sort of pre-stain or wood conditioner before you apply stain. You can get enough for a project like this for around $4, it’s fast and easy to apply, and it helps bring out the wood grain in your stain job while discouraging blotchiness or an uneven finish. You can see the difference between conditioned wood (left) and raw wood in the photo below.

To apply it you just liberally brush it on with a paintbrush or rag, let it soak in for about 10 minutes, and then wipe off any excess with a paper towel or rag. Then you can go right on to staining.

The other thing we did in this project was mimic the color treatment we did to the wood railings in our beach house’s bunk beds. We spent a lot of time during that project testing stain samples to get as close of a match to the pine floor as possible and, since these shelves would also be in a room with the same old pine floors, we wanted them to look similar as well.

Turns out the magic formula is a base coat of Minwax’s Puritan Pine, followed by a light coat of Minwax’s Colonial Maple. That second coat adds an extra hint of red that mimics the old heart pine floors.

The photo above is from before I wiped off the excess Colonial Maple, but you can see a clear difference that the second stain color makes. Once everything was dry, we also did a few coats of protective sealer on everything before rehanging them on the brackets.

Storage & Finishing Touches

Once everything was done, Sherry was excited to load up the shelves and I was excited to see just how much use we could get out of this small space. As you can see in the photo above, it’s kind of a mix of pretty and practical. For example there’s a perfect nook under the desk to stash our suitcases once we’ve unloaded our clothes into dressers for our stay (which isn’t exactly beautiful but it’s amazingly practical not to have them sitting in the bedrooms getting trampled).

Almost all of the decorative items that you see (that vase with some fake greenery from Michael’s, the gold frame, the faux succulent, that painting Sherry got from craigslist for $7 a while back, the three woven baskets from Target last year) are things we already had on hand, but she did grab a few new items to add a little more organization/function. Namely the clock, the magazine files (which we filled with all of our appliance manuals and warrantee sheets), and the desk lamp.

Although our favorite item might be the brass crab that a reader sent us after she spotted it for super cheap in a thrift store and felt like it had to live at the beach house. And now it does! I just have to keep an eye on it because I think the kids might try to steal it and raise it as their own at some point. The claws move and the top flips open for the most minuscule amount of storage (ink well? paperclip holder? ring storage?).

Oh and the desk chair in the photo above is one that we used to have at our beach house dining table before we got the benches – so we had that on hand too (it’s this one in “gray”). And the armchair below is an old thrift store find that Sherry purchased years ago with a new blue cushion for added comfort.

All in all, we’re super pumped about having pulled this little functional nook out of nowhere in just a few hours of work. And despite having some varying opinions and debates about this room’s use for MONTHS, we’re both glad that we landed on the perfect mix of our preferences. I get storage. Sherry gets a chair to read in AND a Pack & Play stash spot. And we both get a bonus little office area to sit down and type up posts like this one.

Although Burger may secretly be the most excited about it. I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it when he wakes up from his nap.

P.S. If you want to get access to project ideas, behind the scenes happenings, and other DIY stuff that’s going on in our world BEFORE it hits the blog, just sign up for our free email newsletter. And thanks to everyone who has already subscribed – Sherry loves writing them up and hitting send. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201 appeared first on Young House Love.

Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201 published first on https://aireloomreview.tumblr.com/

[endlessarchite]

Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201

I know, I know – the idea of adding a little DIY office area at a vacation home seems borderline ridiculous, but back when we were debating what to add to the other side of the pantry, a bunch of people said a little desk area for email or writing or reading quietly would be nice to have in a rental. We definitely considered it, but went with more cabinets for general storage in there (you can see it here). But we kept the idea of adding a little desk nook somewhere else in the back of our mind.

And if you get our email newsletter, you already know that we ended up opting to add a desk and some extra shelving to the small little upstairs front room – which also has room for a Pack & Play. It’s a small room, but man it’s packed with function. So we’re here to share exactly how easy the whole adding-a-desk-and-shelves thing was. Literally anyone can turn some unused wall space into a functional workspace that looks polished and built-in. And it doesn’t have to cost a lot or require a lot of complicated tools or building methods.

The room we’re talking about sits near the top of the stairs at the beach house and since it’s only about the size of a queen mattress itself, it never would have worked as a proper bedroom. I don’t really have any “before” photos of the room, but here’s the view into it when we first bought the house in fall of 2016:

Below is the current view of it. We still can’t get over what a difference the refinished floors made (yes, the floors below are the same floors as the ones above – we just sanded them down and clear sealed them). It also probably helps that the walls and ceiling are no longer crumbling.

We’ve considered a ton of options for that room, including making it into a little reading/game nook or a spot to stash a Pack & Play for a sleeping baby (Sherry’s original votes) or a super practical storage closet (my vote) but until recently it had sort of just been a holding room for junk. But when Sherry’s brother visited in July, it finally proved that it was the perfect small sleeping space for a baby in a Pack & Play (the room darkening blinds definitely helped, along with having just the right amount of floor space).

We just move the chair and side table into the front bedroom and plop in a Pack & Play. You can read more about that in this past newsletter (and see a picture of it all set up in there).

Putting the Pack & Play in there temporarily also made us realize we would still have PLENTY OF SPACE on the inside wall for storage (again, my vote) AND a little desk so we’d no longer have to plop our laptop in the middle of the dining table. And the best part is that it only cost us $201. Here’s how we did it:

Materials & Budget

Two 1″ x 18″ x 72″ planks of pine shelving – $40 (these are showing as $25 each online, but ours were $19 in store)

Two 1″ x 12″ X 72″ common boards – $30

One 1″ x 2″ x 72″ select pine board – $4

Two 16″ heavy duty white shelf brackets & screws– $19

Six decorative 12″ iron shelf brackets – $108

Wall anchors (if needed)

Wood stain, conditioner, and sealer – they’d be $24 but we already had ’em from the bunk beds

TOTAL SPENT: $201 (or $225 to buy everything)

You may notice that the decorative iron brackets were more than half of our budget, so if you’re looking to do this for less – that’s a great place to save money. We chose these for consistency since we have them in our laundry room and love them, but these similar ones would save you about $30. And these slightly smaller ones would save you $45.

Making The Desk

The desk is actually hung on some basic heavy duty white brackets that we picked up in Home Depot. They aren’t intended to be a decorative element (we wanted them to visually disappear) so we mostly just chose them since they’d give us a nice deep desk space while being strong and easy to install. The 16″ depth was perfect for the 18″ shelving boards that we found to use for the desktop (actual width = 17.25″ because wood is never the size it says it is – seriously, a 2 x 4″ board is only 3.5″ wide!).

I used my stud finder to make sure I could go directly into the studs for the strongest hold. Because of that, they’re not exactly equidistant from the side walls, but they’re only a few inches off, and in a room this small you’ll never be standing straight on or far back enough to notice. You could use anchors though if bracket placement was more important for your project.

I hung them so the top of the bracket was 29″ from the floor, making the final desktop a hair over 30″ – which is pretty standard for most desks. Then, after cutting each of my boards to the right length, I laid them both on top of the brackets.

I used two pieces so that the desk would appear thicker than just 3/4″ – which is the actual thickness of each piece of shelving. Once everything was stained (which I’ll get to in a minute) I screwed the boards together from the bottom and then secured them to the brackets. And to cover the seam along the front edge, I nailed in a 1 x 2″ piece of pine that we stained to match.

It blends PERFECTLY with the rest of the top because the shelving already appears to be made of several smaller planks. So it gives the whole desk a really finished look (and makes it a smidge wider too – bonus!). My only tip is to sand the outside edges of this face piece before you stain it. The rounded edge will be much nicer on your wrists and forearms as you type… like I’m doing right now for this post.

Hanging The Shelves

The reason for the shelving above the desk area was to inject that added storage element we wanted. We still have random junk around (extra bed sheets and towels, repair stuff like spackle and caulk, a few faucets we’re storing for the duplex, and instruction manuals/warranties for all the beach house appliances, etc) that we wanted a spot for. So we ordered more of the same iron shelf brackets that you may remember from our laundry room makeover (more on that room update here).

We hung the first shelf 26″ above the desk, which was somewhat arbitrary. It looked good and felt high enough that we wouldn’t knock our faces into it when we stood up. To secure it, I once again located the studs – one in the exact middle of the room (thank goodness!) and two at the outer edge. Then I used my laser level to mark level across the three locations.

When hanging brackets like these, don’t forget to also level the bracket itself. Even on things like a robe hook in the bathroom, if you don’t take the time to level the spots where your screws enter the wall, you could end up with a twisted looking piece of hardware in the end.

The Etsy seller that we bought the brackets from included the screws, which is super helpful. You’ll need a ratchet or hex screw head to attach them, but they’re super sturdy. Just don’t forget to make pilot holes first, which will help ensure that your screws go into the exact right spot.

Then we repeated the process for the second shelf, which we placed 18″ above the first one. That’s a fairly standard distance for shelves when you plan to put large baskets, boxes, or decorative objects on them. However if you’re just putting things like small paperback books or games, you might want to go with 12-14″ spacing.

Another thing we love about these brackets is that the wood shelves just rest in them – no permanent attachment or anything. So this is where we were after a couple hours of work (and where some of you saw things in our email newsletter).

Staining The Shelves

I know we’ve probably talked about staining a billion times, but I want to point out a couple of quick things. One: we highly recommend that you use some sort of pre-stain or wood conditioner before you apply stain. You can get enough for a project like this for around $4, it’s fast and easy to apply, and it helps bring out the wood grain in your stain job while discouraging blotchiness or an uneven finish. You can see the difference between conditioned wood (left) and raw wood in the photo below.

To apply it you just liberally brush it on with a paintbrush or rag, let it soak in for about 10 minutes, and then wipe off any excess with a paper towel or rag. Then you can go right on to staining.

The other thing we did in this project was mimic the color treatment we did to the wood railings in our beach house’s bunk beds. We spent a lot of time during that project testing stain samples to get as close of a match to the pine floor as possible and, since these shelves would also be in a room with the same old pine floors, we wanted them to look similar as well.

Turns out the magic formula is a base coat of Minwax’s Puritan Pine, followed by a light coat of Minwax’s Colonial Maple. That second coat adds an extra hint of red that mimics the old heart pine floors.

The photo above is from before I wiped off the excess Colonial Maple, but you can see a clear difference that the second stain color makes. Once everything was dry, we also did a few coats of protective sealer on everything before rehanging them on the brackets.

Storage & Finishing Touches

Once everything was done, Sherry was excited to load up the shelves and I was excited to see just how much use we could get out of this small space. As you can see in the photo above, it’s kind of a mix of pretty and practical. For example there’s a perfect nook under the desk to stash our suitcases once we’ve unloaded our clothes into dressers for our stay (which isn’t exactly beautiful but it’s amazingly practical not to have them sitting in the bedrooms getting trampled).

Almost all of the decorative items that you see (that vase with some fake greenery from Michael’s, the gold frame, the faux succulent, that painting Sherry got from craigslist for $7 a while back, the three woven baskets from Target last year) are things we already had on hand, but she did grab a few new items to add a little more organization/function. Namely the clock, the magazine files (which we filled with all of our appliance manuals and warrantee sheets), and the desk lamp.

Although our favorite item might be the brass crab that a reader sent us after she spotted it for super cheap in a thrift store and felt like it had to live at the beach house. And now it does! I just have to keep an eye on it because I think the kids might try to steal it and raise it as their own at some point. The claws move and the top flips open for the most minuscule amount of storage (ink well? paperclip holder? ring storage?).

Oh and the desk chair in the photo above is one that we used to have at our beach house dining table before we got the benches – so we had that on hand too (it’s this one in “gray”). And the armchair below is an old thrift store find that Sherry purchased years ago with a new blue cushion for added comfort.

All in all, we’re super pumped about having pulled this little functional nook out of nowhere in just a few hours of work. And despite having some varying opinions and debates about this room’s use for MONTHS, we’re both glad that we landed on the perfect mix of our preferences. I get storage. Sherry gets a chair to read in AND a Pack & Play stash spot. And we both get a bonus little office area to sit down and type up posts like this one.

Although Burger may secretly be the most excited about it. I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it when he wakes up from his nap.

P.S. If you want to get access to project ideas, behind the scenes happenings, and other DIY stuff that’s going on in our world BEFORE it hits the blog, just sign up for our free email newsletter. And thanks to everyone who has already subscribed – Sherry loves writing them up and hitting send. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201 appeared first on Young House Love.

Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201 published first on https://bakerskitchenslimited.tumblr.com/

[interiorstarweb]

Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201

I know, I know – the idea of adding a little DIY office area at a vacation home seems borderline ridiculous, but back when we were debating what to add to the other side of the pantry, a bunch of people said a little desk area for email or writing or reading quietly would be nice to have in a rental. We definitely considered it, but went with more cabinets for general storage in there (you can see it here). But we kept the idea of adding a little desk nook somewhere else in the back of our mind.

And if you get our email newsletter, you already know that we ended up opting to add a desk and some extra shelving to the small little upstairs front room – which also has room for a Pack & Play. It’s a small room, but man it’s packed with function. So we’re here to share exactly how easy the whole adding-a-desk-and-shelves thing was. Literally anyone can turn some unused wall space into a functional workspace that looks polished and built-in. And it doesn’t have to cost a lot or require a lot of complicated tools or building methods.

The room we’re talking about sits near the top of the stairs at the beach house and since it’s only about the size of a queen mattress itself, it never would have worked as a proper bedroom. I don’t really have any “before” photos of the room, but here’s the view into it when we first bought the house in fall of 2016:

Below is the current view of it. We still can’t get over what a difference the refinished floors made (yes, the floors below are the same floors as the ones above – we just sanded them down and clear sealed them). It also probably helps that the walls and ceiling are no longer crumbling.

We’ve considered a ton of options for that room, including making it into a little reading/game nook or a spot to stash a Pack & Play for a sleeping baby (Sherry’s original votes) or a super practical storage closet (my vote) but until recently it had sort of just been a holding room for junk. But when Sherry’s brother visited in July, it finally proved that it was the perfect small sleeping space for a baby in a Pack & Play (the room darkening blinds definitely helped, along with having just the right amount of floor space).

We just move the chair and side table into the front bedroom and plop in a Pack & Play. You can read more about that in this past newsletter (and see a picture of it all set up in there).

Putting the Pack & Play in there temporarily also made us realize we would still have PLENTY OF SPACE on the inside wall for storage (again, my vote) AND a little desk so we’d no longer have to plop our laptop in the middle of the dining table. And the best part is that it only cost us $201. Here’s how we did it:

Materials & Budget

Two 1″ x 18″ x 72″ planks of pine shelving – $40 (these are showing as $25 each online, but ours were $19 in store)

Two 1″ x 12″ X 72″ common boards – $30

One 1″ x 2″ x 72″ select pine board – $4

Two 16″ heavy duty white shelf brackets & screws– $19

Six decorative 12″ iron shelf brackets – $108

Wall anchors (if needed)

Wood stain, conditioner, and sealer – they’d be $24 but we already had ’em from the bunk beds

TOTAL SPENT: $201 (or $225 to buy everything)

You may notice that the decorative iron brackets were more than half of our budget, so if you’re looking to do this for less – that’s a great place to save money. We chose these for consistency since we have them in our laundry room and love them, but these similar ones would save you about $30. And these slightly smaller ones would save you $45.

Making The Desk

The desk is actually hung on some basic heavy duty white brackets that we picked up in Home Depot. They aren’t intended to be a decorative element (we wanted them to visually disappear) so we mostly just chose them since they’d give us a nice deep desk space while being strong and easy to install. The 16″ depth was perfect for the 18″ shelving boards that we found to use for the desktop (actual width = 17.25″ because wood is never the size it says it is – seriously, a 2 x 4″ board is only 3.5″ wide!).

I used my stud finder to make sure I could go directly into the studs for the strongest hold. Because of that, they’re not exactly equidistant from the side walls, but they’re only a few inches off, and in a room this small you’ll never be standing straight on or far back enough to notice. You could use anchors though if bracket placement was more important for your project.

I hung them so the top of the bracket was 29″ from the floor, making the final desktop a hair over 30″ – which is pretty standard for most desks. Then, after cutting each of my boards to the right length, I laid them both on top of the brackets.

I used two pieces so that the desk would appear thicker than just 3/4″ – which is the actual thickness of each piece of shelving. Once everything was stained (which I’ll get to in a minute) I screwed the boards together from the bottom and then secured them to the brackets. And to cover the seam along the front edge, I nailed in a 1 x 2″ piece of pine that we stained to match.

It blends PERFECTLY with the rest of the top because the shelving already appears to be made of several smaller planks. So it gives the whole desk a really finished look (and makes it a smidge wider too – bonus!). My only tip is to sand the outside edges of this face piece before you stain it. The rounded edge will be much nicer on your wrists and forearms as you type… like I’m doing right now for this post.

Hanging The Shelves

The reason for the shelving above the desk area was to inject that added storage element we wanted. We still have random junk around (extra bed sheets and towels, repair stuff like spackle and caulk, a few faucets we’re storing for the duplex, and instruction manuals/warranties for all the beach house appliances, etc) that we wanted a spot for. So we ordered more of the same iron shelf brackets that you may remember from our laundry room makeover (more on that room update here).

We hung the first shelf 26″ above the desk, which was somewhat arbitrary. It looked good and felt high enough that we wouldn’t knock our faces into it when we stood up. To secure it, I once again located the studs – one in the exact middle of the room (thank goodness!) and two at the outer edge. Then I used my laser level to mark level across the three locations.

When hanging brackets like these, don’t forget to also level the bracket itself. Even on things like a robe hook in the bathroom, if you don’t take the time to level the spots where your screws enter the wall, you could end up with a twisted looking piece of hardware in the end.

The Etsy seller that we bought the brackets from included the screws, which is super helpful. You’ll need a ratchet or hex screw head to attach them, but they’re super sturdy. Just don’t forget to make pilot holes first, which will help ensure that your screws go into the exact right spot.

Then we repeated the process for the second shelf, which we placed 18″ above the first one. That’s a fairly standard distance for shelves when you plan to put large baskets, boxes, or decorative objects on them. However if you’re just putting things like small paperback books or games, you might want to go with 12-14″ spacing.

Another thing we love about these brackets is that the wood shelves just rest in them – no permanent attachment or anything. So this is where we were after a couple hours of work (and where some of you saw things in our email newsletter).

Staining The Shelves

I know we’ve probably talked about staining a billion times, but I want to point out a couple of quick things. One: we highly recommend that you use some sort of pre-stain or wood conditioner before you apply stain. You can get enough for a project like this for around $4, it’s fast and easy to apply, and it helps bring out the wood grain in your stain job while discouraging blotchiness or an uneven finish. You can see the difference between conditioned wood (left) and raw wood in the photo below.

To apply it you just liberally brush it on with a paintbrush or rag, let it soak in for about 10 minutes, and then wipe off any excess with a paper towel or rag. Then you can go right on to staining.

The other thing we did in this project was mimic the color treatment we did to the wood railings in our beach house’s bunk beds. We spent a lot of time during that project testing stain samples to get as close of a match to the pine floor as possible and, since these shelves would also be in a room with the same old pine floors, we wanted them to look similar as well.

Turns out the magic formula is a base coat of Minwax’s Puritan Pine, followed by a light coat of Minwax’s Colonial Maple. That second coat adds an extra hint of red that mimics the old heart pine floors.

The photo above is from before I wiped off the excess Colonial Maple, but you can see a clear difference that the second stain color makes. Once everything was dry, we also did a few coats of protective sealer on everything before rehanging them on the brackets.

Storage & Finishing Touches

Once everything was done, Sherry was excited to load up the shelves and I was excited to see just how much use we could get out of this small space. As you can see in the photo above, it’s kind of a mix of pretty and practical. For example there’s a perfect nook under the desk to stash our suitcases once we’ve unloaded our clothes into dressers for our stay (which isn’t exactly beautiful but it’s amazingly practical not to have them sitting in the bedrooms getting trampled).

Almost all of the decorative items that you see (that vase with some fake greenery from Michael’s, the gold frame, the faux succulent, that painting Sherry got from craigslist for $7 a while back, the three woven baskets from Target last year) are things we already had on hand, but she did grab a few new items to add a little more organization/function. Namely the clock, the magazine files (which we filled with all of our appliance manuals and warrantee sheets), and the desk lamp.

Although our favorite item might be the brass crab that a reader sent us after she spotted it for super cheap in a thrift store and felt like it had to live at the beach house. And now it does! I just have to keep an eye on it because I think the kids might try to steal it and raise it as their own at some point. The claws move and the top flips open for the most minuscule amount of storage (ink well? paperclip holder? ring storage?).

Oh and the desk chair in the photo above is one that we used to have at our beach house dining table before we got the benches – so we had that on hand too (it’s this one in “gray”). And the armchair below is an old thrift store find that Sherry purchased years ago with a new blue cushion for added comfort.

All in all, we’re super pumped about having pulled this little functional nook out of nowhere in just a few hours of work. And despite having some varying opinions and debates about this room’s use for MONTHS, we’re both glad that we landed on the perfect mix of our preferences. I get storage. Sherry gets a chair to read in AND a Pack & Play stash spot. And we both get a bonus little office area to sit down and type up posts like this one.

Although Burger may secretly be the most excited about it. I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it when he wakes up from his nap.

P.S. If you want to get access to project ideas, behind the scenes happenings, and other DIY stuff that’s going on in our world BEFORE it hits the blog, just sign up for our free email newsletter. And thanks to everyone who has already subscribed – Sherry loves writing them up and hitting send. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201 appeared first on Young House Love.

Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201 published first on https://novaformmattressreview.tumblr.com/

[additionallysad]

Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201 https://ift.tt/2o2zUPq

I know, I know – the idea of adding a little DIY office area at a vacation home seems borderline ridiculous, but back when we were debating what to add to the other side of the pantry, a bunch of people said a little desk area for email or writing or reading quietly would be nice to have in a rental. We definitely considered it, but went with more cabinets for general storage in there (you can see it here). But we kept the idea of adding a little desk nook somewhere else in the back of our mind.

And if you get our email newsletter, you already know that we ended up opting to add a desk and some extra shelving to the small little upstairs front room – which also has room for a Pack & Play. It’s a small room, but man it’s packed with function. So we’re here to share exactly how easy the whole adding-a-desk-and-shelves thing was. Literally anyone can turn some unused wall space into a functional workspace that looks polished and built-in. And it doesn’t have to cost a lot or require a lot of complicated tools or building methods.

The room we’re talking about sits near the top of the stairs at the beach house and since it’s only about the size of a queen mattress itself, it never would have worked as a proper bedroom. I don’t really have any “before” photos of the room, but here’s the view into it when we first bought the house in fall of 2016:

Below is the current view of it. We still can’t get over what a difference the refinished floors made (yes, the floors below are the same floors as the ones above – we just sanded them down and clear sealed them). It also probably helps that the walls and ceiling are no longer crumbling.

We’ve considered a ton of options for that room, including making it into a little reading/game nook or a spot to stash a Pack & Play for a sleeping baby (Sherry’s original votes) or a super practical storage closet (my vote) but until recently it had sort of just been a holding room for junk. But when Sherry’s brother visited in July, it finally proved that it was the perfect small sleeping space for a baby in a Pack & Play (the room darkening blinds definitely helped, along with having just the right amount of floor space).

We just move the chair and side table into the front bedroom and plop in a Pack & Play. You can read more about that in this past newsletter (and see a picture of it all set up in there).

Putting the Pack & Play in there temporarily also made us realize we would still have PLENTY OF SPACE on the inside wall for storage (again, my vote) AND a little desk so we’d no longer have to plop our laptop in the middle of the dining table. And the best part is that it only cost us $201. Here’s how we did it:

Materials & Budget

Two 1″ x 18″ x 72″ planks of pine shelving – $40 (these are showing as $25 each online, but ours were $19 in store)

Two 1″ x 12″ X 72″ common boards – $30

One 1″ x 2″ x 72″ select pine board – $4

Two 16″ heavy duty white shelf brackets & screws– $19

Six decorative 12″ iron shelf brackets – $108

Wall anchors (if needed)

Wood stain, conditioner, and sealer – they’d be $24 but we already had ’em from the bunk beds

TOTAL SPENT: $201 (or $225 to buy everything)

You may notice that the decorative iron brackets were more than half of our budget, so if you’re looking to do this for less – that’s a great place to save money. We chose these for consistency since we have them in our laundry room and love them, but these similar ones would save you about $30. And these slightly smaller ones would save you $45.

Making The Desk

The desk is actually hung on some basic heavy duty white brackets that we picked up in Home Depot. They aren’t intended to be a decorative element (we wanted them to visually disappear) so we mostly just chose them since they’d give us a nice deep desk space while being strong and easy to install. The 16″ depth was perfect for the 18″ shelving boards that we found to use for the desktop (actual width = 17.25″ because wood is never the size it says it is – seriously, a 2 x 4″ board is only 3.5″ wide!).

I used my stud finder to make sure I could go directly into the studs for the strongest hold. Because of that, they’re not exactly equidistant from the side walls, but they’re only a few inches off, and in a room this small you’ll never be standing straight on or far back enough to notice. You could use anchors though if bracket placement was more important for your project.

I hung them so the top of the bracket was 29″ from the floor, making the final desktop a hair over 30″ – which is pretty standard for most desks. Then, after cutting each of my boards to the right length, I laid them both on top of the brackets.

I used two pieces so that the desk would appear thicker than just 3/4″ – which is the actual thickness of each piece of shelving. Once everything was stained (which I’ll get to in a minute) I screwed the boards together from the bottom and then secured them to the brackets. And to cover the seam along the front edge, I nailed in a 1 x 2″ piece of pine that we stained to match.

It blends PERFECTLY with the rest of the top because the shelving already appears to be made of several smaller planks. So it gives the whole desk a really finished look (and makes it a smidge wider too – bonus!). My only tip is to sand the outside edges of this face piece before you stain it. The rounded edge will be much nicer on your wrists and forearms as you type… like I’m doing right now for this post.

Hanging The Shelves

The reason for the shelving above the desk area was to inject that added storage element we wanted. We still have random junk around (extra bed sheets and towels, repair stuff like spackle and caulk, a few faucets we’re storing for the duplex, and instruction manuals/warranties for all the beach house appliances, etc) that we wanted a spot for. So we ordered more of the same iron shelf brackets that you may remember from our laundry room makeover (more on that room update here).

We hung the first shelf 26″ above the desk, which was somewhat arbitrary. It looked good and felt high enough that we wouldn’t knock our faces into it when we stood up. To secure it, I once again located the studs – one in the exact middle of the room (thank goodness!) and two at the outer edge. Then I used my laser level to mark level across the three locations.

When hanging brackets like these, don’t forget to also level the bracket itself. Even on things like a robe hook in the bathroom, if you don’t take the time to level the spots where your screws enter the wall, you could end up with a twisted looking piece of hardware in the end.

The Etsy seller that we bought the brackets from included the screws, which is super helpful. You’ll need a ratchet or hex screw head to attach them, but they’re super sturdy. Just don’t forget to make pilot holes first, which will help ensure that your screws go into the exact right spot.

Then we repeated the process for the second shelf, which we placed 18″ above the first one. That’s a fairly standard distance for shelves when you plan to put large baskets, boxes, or decorative objects on them. However if you’re just putting things like small paperback books or games, you might want to go with 12-14″ spacing.

Another thing we love about these brackets is that the wood shelves just rest in them – no permanent attachment or anything. So this is where we were after a couple hours of work (and where some of you saw things in our email newsletter).

Staining The Shelves

I know we’ve probably talked about staining a billion times, but I want to point out a couple of quick things. One: we highly recommend that you use some sort of pre-stain or wood conditioner before you apply stain. You can get enough for a project like this for around $4, it’s fast and easy to apply, and it helps bring out the wood grain in your stain job while discouraging blotchiness or an uneven finish. You can see the difference between conditioned wood (left) and raw wood in the photo below.

To apply it you just liberally brush it on with a paintbrush or rag, let it soak in for about 10 minutes, and then wipe off any excess with a paper towel or rag. Then you can go right on to staining.

The other thing we did in this project was mimic the color treatment we did to the wood railings in our beach house’s bunk beds. We spent a lot of time during that project testing stain samples to get as close of a match to the pine floor as possible and, since these shelves would also be in a room with the same old pine floors, we wanted them to look similar as well.

Turns out the magic formula is a base coat of Minwax’s Puritan Pine, followed by a light coat of Minwax’s Colonial Maple. That second coat adds an extra hint of red that mimics the old heart pine floors.

The photo above is from before I wiped off the excess Colonial Maple, but you can see a clear difference that the second stain color makes. Once everything was dry, we also did a few coats of protective sealer on everything before rehanging them on the brackets.

Storage & Finishing Touches

Once everything was done, Sherry was excited to load up the shelves and I was excited to see just how much use we could get out of this small space. As you can see in the photo above, it’s kind of a mix of pretty and practical. For example there’s a perfect nook under the desk to stash our suitcases once we’ve unloaded our clothes into dressers for our stay (which isn’t exactly beautiful but it’s amazingly practical not to have them sitting in the bedrooms getting trampled).

Almost all of the decorative items that you see (that vase with some fake greenery from Michael’s, the gold frame, the faux succulent, that painting Sherry got from craigslist for $7 a while back, the three woven baskets from Target last year) are things we already had on hand, but she did grab a few new items to add a little more organization/function. Namely the clock, the magazine files (which we filled with all of our appliance manuals and warrantee sheets), and the desk lamp.

Although our favorite item might be the brass crab that a reader sent us after she spotted it for super cheap in a thrift store and felt like it had to live at the beach house. And now it does! I just have to keep an eye on it because I think the kids might try to steal it and raise it as their own at some point. The claws move and the top flips open for the most minuscule amount of storage (ink well? paperclip holder? ring storage?).

Oh and the desk chair in the photo above is one that we used to have at our beach house dining table before we got the benches – so we had that on hand too (it’s this one in “gray”). And the armchair below is an old thrift store find that Sherry purchased years ago with a new blue cushion for added comfort.

All in all, we’re super pumped about having pulled this little functional nook out of nowhere in just a few hours of work. And despite having some varying opinions and debates about this room’s use for MONTHS, we’re both glad that we landed on the perfect mix of our preferences. I get storage. Sherry gets a chair to read in AND a Pack & Play stash spot. And we both get a bonus little office area to sit down and type up posts like this one.

Although Burger may secretly be the most excited about it. I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it when he wakes up from his nap.

P.S. If you want to get access to project ideas, behind the scenes happenings, and other DIY stuff that’s going on in our world BEFORE it hits the blog, just sign up for our free email newsletter. And thanks to everyone who has already subscribed – Sherry loves writing them up and hitting send. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201 appeared first on Young House Love.

[yesterdaysdreams]

Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201

I know, I know – the idea of adding a little DIY office area at a vacation home seems borderline ridiculous, but back when we were debating what to add to the other side of the pantry, a bunch of people said a little desk area for email or writing or reading quietly would be nice to have in a rental. We definitely considered it, but went with more cabinets for general storage in there (you can see it here). But we kept the idea of adding a little desk nook somewhere else in the back of our mind.

And if you get our email newsletter, you already know that we ended up opting to add a desk and some extra shelving to the small little upstairs front room – which also has room for a Pack & Play. It’s a small room, but man it’s packed with function. So we’re here to share exactly how easy the whole adding-a-desk-and-shelves thing was. Literally anyone can turn some unused wall space into a functional workspace that looks polished and built-in. And it doesn’t have to cost a lot or require a lot of complicated tools or building methods.

The room we’re talking about sits near the top of the stairs at the beach house and since it’s only about the size of a queen mattress itself, it never would have worked as a proper bedroom. I don’t really have any “before” photos of the room, but here’s the view into it when we first bought the house in fall of 2016:

Below is the current view of it. We still can’t get over what a difference the refinished floors made (yes, the floors below are the same floors as the ones above – we just sanded them down and clear sealed them). It also probably helps that the walls and ceiling are no longer crumbling.

We’ve considered a ton of options for that room, including making it into a little reading/game nook or a spot to stash a Pack & Play for a sleeping baby (Sherry’s original votes) or a super practical storage closet (my vote) but until recently it had sort of just been a holding room for junk. But when Sherry’s brother visited in July, it finally proved that it was the perfect small sleeping space for a baby in a Pack & Play (the room darkening blinds definitely helped, along with having just the right amount of floor space).

We just move the chair and side table into the front bedroom and plop in a Pack & Play. You can read more about that in this past newsletter (and see a picture of it all set up in there).

Putting the Pack & Play in there temporarily also made us realize we would still have PLENTY OF SPACE on the inside wall for storage (again, my vote) AND a little desk so we’d no longer have to plop our laptop in the middle of the dining table. And the best part is that it only cost us $201. Here’s how we did it:

Materials & Budget

Two 1″ x 18″ x 72″ planks of pine shelving – $40 (these are showing as $25 each online, but ours were $19 in store)

Two 1″ x 12″ X 72″ common boards – $30

One 1″ x 2″ x 72″ select pine board – $4

Two 16″ heavy duty white shelf brackets & screws– $19

Six decorative 12″ iron shelf brackets – $108

Wall anchors (if needed)

Wood stain, conditioner, and sealer – they’d be $24 but we already had ’em from the bunk beds

TOTAL SPENT: $201 (or $225 to buy everything)

You may notice that the decorative iron brackets were more than half of our budget, so if you’re looking to do this for less – that’s a great place to save money. We chose these for consistency since we have them in our laundry room and love them, but these similar ones would save you about $30. And these slightly smaller ones would save you $45.

Making The Desk

The desk is actually hung on some basic heavy duty white brackets that we picked up in Home Depot. They aren’t intended to be a decorative element (we wanted them to visually disappear) so we mostly just chose them since they’d give us a nice deep desk space while being strong and easy to install. The 16″ depth was perfect for the 18″ shelving boards that we found to use for the desktop (actual width = 17.25″ because wood is never the size it says it is – seriously, a 2 x 4″ board is only 3.5″ wide!).

I used my stud finder to make sure I could go directly into the studs for the strongest hold. Because of that, they’re not exactly equidistant from the side walls, but they’re only a few inches off, and in a room this small you’ll never be standing straight on or far back enough to notice. You could use anchors though if bracket placement was more important for your project.

I hung them so the top of the bracket was 29″ from the floor, making the final desktop a hair over 30″ – which is pretty standard for most desks. Then, after cutting each of my boards to the right length, I laid them both on top of the brackets.

I used two pieces so that the desk would appear thicker than just 3/4″ – which is the actual thickness of each piece of shelving. Once everything was stained (which I’ll get to in a minute) I screwed the boards together from the bottom and then secured them to the brackets. And to cover the seam along the front edge, I nailed in a 1 x 2″ piece of pine that we stained to match.

It blends PERFECTLY with the rest of the top because the shelving already appears to be made of several smaller planks. So it gives the whole desk a really finished look (and makes it a smidge wider too – bonus!). My only tip is to sand the outside edges of this face piece before you stain it. The rounded edge will be much nicer on your wrists and forearms as you type… like I’m doing right now for this post.

Hanging The Shelves

The reason for the shelving above the desk area was to inject that added storage element we wanted. We still have random junk around (extra bed sheets and towels, repair stuff like spackle and caulk, a few faucets we’re storing for the duplex, and instruction manuals/warranties for all the beach house appliances, etc) that we wanted a spot for. So we ordered more of the same iron shelf brackets that you may remember from our laundry room makeover (more on that room update here).

We hung the first shelf 26″ above the desk, which was somewhat arbitrary. It looked good and felt high enough that we wouldn’t knock our faces into it when we stood up. To secure it, I once again located the studs – one in the exact middle of the room (thank goodness!) and two at the outer edge. Then I used my laser level to mark level across the three locations.

When hanging brackets like these, don’t forget to also level the bracket itself. Even on things like a robe hook in the bathroom, if you don’t take the time to level the spots where your screws enter the wall, you could end up with a twisted looking piece of hardware in the end.

The Etsy seller that we bought the brackets from included the screws, which is super helpful. You’ll need a ratchet or hex screw head to attach them, but they’re super sturdy. Just don’t forget to make pilot holes first, which will help ensure that your screws go into the exact right spot.

Then we repeated the process for the second shelf, which we placed 18″ above the first one. That’s a fairly standard distance for shelves when you plan to put large baskets, boxes, or decorative objects on them. However if you’re just putting things like small paperback books or games, you might want to go with 12-14″ spacing.

Another thing we love about these brackets is that the wood shelves just rest in them – no permanent attachment or anything. So this is where we were after a couple hours of work (and where some of you saw things in our email newsletter).

Staining The Shelves

I know we’ve probably talked about staining a billion times, but I want to point out a couple of quick things. One: we highly recommend that you use some sort of pre-stain or wood conditioner before you apply stain. You can get enough for a project like this for around $4, it’s fast and easy to apply, and it helps bring out the wood grain in your stain job while discouraging blotchiness or an uneven finish. You can see the difference between conditioned wood (left) and raw wood in the photo below.

To apply it you just liberally brush it on with a paintbrush or rag, let it soak in for about 10 minutes, and then wipe off any excess with a paper towel or rag. Then you can go right on to staining.

The other thing we did in this project was mimic the color treatment we did to the wood railings in our beach house’s bunk beds. We spent a lot of time during that project testing stain samples to get as close of a match to the pine floor as possible and, since these shelves would also be in a room with the same old pine floors, we wanted them to look similar as well.

Turns out the magic formula is a base coat of Minwax’s Puritan Pine, followed by a light coat of Minwax’s Colonial Maple. That second coat adds an extra hint of red that mimics the old heart pine floors.

The photo above is from before I wiped off the excess Colonial Maple, but you can see a clear difference that the second stain color makes. Once everything was dry, we also did a few coats of protective sealer on everything before rehanging them on the brackets.

Storage & Finishing Touches

Once everything was done, Sherry was excited to load up the shelves and I was excited to see just how much use we could get out of this small space. As you can see in the photo above, it’s kind of a mix of pretty and practical. For example there’s a perfect nook under the desk to stash our suitcases once we’ve unloaded our clothes into dressers for our stay (which isn’t exactly beautiful but it’s amazingly practical not to have them sitting in the bedrooms getting trampled).

Almost all of the decorative items that you see (that vase with some fake greenery from Michael’s, the gold frame, the faux succulent, that painting Sherry got from craigslist for $7 a while back, the three woven baskets from Target last year) are things we already had on hand, but she did grab a few new items to add a little more organization/function. Namely the clock, the magazine files (which we filled with all of our appliance manuals and warrantee sheets), and the desk lamp.

Although our favorite item might be the brass crab that a reader sent us after she spotted it for super cheap in a thrift store and felt like it had to live at the beach house. And now it does! I just have to keep an eye on it because I think the kids might try to steal it and raise it as their own at some point. The claws move and the top flips open for the most minuscule amount of storage (ink well? paperclip holder? ring storage?).

Oh and the desk chair in the photo above is one that we used to have at our beach house dining table before we got the benches – so we had that on hand too (it’s this one in “gray”). And the armchair below is an old thrift store find that Sherry purchased years ago with a new blue cushion for added comfort.

All in all, we’re super pumped about having pulled this little functional nook out of nowhere in just a few hours of work. And despite having some varying opinions and debates about this room’s use for MONTHS, we’re both glad that we landed on the perfect mix of our preferences. I get storage. Sherry gets a chair to read in AND a Pack & Play stash spot. And we both get a bonus little office area to sit down and type up posts like this one.

Although Burger may secretly be the most excited about it. I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it when he wakes up from his nap.

P.S. If you want to get access to project ideas, behind the scenes happenings, and other DIY stuff that’s going on in our world BEFORE it hits the blog, just sign up for our free email newsletter. And thanks to everyone who has already subscribed – Sherry loves writing them up and hitting send. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201 appeared first on Young House Love.

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[lukerhill]

Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201

I know, I know – the idea of adding a little DIY office area at a vacation home seems borderline ridiculous, but back when we were debating what to add to the other side of the pantry, a bunch of people said a little desk area for email or writing or reading quietly would be nice to have in a rental. We definitely considered it, but went with more cabinets for general storage in there (you can see it here). But we kept the idea of adding a little desk nook somewhere else in the back of our mind.

And if you get our email newsletter, you already know that we ended up opting to add a desk and some extra shelving to the small little upstairs front room – which also has room for a Pack & Play. It’s a small room, but man it’s packed with function. So we’re here to share exactly how easy the whole adding-a-desk-and-shelves thing was. Literally anyone can turn some unused wall space into a functional workspace that looks polished and built-in. And it doesn’t have to cost a lot or require a lot of complicated tools or building methods.

The room we’re talking about sits near the top of the stairs at the beach house and since it’s only about the size of a queen mattress itself, it never would have worked as a proper bedroom. I don’t really have any “before” photos of the room, but here’s the view into it when we first bought the house in fall of 2016:

Below is the current view of it. We still can’t get over what a difference the refinished floors made (yes, the floors below are the same floors as the ones above – we just sanded them down and clear sealed them). It also probably helps that the walls and ceiling are no longer crumbling.

We’ve considered a ton of options for that room, including making it into a little reading/game nook or a spot to stash a Pack & Play for a sleeping baby (Sherry’s original votes) or a super practical storage closet (my vote) but until recently it had sort of just been a holding room for junk. But when Sherry’s brother visited in July, it finally proved that it was the perfect small sleeping space for a baby in a Pack & Play (the room darkening blinds definitely helped, along with having just the right amount of floor space).

We just move the chair and side table into the front bedroom and plop in a Pack & Play. You can read more about that in this past newsletter (and see a picture of it all set up in there).

Putting the Pack & Play in there temporarily also made us realize we would still have PLENTY OF SPACE on the inside wall for storage (again, my vote) AND a little desk so we’d no longer have to plop our laptop in the middle of the dining table. And the best part is that it only cost us $201. Here’s how we did it:

Materials & Budget

Two 1″ x 18″ x 72″ planks of pine shelving – $40 (these are showing as $25 each online, but ours were $19 in store)

Two 1″ x 12″ X 72″ common boards – $30

One 1″ x 2″ x 72″ select pine board – $4

Two 16″ heavy duty white shelf brackets & screws– $19

Six decorative 12″ iron shelf brackets – $108

Wall anchors (if needed)

Wood stain, conditioner, and sealer – they’d be $24 but we already had ’em from the bunk beds

TOTAL SPENT: $201 (or $225 to buy everything)

You may notice that the decorative iron brackets were more than half of our budget, so if you’re looking to do this for less – that’s a great place to save money. We chose these for consistency since we have them in our laundry room and love them, but these similar ones would save you about $30. And these slightly smaller ones would save you $45.

Making The Desk

The desk is actually hung on some basic heavy duty white brackets that we picked up in Home Depot. They aren’t intended to be a decorative element (we wanted them to visually disappear) so we mostly just chose them since they’d give us a nice deep desk space while being strong and easy to install. The 16″ depth was perfect for the 18″ shelving boards that we found to use for the desktop (actual width = 17.25″ because wood is never the size it says it is – seriously, a 2 x 4″ board is only 3.5″ wide!).

I used my stud finder to make sure I could go directly into the studs for the strongest hold. Because of that, they’re not exactly equidistant from the side walls, but they’re only a few inches off, and in a room this small you’ll never be standing straight on or far back enough to notice. You could use anchors though if bracket placement was more important for your project.

I hung them so the top of the bracket was 29″ from the floor, making the final desktop a hair over 30″ – which is pretty standard for most desks. Then, after cutting each of my boards to the right length, I laid them both on top of the brackets.

I used two pieces so that the desk would appear thicker than just 3/4″ – which is the actual thickness of each piece of shelving. Once everything was stained (which I’ll get to in a minute) I screwed the boards together from the bottom and then secured them to the brackets. And to cover the seam along the front edge, I nailed in a 1 x 2″ piece of pine that we stained to match.

It blends PERFECTLY with the rest of the top because the shelving already appears to be made of several smaller planks. So it gives the whole desk a really finished look (and makes it a smidge wider too – bonus!). My only tip is to sand the outside edges of this face piece before you stain it. The rounded edge will be much nicer on your wrists and forearms as you type… like I’m doing right now for this post.

Hanging The Shelves

The reason for the shelving above the desk area was to inject that added storage element we wanted. We still have random junk around (extra bed sheets and towels, repair stuff like spackle and caulk, a few faucets we’re storing for the duplex, and instruction manuals/warranties for all the beach house appliances, etc) that we wanted a spot for. So we ordered more of the same iron shelf brackets that you may remember from our laundry room makeover (more on that room update here).

We hung the first shelf 26″ above the desk, which was somewhat arbitrary. It looked good and felt high enough that we wouldn’t knock our faces into it when we stood up. To secure it, I once again located the studs – one in the exact middle of the room (thank goodness!) and two at the outer edge. Then I used my laser level to mark level across the three locations.

When hanging brackets like these, don’t forget to also level the bracket itself. Even on things like a robe hook in the bathroom, if you don’t take the time to level the spots where your screws enter the wall, you could end up with a twisted looking piece of hardware in the end.

The Etsy seller that we bought the brackets from included the screws, which is super helpful. You’ll need a ratchet or hex screw head to attach them, but they’re super sturdy. Just don’t forget to make pilot holes first, which will help ensure that your screws go into the exact right spot.

Then we repeated the process for the second shelf, which we placed 18″ above the first one. That’s a fairly standard distance for shelves when you plan to put large baskets, boxes, or decorative objects on them. However if you’re just putting things like small paperback books or games, you might want to go with 12-14″ spacing.

Another thing we love about these brackets is that the wood shelves just rest in them – no permanent attachment or anything. So this is where we were after a couple hours of work (and where some of you saw things in our email newsletter).

Staining The Shelves

I know we’ve probably talked about staining a billion times, but I want to point out a couple of quick things. One: we highly recommend that you use some sort of pre-stain or wood conditioner before you apply stain. You can get enough for a project like this for around $4, it’s fast and easy to apply, and it helps bring out the wood grain in your stain job while discouraging blotchiness or an uneven finish. You can see the difference between conditioned wood (left) and raw wood in the photo below.

To apply it you just liberally brush it on with a paintbrush or rag, let it soak in for about 10 minutes, and then wipe off any excess with a paper towel or rag. Then you can go right on to staining.

The other thing we did in this project was mimic the color treatment we did to the wood railings in our beach house’s bunk beds. We spent a lot of time during that project testing stain samples to get as close of a match to the pine floor as possible and, since these shelves would also be in a room with the same old pine floors, we wanted them to look similar as well.

Turns out the magic formula is a base coat of Minwax’s Puritan Pine, followed by a light coat of Minwax’s Colonial Maple. That second coat adds an extra hint of red that mimics the old heart pine floors.

The photo above is from before I wiped off the excess Colonial Maple, but you can see a clear difference that the second stain color makes. Once everything was dry, we also did a few coats of protective sealer on everything before rehanging them on the brackets.

Storage & Finishing Touches

Once everything was done, Sherry was excited to load up the shelves and I was excited to see just how much use we could get out of this small space. As you can see in the photo above, it’s kind of a mix of pretty and practical. For example there’s a perfect nook under the desk to stash our suitcases once we’ve unloaded our clothes into dressers for our stay (which isn’t exactly beautiful but it’s amazingly practical not to have them sitting in the bedrooms getting trampled).

Almost all of the decorative items that you see (that vase with some fake greenery from Michael’s, the gold frame, the faux succulent, that painting Sherry got from craigslist for $7 a while back, the three woven baskets from Target last year) are things we already had on hand, but she did grab a few new items to add a little more organization/function. Namely the clock, the magazine files (which we filled with all of our appliance manuals and warrantee sheets), and the desk lamp.

Although our favorite item might be the brass crab that a reader sent us after she spotted it for super cheap in a thrift store and felt like it had to live at the beach house. And now it does! I just have to keep an eye on it because I think the kids might try to steal it and raise it as their own at some point. The claws move and the top flips open for the most minuscule amount of storage (ink well? paperclip holder? ring storage?).

Oh and the desk chair in the photo above is one that we used to have at our beach house dining table before we got the benches – so we had that on hand too (it’s this one in “gray”). And the armchair below is an old thrift store find that Sherry purchased years ago with a new blue cushion for added comfort.

All in all, we’re super pumped about having pulled this little functional nook out of nowhere in just a few hours of work. And despite having some varying opinions and debates about this room’s use for MONTHS, we’re both glad that we landed on the perfect mix of our preferences. I get storage. Sherry gets a chair to read in AND a Pack & Play stash spot. And we both get a bonus little office area to sit down and type up posts like this one.

Although Burger may secretly be the most excited about it. I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it when he wakes up from his nap.

P.S. If you want to get access to project ideas, behind the scenes happenings, and other DIY stuff that’s going on in our world BEFORE it hits the blog, just sign up for our free email newsletter. And thanks to everyone who has already subscribed – Sherry loves writing them up and hitting send. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201 appeared first on Young House Love.

[billydmacklin]

Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201

I know, I know – the idea of adding a little DIY office area at a vacation home seems borderline ridiculous, but back when we were debating what to add to the other side of the pantry, a bunch of people said a little desk area for email or writing or reading quietly would be nice to have in a rental. We definitely considered it, but went with more cabinets for general storage in there (you can see it here). But we kept the idea of adding a little desk nook somewhere else in the back of our mind.

And if you get our email newsletter, you already know that we ended up opting to add a desk and some extra shelving to the small little upstairs front room – which also has room for a Pack & Play. It’s a small room, but man it’s packed with function. So we’re here to share exactly how easy the whole adding-a-desk-and-shelves thing was. Literally anyone can turn some unused wall space into a functional workspace that looks polished and built-in. And it doesn’t have to cost a lot or require a lot of complicated tools or building methods.

The room we’re talking about sits near the top of the stairs at the beach house and since it’s only about the size of a queen mattress itself, it never would have worked as a proper bedroom. I don’t really have any “before” photos of the room, but here’s the view into it when we first bought the house in fall of 2016:

Below is the current view of it. We still can’t get over what a difference the refinished floors made (yes, the floors below are the same floors as the ones above – we just sanded them down and clear sealed them). It also probably helps that the walls and ceiling are no longer crumbling.

We’ve considered a ton of options for that room, including making it into a little reading/game nook or a spot to stash a Pack & Play for a sleeping baby (Sherry’s original votes) or a super practical storage closet (my vote) but until recently it had sort of just been a holding room for junk. But when Sherry’s brother visited in July, it finally proved that it was the perfect small sleeping space for a baby in a Pack & Play (the room darkening blinds definitely helped, along with having just the right amount of floor space).

We just move the chair and side table into the front bedroom and plop in a Pack & Play. You can read more about that in this past newsletter (and see a picture of it all set up in there).

Putting the Pack & Play in there temporarily also made us realize we would still have PLENTY OF SPACE on the inside wall for storage (again, my vote) AND a little desk so we’d no longer have to plop our laptop in the middle of the dining table. And the best part is that it only cost us $201. Here’s how we did it:

Materials & Budget

Two 1″ x 18″ x 72″ planks of pine shelving – $40 (these are showing as $25 each online, but ours were $19 in store)

Two 1″ x 12″ X 72″ common boards – $30

One 1″ x 2″ x 72″ select pine board – $4

Two 16″ heavy duty white shelf brackets & screws– $19

Six decorative 12″ iron shelf brackets – $108

Wall anchors (if needed)

Wood stain, conditioner, and sealer – they’d be $24 but we already had ’em from the bunk beds

TOTAL SPENT: $201 (or $225 to buy everything)

You may notice that the decorative iron brackets were more than half of our budget, so if you’re looking to do this for less – that’s a great place to save money. We chose these for consistency since we have them in our laundry room and love them, but these similar ones would save you about $30. And these slightly smaller ones would save you $45.

Making The Desk

The desk is actually hung on some basic heavy duty white brackets that we picked up in Home Depot. They aren’t intended to be a decorative element (we wanted them to visually disappear) so we mostly just chose them since they’d give us a nice deep desk space while being strong and easy to install. The 16″ depth was perfect for the 18″ shelving boards that we found to use for the desktop (actual width = 17.25″ because wood is never the size it says it is – seriously, a 2 x 4″ board is only 3.5″ wide!).

I used my stud finder to make sure I could go directly into the studs for the strongest hold. Because of that, they’re not exactly equidistant from the side walls, but they’re only a few inches off, and in a room this small you’ll never be standing straight on or far back enough to notice. You could use anchors though if bracket placement was more important for your project.

I hung them so the top of the bracket was 29″ from the floor, making the final desktop a hair over 30″ – which is pretty standard for most desks. Then, after cutting each of my boards to the right length, I laid them both on top of the brackets.

I used two pieces so that the desk would appear thicker than just 3/4″ – which is the actual thickness of each piece of shelving. Once everything was stained (which I’ll get to in a minute) I screwed the boards together from the bottom and then secured them to the brackets. And to cover the seam along the front edge, I nailed in a 1 x 2″ piece of pine that we stained to match.

It blends PERFECTLY with the rest of the top because the shelving already appears to be made of several smaller planks. So it gives the whole desk a really finished look (and makes it a smidge wider too – bonus!). My only tip is to sand the outside edges of this face piece before you stain it. The rounded edge will be much nicer on your wrists and forearms as you type… like I’m doing right now for this post.

Hanging The Shelves

The reason for the shelving above the desk area was to inject that added storage element we wanted. We still have random junk around (extra bed sheets and towels, repair stuff like spackle and caulk, a few faucets we’re storing for the duplex, and instruction manuals/warranties for all the beach house appliances, etc) that we wanted a spot for. So we ordered more of the same iron shelf brackets that you may remember from our laundry room makeover (more on that room update here).

We hung the first shelf 26″ above the desk, which was somewhat arbitrary. It looked good and felt high enough that we wouldn’t knock our faces into it when we stood up. To secure it, I once again located the studs – one in the exact middle of the room (thank goodness!) and two at the outer edge. Then I used my laser level to mark level across the three locations.

When hanging brackets like these, don’t forget to also level the bracket itself. Even on things like a robe hook in the bathroom, if you don’t take the time to level the spots where your screws enter the wall, you could end up with a twisted looking piece of hardware in the end.

The Etsy seller that we bought the brackets from included the screws, which is super helpful. You’ll need a ratchet or hex screw head to attach them, but they’re super sturdy. Just don’t forget to make pilot holes first, which will help ensure that your screws go into the exact right spot.

Then we repeated the process for the second shelf, which we placed 18″ above the first one. That’s a fairly standard distance for shelves when you plan to put large baskets, boxes, or decorative objects on them. However if you’re just putting things like small paperback books or games, you might want to go with 12-14″ spacing.

Another thing we love about these brackets is that the wood shelves just rest in them – no permanent attachment or anything. So this is where we were after a couple hours of work (and where some of you saw things in our email newsletter).

Staining The Shelves

I know we’ve probably talked about staining a billion times, but I want to point out a couple of quick things. One: we highly recommend that you use some sort of pre-stain or wood conditioner before you apply stain. You can get enough for a project like this for around $4, it’s fast and easy to apply, and it helps bring out the wood grain in your stain job while discouraging blotchiness or an uneven finish. You can see the difference between conditioned wood (left) and raw wood in the photo below.

To apply it you just liberally brush it on with a paintbrush or rag, let it soak in for about 10 minutes, and then wipe off any excess with a paper towel or rag. Then you can go right on to staining.

The other thing we did in this project was mimic the color treatment we did to the wood railings in our beach house’s bunk beds. We spent a lot of time during that project testing stain samples to get as close of a match to the pine floor as possible and, since these shelves would also be in a room with the same old pine floors, we wanted them to look similar as well.

Turns out the magic formula is a base coat of Minwax’s Puritan Pine, followed by a light coat of Minwax’s Colonial Maple. That second coat adds an extra hint of red that mimics the old heart pine floors.

The photo above is from before I wiped off the excess Colonial Maple, but you can see a clear difference that the second stain color makes. Once everything was dry, we also did a few coats of protective sealer on everything before rehanging them on the brackets.

Storage & Finishing Touches

Once everything was done, Sherry was excited to load up the shelves and I was excited to see just how much use we could get out of this small space. As you can see in the photo above, it’s kind of a mix of pretty and practical. For example there’s a perfect nook under the desk to stash our suitcases once we’ve unloaded our clothes into dressers for our stay (which isn’t exactly beautiful but it’s amazingly practical not to have them sitting in the bedrooms getting trampled).

Almost all of the decorative items that you see (that vase with some fake greenery from Michael’s, the gold frame, the faux succulent, that painting Sherry got from craigslist for $7 a while back, the three woven baskets from Target last year) are things we already had on hand, but she did grab a few new items to add a little more organization/function. Namely the clock, the magazine files (which we filled with all of our appliance manuals and warrantee sheets), and the desk lamp.

Although our favorite item might be the brass crab that a reader sent us after she spotted it for super cheap in a thrift store and felt like it had to live at the beach house. And now it does! I just have to keep an eye on it because I think the kids might try to steal it and raise it as their own at some point. The claws move and the top flips open for the most minuscule amount of storage (ink well? paperclip holder? ring storage?).

Oh and the desk chair in the photo above is one that we used to have at our beach house dining table before we got the benches – so we had that on hand too (it’s this one in “gray”). And the armchair below is an old thrift store find that Sherry purchased years ago with a new blue cushion for added comfort.

All in all, we’re super pumped about having pulled this little functional nook out of nowhere in just a few hours of work. And despite having some varying opinions and debates about this room’s use for MONTHS, we’re both glad that we landed on the perfect mix of our preferences. I get storage. Sherry gets a chair to read in AND a Pack & Play stash spot. And we both get a bonus little office area to sit down and type up posts like this one.

Although Burger may secretly be the most excited about it. I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it when he wakes up from his nap.

P.S. If you want to get access to project ideas, behind the scenes happenings, and other DIY stuff that’s going on in our world BEFORE it hits the blog, just sign up for our free email newsletter. And thanks to everyone who has already subscribed – Sherry loves writing them up and hitting send. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201 appeared first on Young House Love.

Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201 published first on https://carpetgurus.tumblr.com/

[statusreview]

Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201

I know, I know – the idea of adding a little DIY office area at a vacation home seems borderline ridiculous, but back when we were debating what to add to the other side of the pantry, a bunch of people said a little desk area for email or writing or reading quietly would be nice to have in a rental. We definitely considered it, but went with more cabinets for general storage in there (you can see it here). But we kept the idea of adding a little desk nook somewhere else in the back of our mind.

And if you get our email newsletter, you already know that we ended up opting to add a desk and some extra shelving to the small little upstairs front room – which also has room for a Pack & Play. It’s a small room, but man it’s packed with function. So we’re here to share exactly how easy the whole adding-a-desk-and-shelves thing was. Literally anyone can turn some unused wall space into a functional workspace that looks polished and built-in. And it doesn’t have to cost a lot or require a lot of complicated tools or building methods.

The room we’re talking about sits near the top of the stairs at the beach house and since it’s only about the size of a queen mattress itself, it never would have worked as a proper bedroom. I don’t really have any “before” photos of the room, but here’s the view into it when we first bought the house in fall of 2016:

Below is the current view of it. We still can’t get over what a difference the refinished floors made (yes, the floors below are the same floors as the ones above – we just sanded them down and clear sealed them). It also probably helps that the walls and ceiling are no longer crumbling.

We’ve considered a ton of options for that room, including making it into a little reading/game nook or a spot to stash a Pack & Play for a sleeping baby (Sherry’s original votes) or a super practical storage closet (my vote) but until recently it had sort of just been a holding room for junk. But when Sherry’s brother visited in July, it finally proved that it was the perfect small sleeping space for a baby in a Pack & Play (the room darkening blinds definitely helped, along with having just the right amount of floor space).

We just move the chair and side table into the front bedroom and plop in a Pack & Play. You can read more about that in this past newsletter (and see a picture of it all set up in there).

Putting the Pack & Play in there temporarily also made us realize we would still have PLENTY OF SPACE on the inside wall for storage (again, my vote) AND a little desk so we’d no longer have to plop our laptop in the middle of the dining table. And the best part is that it only cost us $201. Here’s how we did it:

Materials & Budget

Two 1″ x 18″ x 72″ planks of pine shelving – $40 (these are showing as $25 each online, but ours were $19 in store)

Two 1″ x 12″ X 72″ common boards – $30

One 1″ x 2″ x 72″ select pine board – $4

Two 16″ heavy duty white shelf brackets & screws– $19

Six decorative 12″ iron shelf brackets – $108

Wall anchors (if needed)

Wood stain, conditioner, and sealer – they’d be $24 but we already had ’em from the bunk beds

TOTAL SPENT: $201 (or $225 to buy everything)

You may notice that the decorative iron brackets were more than half of our budget, so if you’re looking to do this for less – that’s a great place to save money. We chose these for consistency since we have them in our laundry room and love them, but these similar ones would save you about $30. And these slightly smaller ones would save you $45.

Making The Desk

The desk is actually hung on some basic heavy duty white brackets that we picked up in Home Depot. They aren’t intended to be a decorative element (we wanted them to visually disappear) so we mostly just chose them since they’d give us a nice deep desk space while being strong and easy to install. The 16″ depth was perfect for the 18″ shelving boards that we found to use for the desktop (actual width = 17.25″ because wood is never the size it says it is – seriously, a 2 x 4″ board is only 3.5″ wide!).

I used my stud finder to make sure I could go directly into the studs for the strongest hold. Because of that, they’re not exactly equidistant from the side walls, but they’re only a few inches off, and in a room this small you’ll never be standing straight on or far back enough to notice. You could use anchors though if bracket placement was more important for your project.

I hung them so the top of the bracket was 29″ from the floor, making the final desktop a hair over 30″ – which is pretty standard for most desks. Then, after cutting each of my boards to the right length, I laid them both on top of the brackets.

I used two pieces so that the desk would appear thicker than just 3/4″ – which is the actual thickness of each piece of shelving. Once everything was stained (which I’ll get to in a minute) I screwed the boards together from the bottom and then secured them to the brackets. And to cover the seam along the front edge, I nailed in a 1 x 2″ piece of pine that we stained to match.

It blends PERFECTLY with the rest of the top because the shelving already appears to be made of several smaller planks. So it gives the whole desk a really finished look (and makes it a smidge wider too – bonus!). My only tip is to sand the outside edges of this face piece before you stain it. The rounded edge will be much nicer on your wrists and forearms as you type… like I’m doing right now for this post.

Hanging The Shelves

The reason for the shelving above the desk area was to inject that added storage element we wanted. We still have random junk around (extra bed sheets and towels, repair stuff like spackle and caulk, a few faucets we’re storing for the duplex, and instruction manuals/warranties for all the beach house appliances, etc) that we wanted a spot for. So we ordered more of the same iron shelf brackets that you may remember from our laundry room makeover (more on that room update here).

We hung the first shelf 26″ above the desk, which was somewhat arbitrary. It looked good and felt high enough that we wouldn’t knock our faces into it when we stood up. To secure it, I once again located the studs – one in the exact middle of the room (thank goodness!) and two at the outer edge. Then I used my laser level to mark level across the three locations.

When hanging brackets like these, don’t forget to also level the bracket itself. Even on things like a robe hook in the bathroom, if you don’t take the time to level the spots where your screws enter the wall, you could end up with a twisted looking piece of hardware in the end.

The Etsy seller that we bought the brackets from included the screws, which is super helpful. You’ll need a ratchet or hex screw head to attach them, but they’re super sturdy. Just don’t forget to make pilot holes first, which will help ensure that your screws go into the exact right spot.

Then we repeated the process for the second shelf, which we placed 18″ above the first one. That’s a fairly standard distance for shelves when you plan to put large baskets, boxes, or decorative objects on them. However if you’re just putting things like small paperback books or games, you might want to go with 12-14″ spacing.

Another thing we love about these brackets is that the wood shelves just rest in them – no permanent attachment or anything. So this is where we were after a couple hours of work (and where some of you saw things in our email newsletter).

Staining The Shelves

I know we’ve probably talked about staining a billion times, but I want to point out a couple of quick things. One: we highly recommend that you use some sort of pre-stain or wood conditioner before you apply stain. You can get enough for a project like this for around $4, it’s fast and easy to apply, and it helps bring out the wood grain in your stain job while discouraging blotchiness or an uneven finish. You can see the difference between conditioned wood (left) and raw wood in the photo below.

To apply it you just liberally brush it on with a paintbrush or rag, let it soak in for about 10 minutes, and then wipe off any excess with a paper towel or rag. Then you can go right on to staining.

The other thing we did in this project was mimic the color treatment we did to the wood railings in our beach house’s bunk beds. We spent a lot of time during that project testing stain samples to get as close of a match to the pine floor as possible and, since these shelves would also be in a room with the same old pine floors, we wanted them to look similar as well.

Turns out the magic formula is a base coat of Minwax’s Puritan Pine, followed by a light coat of Minwax’s Colonial Maple. That second coat adds an extra hint of red that mimics the old heart pine floors.

The photo above is from before I wiped off the excess Colonial Maple, but you can see a clear difference that the second stain color makes. Once everything was dry, we also did a few coats of protective sealer on everything before rehanging them on the brackets.

Storage & Finishing Touches

Once everything was done, Sherry was excited to load up the shelves and I was excited to see just how much use we could get out of this small space. As you can see in the photo above, it’s kind of a mix of pretty and practical. For example there’s a perfect nook under the desk to stash our suitcases once we’ve unloaded our clothes into dressers for our stay (which isn’t exactly beautiful but it’s amazingly practical not to have them sitting in the bedrooms getting trampled).

Almost all of the decorative items that you see (that vase with some fake greenery from Michael’s, the gold frame, the faux succulent, that painting Sherry got from craigslist for $7 a while back, the three woven baskets from Target last year) are things we already had on hand, but she did grab a few new items to add a little more organization/function. Namely the clock, the magazine files (which we filled with all of our appliance manuals and warrantee sheets), and the desk lamp.

Although our favorite item might be the brass crab that a reader sent us after she spotted it for super cheap in a thrift store and felt like it had to live at the beach house. And now it does! I just have to keep an eye on it because I think the kids might try to steal it and raise it as their own at some point. The claws move and the top flips open for the most minuscule amount of storage (ink well? paperclip holder? ring storage?).

Oh and the desk chair in the photo above is one that we used to have at our beach house dining table before we got the benches – so we had that on hand too (it’s this one in “gray”). And the armchair below is an old thrift store find that Sherry purchased years ago with a new blue cushion for added comfort.

All in all, we’re super pumped about having pulled this little functional nook out of nowhere in just a few hours of work. And despite having some varying opinions and debates about this room’s use for MONTHS, we’re both glad that we landed on the perfect mix of our preferences. I get storage. Sherry gets a chair to read in AND a Pack & Play stash spot. And we both get a bonus little office area to sit down and type up posts like this one.

Although Burger may secretly be the most excited about it. I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it when he wakes up from his nap.

P.S. If you want to get access to project ideas, behind the scenes happenings, and other DIY stuff that’s going on in our world BEFORE it hits the blog, just sign up for our free email newsletter. And thanks to everyone who has already subscribed – Sherry loves writing them up and hitting send. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201 appeared first on Young House Love.

Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201 published first on https://ssmattress.tumblr.com/

[vincentbnaughton]

Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201

I know, I know – the idea of adding a little DIY office area at a vacation home seems borderline ridiculous, but back when we were debating what to add to the other side of the pantry, a bunch of people said a little desk area for email or writing or reading quietly would be nice to have in a rental. We definitely considered it, but went with more cabinets for general storage in there (you can see it here). But we kept the idea of adding a little desk nook somewhere else in the back of our mind.

And if you get our email newsletter, you already know that we ended up opting to add a desk and some extra shelving to the small little upstairs front room – which also has room for a Pack & Play. It’s a small room, but man it’s packed with function. So we’re here to share exactly how easy the whole adding-a-desk-and-shelves thing was. Literally anyone can turn some unused wall space into a functional workspace that looks polished and built-in. And it doesn’t have to cost a lot or require a lot of complicated tools or building methods.

The room we’re talking about sits near the top of the stairs at the beach house and since it’s only about the size of a queen mattress itself, it never would have worked as a proper bedroom. I don’t really have any “before” photos of the room, but here’s the view into it when we first bought the house in fall of 2016:

Below is the current view of it. We still can’t get over what a difference the refinished floors made (yes, the floors below are the same floors as the ones above – we just sanded them down and clear sealed them). It also probably helps that the walls and ceiling are no longer crumbling.

We’ve considered a ton of options for that room, including making it into a little reading/game nook or a spot to stash a Pack & Play for a sleeping baby (Sherry’s original votes) or a super practical storage closet (my vote) but until recently it had sort of just been a holding room for junk. But when Sherry’s brother visited in July, it finally proved that it was the perfect small sleeping space for a baby in a Pack & Play (the room darkening blinds definitely helped, along with having just the right amount of floor space).

We just move the chair and side table into the front bedroom and plop in a Pack & Play. You can read more about that in this past newsletter (and see a picture of it all set up in there).

Putting the Pack & Play in there temporarily also made us realize we would still have PLENTY OF SPACE on the inside wall for storage (again, my vote) AND a little desk so we’d no longer have to plop our laptop in the middle of the dining table. And the best part is that it only cost us $201. Here’s how we did it:

Materials & Budget

Two 1″ x 18″ x 72″ planks of pine shelving – $40 (these are showing as $25 each online, but ours were $19 in store)

Two 1″ x 12″ X 72″ common boards – $30

One 1″ x 2″ x 72″ select pine board – $4

Two 16″ heavy duty white shelf brackets & screws– $19

Six decorative 12″ iron shelf brackets – $108

Wall anchors (if needed)

Wood stain, conditioner, and sealer – they’d be $24 but we already had ’em from the bunk beds

TOTAL SPENT: $201 (or $225 to buy everything)

You may notice that the decorative iron brackets were more than half of our budget, so if you’re looking to do this for less – that’s a great place to save money. We chose these for consistency since we have them in our laundry room and love them, but these similar ones would save you about $30. And these slightly smaller ones would save you $45.

Making The Desk

The desk is actually hung on some basic heavy duty white brackets that we picked up in Home Depot. They aren’t intended to be a decorative element (we wanted them to visually disappear) so we mostly just chose them since they’d give us a nice deep desk space while being strong and easy to install. The 16″ depth was perfect for the 18″ shelving boards that we found to use for the desktop (actual width = 17.25″ because wood is never the size it says it is – seriously, a 2 x 4″ board is only 3.5″ wide!).

I used my stud finder to make sure I could go directly into the studs for the strongest hold. Because of that, they’re not exactly equidistant from the side walls, but they’re only a few inches off, and in a room this small you’ll never be standing straight on or far back enough to notice. You could use anchors though if bracket placement was more important for your project.

I hung them so the top of the bracket was 29″ from the floor, making the final desktop a hair over 30″ – which is pretty standard for most desks. Then, after cutting each of my boards to the right length, I laid them both on top of the brackets.

I used two pieces so that the desk would appear thicker than just 3/4″ – which is the actual thickness of each piece of shelving. Once everything was stained (which I’ll get to in a minute) I screwed the boards together from the bottom and then secured them to the brackets. And to cover the seam along the front edge, I nailed in a 1 x 2″ piece of pine that we stained to match.

It blends PERFECTLY with the rest of the top because the shelving already appears to be made of several smaller planks. So it gives the whole desk a really finished look (and makes it a smidge wider too – bonus!). My only tip is to sand the outside edges of this face piece before you stain it. The rounded edge will be much nicer on your wrists and forearms as you type… like I’m doing right now for this post.

Hanging The Shelves

The reason for the shelving above the desk area was to inject that added storage element we wanted. We still have random junk around (extra bed sheets and towels, repair stuff like spackle and caulk, a few faucets we’re storing for the duplex, and instruction manuals/warranties for all the beach house appliances, etc) that we wanted a spot for. So we ordered more of the same iron shelf brackets that you may remember from our laundry room makeover (more on that room update here).

We hung the first shelf 26″ above the desk, which was somewhat arbitrary. It looked good and felt high enough that we wouldn’t knock our faces into it when we stood up. To secure it, I once again located the studs – one in the exact middle of the room (thank goodness!) and two at the outer edge. Then I used my laser level to mark level across the three locations.

When hanging brackets like these, don’t forget to also level the bracket itself. Even on things like a robe hook in the bathroom, if you don’t take the time to level the spots where your screws enter the wall, you could end up with a twisted looking piece of hardware in the end.

The Etsy seller that we bought the brackets from included the screws, which is super helpful. You’ll need a ratchet or hex screw head to attach them, but they’re super sturdy. Just don’t forget to make pilot holes first, which will help ensure that your screws go into the exact right spot.

Then we repeated the process for the second shelf, which we placed 18″ above the first one. That’s a fairly standard distance for shelves when you plan to put large baskets, boxes, or decorative objects on them. However if you’re just putting things like small paperback books or games, you might want to go with 12-14″ spacing.

Another thing we love about these brackets is that the wood shelves just rest in them – no permanent attachment or anything. So this is where we were after a couple hours of work (and where some of you saw things in our email newsletter).

Staining The Shelves

I know we’ve probably talked about staining a billion times, but I want to point out a couple of quick things. One: we highly recommend that you use some sort of pre-stain or wood conditioner before you apply stain. You can get enough for a project like this for around $4, it’s fast and easy to apply, and it helps bring out the wood grain in your stain job while discouraging blotchiness or an uneven finish. You can see the difference between conditioned wood (left) and raw wood in the photo below.

To apply it you just liberally brush it on with a paintbrush or rag, let it soak in for about 10 minutes, and then wipe off any excess with a paper towel or rag. Then you can go right on to staining.

The other thing we did in this project was mimic the color treatment we did to the wood railings in our beach house’s bunk beds. We spent a lot of time during that project testing stain samples to get as close of a match to the pine floor as possible and, since these shelves would also be in a room with the same old pine floors, we wanted them to look similar as well.

Turns out the magic formula is a base coat of Minwax’s Puritan Pine, followed by a light coat of Minwax’s Colonial Maple. That second coat adds an extra hint of red that mimics the old heart pine floors.

The photo above is from before I wiped off the excess Colonial Maple, but you can see a clear difference that the second stain color makes. Once everything was dry, we also did a few coats of protective sealer on everything before rehanging them on the brackets.

Storage & Finishing Touches

Once everything was done, Sherry was excited to load up the shelves and I was excited to see just how much use we could get out of this small space. As you can see in the photo above, it’s kind of a mix of pretty and practical. For example there’s a perfect nook under the desk to stash our suitcases once we’ve unloaded our clothes into dressers for our stay (which isn’t exactly beautiful but it’s amazingly practical not to have them sitting in the bedrooms getting trampled).

Almost all of the decorative items that you see (that vase with some fake greenery from Michael’s, the gold frame, the faux succulent, that painting Sherry got from craigslist for $7 a while back, the three woven baskets from Target last year) are things we already had on hand, but she did grab a few new items to add a little more organization/function. Namely the clock, the magazine files (which we filled with all of our appliance manuals and warrantee sheets), and the desk lamp.

Although our favorite item might be the brass crab that a reader sent us after she spotted it for super cheap in a thrift store and felt like it had to live at the beach house. And now it does! I just have to keep an eye on it because I think the kids might try to steal it and raise it as their own at some point. The claws move and the top flips open for the most minuscule amount of storage (ink well? paperclip holder? ring storage?).

Oh and the desk chair in the photo above is one that we used to have at our beach house dining table before we got the benches – so we had that on hand too (it’s this one in “gray”). And the armchair below is an old thrift store find that Sherry purchased years ago with a new blue cushion for added comfort.

All in all, we’re super pumped about having pulled this little functional nook out of nowhere in just a few hours of work. And despite having some varying opinions and debates about this room’s use for MONTHS, we’re both glad that we landed on the perfect mix of our preferences. I get storage. Sherry gets a chair to read in AND a Pack & Play stash spot. And we both get a bonus little office area to sit down and type up posts like this one.

Although Burger may secretly be the most excited about it. I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it when he wakes up from his nap.

P.S. If you want to get access to project ideas, behind the scenes happenings, and other DIY stuff that’s going on in our world BEFORE it hits the blog, just sign up for our free email newsletter. And thanks to everyone who has already subscribed – Sherry loves writing them up and hitting send. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201 appeared first on Young House Love.

[truereviewpage]

Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201

I know, I know – the idea of adding a little DIY office area at a vacation home seems borderline ridiculous, but back when we were debating what to add to the other side of the pantry, a bunch of people said a little desk area for email or writing or reading quietly would be nice to have in a rental. We definitely considered it, but went with more cabinets for general storage in there (you can see it here). But we kept the idea of adding a little desk nook somewhere else in the back of our mind.

And if you get our email newsletter, you already know that we ended up opting to add a desk and some extra shelving to the small little upstairs front room – which also has room for a Pack & Play. It’s a small room, but man it’s packed with function. So we’re here to share exactly how easy the whole adding-a-desk-and-shelves thing was. Literally anyone can turn some unused wall space into a functional workspace that looks polished and built-in. And it doesn’t have to cost a lot or require a lot of complicated tools or building methods.

The room we’re talking about sits near the top of the stairs at the beach house and since it’s only about the size of a queen mattress itself, it never would have worked as a proper bedroom. I don’t really have any “before” photos of the room, but here’s the view into it when we first bought the house in fall of 2016:

Below is the current view of it. We still can’t get over what a difference the refinished floors made (yes, the floors below are the same floors as the ones above – we just sanded them down and clear sealed them). It also probably helps that the walls and ceiling are no longer crumbling.

We’ve considered a ton of options for that room, including making it into a little reading/game nook or a spot to stash a Pack & Play for a sleeping baby (Sherry’s original votes) or a super practical storage closet (my vote) but until recently it had sort of just been a holding room for junk. But when Sherry’s brother visited in July, it finally proved that it was the perfect small sleeping space for a baby in a Pack & Play (the room darkening blinds definitely helped, along with having just the right amount of floor space).

We just move the chair and side table into the front bedroom and plop in a Pack & Play. You can read more about that in this past newsletter (and see a picture of it all set up in there).

Putting the Pack & Play in there temporarily also made us realize we would still have PLENTY OF SPACE on the inside wall for storage (again, my vote) AND a little desk so we’d no longer have to plop our laptop in the middle of the dining table. And the best part is that it only cost us $201. Here’s how we did it:

Materials & Budget

Two 1″ x 18″ x 72″ planks of pine shelving – $40 (these are showing as $25 each online, but ours were $19 in store)

Two 1″ x 12″ X 72″ common boards – $30

One 1″ x 2″ x 72″ select pine board – $4

Two 16″ heavy duty white shelf brackets & screws– $19

Six decorative 12″ iron shelf brackets – $108

Wall anchors (if needed)

Wood stain, conditioner, and sealer – they’d be $24 but we already had ’em from the bunk beds

TOTAL SPENT: $201 (or $225 to buy everything)

You may notice that the decorative iron brackets were more than half of our budget, so if you’re looking to do this for less – that’s a great place to save money. We chose these for consistency since we have them in our laundry room and love them, but these similar ones would save you about $30. And these slightly smaller ones would save you $45.

Making The Desk

The desk is actually hung on some basic heavy duty white brackets that we picked up in Home Depot. They aren’t intended to be a decorative element (we wanted them to visually disappear) so we mostly just chose them since they’d give us a nice deep desk space while being strong and easy to install. The 16″ depth was perfect for the 18″ shelving boards that we found to use for the desktop (actual width = 17.25″ because wood is never the size it says it is – seriously, a 2 x 4″ board is only 3.5″ wide!).

I used my stud finder to make sure I could go directly into the studs for the strongest hold. Because of that, they’re not exactly equidistant from the side walls, but they’re only a few inches off, and in a room this small you’ll never be standing straight on or far back enough to notice. You could use anchors though if bracket placement was more important for your project.

I hung them so the top of the bracket was 29″ from the floor, making the final desktop a hair over 30″ – which is pretty standard for most desks. Then, after cutting each of my boards to the right length, I laid them both on top of the brackets.

I used two pieces so that the desk would appear thicker than just 3/4″ – which is the actual thickness of each piece of shelving. Once everything was stained (which I’ll get to in a minute) I screwed the boards together from the bottom and then secured them to the brackets. And to cover the seam along the front edge, I nailed in a 1 x 2″ piece of pine that we stained to match.

It blends PERFECTLY with the rest of the top because the shelving already appears to be made of several smaller planks. So it gives the whole desk a really finished look (and makes it a smidge wider too – bonus!). My only tip is to sand the outside edges of this face piece before you stain it. The rounded edge will be much nicer on your wrists and forearms as you type… like I’m doing right now for this post.

Hanging The Shelves

The reason for the shelving above the desk area was to inject that added storage element we wanted. We still have random junk around (extra bed sheets and towels, repair stuff like spackle and caulk, a few faucets we’re storing for the duplex, and instruction manuals/warranties for all the beach house appliances, etc) that we wanted a spot for. So we ordered more of the same iron shelf brackets that you may remember from our laundry room makeover (more on that room update here).

We hung the first shelf 26″ above the desk, which was somewhat arbitrary. It looked good and felt high enough that we wouldn’t knock our faces into it when we stood up. To secure it, I once again located the studs – one in the exact middle of the room (thank goodness!) and two at the outer edge. Then I used my laser level to mark level across the three locations.

When hanging brackets like these, don’t forget to also level the bracket itself. Even on things like a robe hook in the bathroom, if you don’t take the time to level the spots where your screws enter the wall, you could end up with a twisted looking piece of hardware in the end.

The Etsy seller that we bought the brackets from included the screws, which is super helpful. You’ll need a ratchet or hex screw head to attach them, but they’re super sturdy. Just don’t forget to make pilot holes first, which will help ensure that your screws go into the exact right spot.

Then we repeated the process for the second shelf, which we placed 18″ above the first one. That’s a fairly standard distance for shelves when you plan to put large baskets, boxes, or decorative objects on them. However if you’re just putting things like small paperback books or games, you might want to go with 12-14″ spacing.

Another thing we love about these brackets is that the wood shelves just rest in them – no permanent attachment or anything. So this is where we were after a couple hours of work (and where some of you saw things in our email newsletter).

Staining The Shelves

I know we’ve probably talked about staining a billion times, but I want to point out a couple of quick things. One: we highly recommend that you use some sort of pre-stain or wood conditioner before you apply stain. You can get enough for a project like this for around $4, it’s fast and easy to apply, and it helps bring out the wood grain in your stain job while discouraging blotchiness or an uneven finish. You can see the difference between conditioned wood (left) and raw wood in the photo below.

To apply it you just liberally brush it on with a paintbrush or rag, let it soak in for about 10 minutes, and then wipe off any excess with a paper towel or rag. Then you can go right on to staining.

The other thing we did in this project was mimic the color treatment we did to the wood railings in our beach house’s bunk beds. We spent a lot of time during that project testing stain samples to get as close of a match to the pine floor as possible and, since these shelves would also be in a room with the same old pine floors, we wanted them to look similar as well.

Turns out the magic formula is a base coat of Minwax’s Puritan Pine, followed by a light coat of Minwax’s Colonial Maple. That second coat adds an extra hint of red that mimics the old heart pine floors.

The photo above is from before I wiped off the excess Colonial Maple, but you can see a clear difference that the second stain color makes. Once everything was dry, we also did a few coats of protective sealer on everything before rehanging them on the brackets.

Storage & Finishing Touches

Once everything was done, Sherry was excited to load up the shelves and I was excited to see just how much use we could get out of this small space. As you can see in the photo above, it’s kind of a mix of pretty and practical. For example there’s a perfect nook under the desk to stash our suitcases once we’ve unloaded our clothes into dressers for our stay (which isn’t exactly beautiful but it’s amazingly practical not to have them sitting in the bedrooms getting trampled).

Almost all of the decorative items that you see (that vase with some fake greenery from Michael’s, the gold frame, the faux succulent, that painting Sherry got from craigslist for $7 a while back, the three woven baskets from Target last year) are things we already had on hand, but she did grab a few new items to add a little more organization/function. Namely the clock, the magazine files (which we filled with all of our appliance manuals and warrantee sheets), and the desk lamp.

Although our favorite item might be the brass crab that a reader sent us after she spotted it for super cheap in a thrift store and felt like it had to live at the beach house. And now it does! I just have to keep an eye on it because I think the kids might try to steal it and raise it as their own at some point. The claws move and the top flips open for the most minuscule amount of storage (ink well? paperclip holder? ring storage?).

Oh and the desk chair in the photo above is one that we used to have at our beach house dining table before we got the benches – so we had that on hand too (it’s this one in “gray”). And the armchair below is an old thrift store find that Sherry purchased years ago with a new blue cushion for added comfort.

All in all, we’re super pumped about having pulled this little functional nook out of nowhere in just a few hours of work. And despite having some varying opinions and debates about this room’s use for MONTHS, we’re both glad that we landed on the perfect mix of our preferences. I get storage. Sherry gets a chair to read in AND a Pack & Play stash spot. And we both get a bonus little office area to sit down and type up posts like this one.

Although Burger may secretly be the most excited about it. I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it when he wakes up from his nap.

P.S. If you want to get access to project ideas, behind the scenes happenings, and other DIY stuff that’s going on in our world BEFORE it hits the blog, just sign up for our free email newsletter. And thanks to everyone who has already subscribed – Sherry loves writing them up and hitting send. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201 appeared first on Young House Love.

Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201 published first on https://aireloomreview.tumblr.com/

[truereviewpage]

Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201

I know, I know – the idea of adding a little DIY office area at a vacation home seems borderline ridiculous, but back when we were debating what to add to the other side of the pantry, a bunch of people said a little desk area for email or writing or reading quietly would be nice to have in a rental. We definitely considered it, but went with more cabinets for general storage in there (you can see it here). But we kept the idea of adding a little desk nook somewhere else in the back of our mind.

And if you get our email newsletter, you already know that we ended up opting to add a desk and some extra shelving to the small little upstairs front room – which also has room for a Pack & Play. It’s a small room, but man it’s packed with function. So we’re here to share exactly how easy the whole adding-a-desk-and-shelves thing was. Literally anyone can turn some unused wall space into a functional workspace that looks polished and built-in. And it doesn’t have to cost a lot or require a lot of complicated tools or building methods.

The room we’re talking about sits near the top of the stairs at the beach house and since it’s only about the size of a queen mattress itself, it never would have worked as a proper bedroom. I don’t really have any “before” photos of the room, but here’s the view into it when we first bought the house in fall of 2016:

Below is the current view of it. We still can’t get over what a difference the refinished floors made (yes, the floors below are the same floors as the ones above – we just sanded them down and clear sealed them). It also probably helps that the walls and ceiling are no longer crumbling.

We’ve considered a ton of options for that room, including making it into a little reading/game nook or a spot to stash a Pack & Play for a sleeping baby (Sherry’s original votes) or a super practical storage closet (my vote) but until recently it had sort of just been a holding room for junk. But when Sherry’s brother visited in July, it finally proved that it was the perfect small sleeping space for a baby in a Pack & Play (the room darkening blinds definitely helped, along with having just the right amount of floor space).

We just move the chair and side table into the front bedroom and plop in a Pack & Play. You can read more about that in this past newsletter (and see a picture of it all set up in there).

Putting the Pack & Play in there temporarily also made us realize we would still have PLENTY OF SPACE on the inside wall for storage (again, my vote) AND a little desk so we’d no longer have to plop our laptop in the middle of the dining table. And the best part is that it only cost us $201. Here’s how we did it:

Materials & Budget

Two 1″ x 18″ x 72″ planks of pine shelving – $40 (these are showing as $25 each online, but ours were $19 in store)

Two 1″ x 12″ X 72″ common boards – $30

One 1″ x 2″ x 72″ select pine board – $4

Two 16″ heavy duty white shelf brackets & screws– $19

Six decorative 12″ iron shelf brackets – $108

Wall anchors (if needed)

Wood stain, conditioner, and sealer – they’d be $24 but we already had ’em from the bunk beds

TOTAL SPENT: $201 (or $225 to buy everything)

You may notice that the decorative iron brackets were more than half of our budget, so if you’re looking to do this for less – that’s a great place to save money. We chose these for consistency since we have them in our laundry room and love them, but these similar ones would save you about $30. And these slightly smaller ones would save you $45.

Making The Desk

The desk is actually hung on some basic heavy duty white brackets that we picked up in Home Depot. They aren’t intended to be a decorative element (we wanted them to visually disappear) so we mostly just chose them since they’d give us a nice deep desk space while being strong and easy to install. The 16″ depth was perfect for the 18″ shelving boards that we found to use for the desktop (actual width = 17.25″ because wood is never the size it says it is – seriously, a 2 x 4″ board is only 3.5″ wide!).

I used my stud finder to make sure I could go directly into the studs for the strongest hold. Because of that, they’re not exactly equidistant from the side walls, but they’re only a few inches off, and in a room this small you’ll never be standing straight on or far back enough to notice. You could use anchors though if bracket placement was more important for your project.

I hung them so the top of the bracket was 29″ from the floor, making the final desktop a hair over 30″ – which is pretty standard for most desks. Then, after cutting each of my boards to the right length, I laid them both on top of the brackets.

I used two pieces so that the desk would appear thicker than just 3/4″ – which is the actual thickness of each piece of shelving. Once everything was stained (which I’ll get to in a minute) I screwed the boards together from the bottom and then secured them to the brackets. And to cover the seam along the front edge, I nailed in a 1 x 2″ piece of pine that we stained to match.

It blends PERFECTLY with the rest of the top because the shelving already appears to be made of several smaller planks. So it gives the whole desk a really finished look (and makes it a smidge wider too – bonus!). My only tip is to sand the outside edges of this face piece before you stain it. The rounded edge will be much nicer on your wrists and forearms as you type… like I’m doing right now for this post.

Hanging The Shelves

The reason for the shelving above the desk area was to inject that added storage element we wanted. We still have random junk around (extra bed sheets and towels, repair stuff like spackle and caulk, a few faucets we’re storing for the duplex, and instruction manuals/warranties for all the beach house appliances, etc) that we wanted a spot for. So we ordered more of the same iron shelf brackets that you may remember from our laundry room makeover (more on that room update here).

We hung the first shelf 26″ above the desk, which was somewhat arbitrary. It looked good and felt high enough that we wouldn’t knock our faces into it when we stood up. To secure it, I once again located the studs – one in the exact middle of the room (thank goodness!) and two at the outer edge. Then I used my laser level to mark level across the three locations.

When hanging brackets like these, don’t forget to also level the bracket itself. Even on things like a robe hook in the bathroom, if you don’t take the time to level the spots where your screws enter the wall, you could end up with a twisted looking piece of hardware in the end.

The Etsy seller that we bought the brackets from included the screws, which is super helpful. You’ll need a ratchet or hex screw head to attach them, but they’re super sturdy. Just don’t forget to make pilot holes first, which will help ensure that your screws go into the exact right spot.

Then we repeated the process for the second shelf, which we placed 18″ above the first one. That’s a fairly standard distance for shelves when you plan to put large baskets, boxes, or decorative objects on them. However if you’re just putting things like small paperback books or games, you might want to go with 12-14″ spacing.

Another thing we love about these brackets is that the wood shelves just rest in them – no permanent attachment or anything. So this is where we were after a couple hours of work (and where some of you saw things in our email newsletter).

Staining The Shelves

I know we’ve probably talked about staining a billion times, but I want to point out a couple of quick things. One: we highly recommend that you use some sort of pre-stain or wood conditioner before you apply stain. You can get enough for a project like this for around $4, it’s fast and easy to apply, and it helps bring out the wood grain in your stain job while discouraging blotchiness or an uneven finish. You can see the difference between conditioned wood (left) and raw wood in the photo below.

To apply it you just liberally brush it on with a paintbrush or rag, let it soak in for about 10 minutes, and then wipe off any excess with a paper towel or rag. Then you can go right on to staining.

The other thing we did in this project was mimic the color treatment we did to the wood railings in our beach house’s bunk beds. We spent a lot of time during that project testing stain samples to get as close of a match to the pine floor as possible and, since these shelves would also be in a room with the same old pine floors, we wanted them to look similar as well.

Turns out the magic formula is a base coat of Minwax’s Puritan Pine, followed by a light coat of Minwax’s Colonial Maple. That second coat adds an extra hint of red that mimics the old heart pine floors.

The photo above is from before I wiped off the excess Colonial Maple, but you can see a clear difference that the second stain color makes. Once everything was dry, we also did a few coats of protective sealer on everything before rehanging them on the brackets.

Storage & Finishing Touches

Once everything was done, Sherry was excited to load up the shelves and I was excited to see just how much use we could get out of this small space. As you can see in the photo above, it’s kind of a mix of pretty and practical. For example there’s a perfect nook under the desk to stash our suitcases once we’ve unloaded our clothes into dressers for our stay (which isn’t exactly beautiful but it’s amazingly practical not to have them sitting in the bedrooms getting trampled).

Almost all of the decorative items that you see (that vase with some fake greenery from Michael’s, the gold frame, the faux succulent, that painting Sherry got from craigslist for $7 a while back, the three woven baskets from Target last year) are things we already had on hand, but she did grab a few new items to add a little more organization/function. Namely the clock, the magazine files (which we filled with all of our appliance manuals and warrantee sheets), and the desk lamp.

Although our favorite item might be the brass crab that a reader sent us after she spotted it for super cheap in a thrift store and felt like it had to live at the beach house. And now it does! I just have to keep an eye on it because I think the kids might try to steal it and raise it as their own at some point. The claws move and the top flips open for the most minuscule amount of storage (ink well? paperclip holder? ring storage?).

Oh and the desk chair in the photo above is one that we used to have at our beach house dining table before we got the benches – so we had that on hand too (it’s this one in “gray”). And the armchair below is an old thrift store find that Sherry purchased years ago with a new blue cushion for added comfort.

All in all, we’re super pumped about having pulled this little functional nook out of nowhere in just a few hours of work. And despite having some varying opinions and debates about this room’s use for MONTHS, we’re both glad that we landed on the perfect mix of our preferences. I get storage. Sherry gets a chair to read in AND a Pack & Play stash spot. And we both get a bonus little office area to sit down and type up posts like this one.

Although Burger may secretly be the most excited about it. I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it when he wakes up from his nap.

P.S. If you want to get access to project ideas, behind the scenes happenings, and other DIY stuff that’s going on in our world BEFORE it hits the blog, just sign up for our free email newsletter. And thanks to everyone who has already subscribed – Sherry loves writing them up and hitting send. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201 appeared first on Young House Love.

Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201 published first on https://aireloomreview.tumblr.com/

[vincentbnaughton]

Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201

I know, I know – the idea of adding a little DIY office area at a vacation home seems borderline ridiculous, but back when we were debating what to add to the other side of the pantry, a bunch of people said a little desk area for email or writing or reading quietly would be nice to have in a rental. We definitely considered it, but went with more cabinets for general storage in there (you can see it here). But we kept the idea of adding a little desk nook somewhere else in the back of our mind.

And if you get our email newsletter, you already know that we ended up opting to add a desk and some extra shelving to the small little upstairs front room – which also has room for a Pack & Play. It’s a small room, but man it’s packed with function. So we’re here to share exactly how easy the whole adding-a-desk-and-shelves thing was. Literally anyone can turn some unused wall space into a functional workspace that looks polished and built-in. And it doesn’t have to cost a lot or require a lot of complicated tools or building methods.

The room we’re talking about sits near the top of the stairs at the beach house and since it’s only about the size of a queen mattress itself, it never would have worked as a proper bedroom. I don’t really have any “before” photos of the room, but here’s the view into it when we first bought the house in fall of 2016:

Below is the current view of it. We still can’t get over what a difference the refinished floors made (yes, the floors below are the same floors as the ones above – we just sanded them down and clear sealed them). It also probably helps that the walls and ceiling are no longer crumbling.

We’ve considered a ton of options for that room, including making it into a little reading/game nook or a spot to stash a Pack & Play for a sleeping baby (Sherry’s original votes) or a super practical storage closet (my vote) but until recently it had sort of just been a holding room for junk. But when Sherry’s brother visited in July, it finally proved that it was the perfect small sleeping space for a baby in a Pack & Play (the room darkening blinds definitely helped, along with having just the right amount of floor space).

We just move the chair and side table into the front bedroom and plop in a Pack & Play. You can read more about that in this past newsletter (and see a picture of it all set up in there).

Putting the Pack & Play in there temporarily also made us realize we would still have PLENTY OF SPACE on the inside wall for storage (again, my vote) AND a little desk so we’d no longer have to plop our laptop in the middle of the dining table. And the best part is that it only cost us $201. Here’s how we did it:

Materials & Budget

Two 1″ x 18″ x 72″ planks of pine shelving – $40 (these are showing as $25 each online, but ours were $19 in store)

Two 1″ x 12″ X 72″ common boards – $30

One 1″ x 2″ x 72″ select pine board – $4

Two 16″ heavy duty white shelf brackets & screws– $19

Six decorative 12″ iron shelf brackets – $108

Wall anchors (if needed)

Wood stain, conditioner, and sealer – they’d be $24 but we already had ’em from the bunk beds

TOTAL SPENT: $201 (or $225 to buy everything)

You may notice that the decorative iron brackets were more than half of our budget, so if you’re looking to do this for less – that’s a great place to save money. We chose these for consistency since we have them in our laundry room and love them, but these similar ones would save you about $30. And these slightly smaller ones would save you $45.

Making The Desk

The desk is actually hung on some basic heavy duty white brackets that we picked up in Home Depot. They aren’t intended to be a decorative element (we wanted them to visually disappear) so we mostly just chose them since they’d give us a nice deep desk space while being strong and easy to install. The 16″ depth was perfect for the 18″ shelving boards that we found to use for the desktop (actual width = 17.25″ because wood is never the size it says it is – seriously, a 2 x 4″ board is only 3.5″ wide!).

I used my stud finder to make sure I could go directly into the studs for the strongest hold. Because of that, they’re not exactly equidistant from the side walls, but they’re only a few inches off, and in a room this small you’ll never be standing straight on or far back enough to notice. You could use anchors though if bracket placement was more important for your project.

I hung them so the top of the bracket was 29″ from the floor, making the final desktop a hair over 30″ – which is pretty standard for most desks. Then, after cutting each of my boards to the right length, I laid them both on top of the brackets.

I used two pieces so that the desk would appear thicker than just 3/4″ – which is the actual thickness of each piece of shelving. Once everything was stained (which I’ll get to in a minute) I screwed the boards together from the bottom and then secured them to the brackets. And to cover the seam along the front edge, I nailed in a 1 x 2″ piece of pine that we stained to match.

It blends PERFECTLY with the rest of the top because the shelving already appears to be made of several smaller planks. So it gives the whole desk a really finished look (and makes it a smidge wider too – bonus!). My only tip is to sand the outside edges of this face piece before you stain it. The rounded edge will be much nicer on your wrists and forearms as you type… like I’m doing right now for this post.

Hanging The Shelves

The reason for the shelving above the desk area was to inject that added storage element we wanted. We still have random junk around (extra bed sheets and towels, repair stuff like spackle and caulk, a few faucets we’re storing for the duplex, and instruction manuals/warranties for all the beach house appliances, etc) that we wanted a spot for. So we ordered more of the same iron shelf brackets that you may remember from our laundry room makeover (more on that room update here).

We hung the first shelf 26″ above the desk, which was somewhat arbitrary. It looked good and felt high enough that we wouldn’t knock our faces into it when we stood up. To secure it, I once again located the studs – one in the exact middle of the room (thank goodness!) and two at the outer edge. Then I used my laser level to mark level across the three locations.

When hanging brackets like these, don’t forget to also level the bracket itself. Even on things like a robe hook in the bathroom, if you don’t take the time to level the spots where your screws enter the wall, you could end up with a twisted looking piece of hardware in the end.

The Etsy seller that we bought the brackets from included the screws, which is super helpful. You’ll need a ratchet or hex screw head to attach them, but they’re super sturdy. Just don’t forget to make pilot holes first, which will help ensure that your screws go into the exact right spot.

Then we repeated the process for the second shelf, which we placed 18″ above the first one. That’s a fairly standard distance for shelves when you plan to put large baskets, boxes, or decorative objects on them. However if you’re just putting things like small paperback books or games, you might want to go with 12-14″ spacing.

Another thing we love about these brackets is that the wood shelves just rest in them – no permanent attachment or anything. So this is where we were after a couple hours of work (and where some of you saw things in our email newsletter).

Staining The Shelves

I know we’ve probably talked about staining a billion times, but I want to point out a couple of quick things. One: we highly recommend that you use some sort of pre-stain or wood conditioner before you apply stain. You can get enough for a project like this for around $4, it’s fast and easy to apply, and it helps bring out the wood grain in your stain job while discouraging blotchiness or an uneven finish. You can see the difference between conditioned wood (left) and raw wood in the photo below.

To apply it you just liberally brush it on with a paintbrush or rag, let it soak in for about 10 minutes, and then wipe off any excess with a paper towel or rag. Then you can go right on to staining.

The other thing we did in this project was mimic the color treatment we did to the wood railings in our beach house’s bunk beds. We spent a lot of time during that project testing stain samples to get as close of a match to the pine floor as possible and, since these shelves would also be in a room with the same old pine floors, we wanted them to look similar as well.

Turns out the magic formula is a base coat of Minwax’s Puritan Pine, followed by a light coat of Minwax’s Colonial Maple. That second coat adds an extra hint of red that mimics the old heart pine floors.

The photo above is from before I wiped off the excess Colonial Maple, but you can see a clear difference that the second stain color makes. Once everything was dry, we also did a few coats of protective sealer on everything before rehanging them on the brackets.

Storage & Finishing Touches

Once everything was done, Sherry was excited to load up the shelves and I was excited to see just how much use we could get out of this small space. As you can see in the photo above, it’s kind of a mix of pretty and practical. For example there’s a perfect nook under the desk to stash our suitcases once we’ve unloaded our clothes into dressers for our stay (which isn’t exactly beautiful but it’s amazingly practical not to have them sitting in the bedrooms getting trampled).

Almost all of the decorative items that you see (that vase with some fake greenery from Michael’s, the gold frame, the faux succulent, that painting Sherry got from craigslist for $7 a while back, the three woven baskets from Target last year) are things we already had on hand, but she did grab a few new items to add a little more organization/function. Namely the clock, the magazine files (which we filled with all of our appliance manuals and warrantee sheets), and the desk lamp.

Although our favorite item might be the brass crab that a reader sent us after she spotted it for super cheap in a thrift store and felt like it had to live at the beach house. And now it does! I just have to keep an eye on it because I think the kids might try to steal it and raise it as their own at some point. The claws move and the top flips open for the most minuscule amount of storage (ink well? paperclip holder? ring storage?).

Oh and the desk chair in the photo above is one that we used to have at our beach house dining table before we got the benches – so we had that on hand too (it’s this one in “gray”). And the armchair below is an old thrift store find that Sherry purchased years ago with a new blue cushion for added comfort.

All in all, we’re super pumped about having pulled this little functional nook out of nowhere in just a few hours of work. And despite having some varying opinions and debates about this room’s use for MONTHS, we’re both glad that we landed on the perfect mix of our preferences. I get storage. Sherry gets a chair to read in AND a Pack & Play stash spot. And we both get a bonus little office area to sit down and type up posts like this one.

Although Burger may secretly be the most excited about it. I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it when he wakes up from his nap.

P.S. If you want to get access to project ideas, behind the scenes happenings, and other DIY stuff that’s going on in our world BEFORE it hits the blog, just sign up for our free email newsletter. And thanks to everyone who has already subscribed – Sherry loves writing them up and hitting send. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201 appeared first on Young House Love.

[statusreview]

Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201

I know, I know – the idea of adding a little DIY office area at a vacation home seems borderline ridiculous, but back when we were debating what to add to the other side of the pantry, a bunch of people said a little desk area for email or writing or reading quietly would be nice to have in a rental. We definitely considered it, but went with more cabinets for general storage in there (you can see it here). But we kept the idea of adding a little desk nook somewhere else in the back of our mind.

And if you get our email newsletter, you already know that we ended up opting to add a desk and some extra shelving to the small little upstairs front room – which also has room for a Pack & Play. It’s a small room, but man it’s packed with function. So we’re here to share exactly how easy the whole adding-a-desk-and-shelves thing was. Literally anyone can turn some unused wall space into a functional workspace that looks polished and built-in. And it doesn’t have to cost a lot or require a lot of complicated tools or building methods.

The room we’re talking about sits near the top of the stairs at the beach house and since it’s only about the size of a queen mattress itself, it never would have worked as a proper bedroom. I don’t really have any “before” photos of the room, but here’s the view into it when we first bought the house in fall of 2016:

Below is the current view of it. We still can’t get over what a difference the refinished floors made (yes, the floors below are the same floors as the ones above – we just sanded them down and clear sealed them). It also probably helps that the walls and ceiling are no longer crumbling.

We’ve considered a ton of options for that room, including making it into a little reading/game nook or a spot to stash a Pack & Play for a sleeping baby (Sherry’s original votes) or a super practical storage closet (my vote) but until recently it had sort of just been a holding room for junk. But when Sherry’s brother visited in July, it finally proved that it was the perfect small sleeping space for a baby in a Pack & Play (the room darkening blinds definitely helped, along with having just the right amount of floor space).

We just move the chair and side table into the front bedroom and plop in a Pack & Play. You can read more about that in this past newsletter (and see a picture of it all set up in there).

Putting the Pack & Play in there temporarily also made us realize we would still have PLENTY OF SPACE on the inside wall for storage (again, my vote) AND a little desk so we’d no longer have to plop our laptop in the middle of the dining table. And the best part is that it only cost us $201. Here’s how we did it:

Materials & Budget

Two 1″ x 18″ x 72″ planks of pine shelving – $40 (these are showing as $25 each online, but ours were $19 in store)

Two 1″ x 12″ X 72″ common boards – $30

One 1″ x 2″ x 72″ select pine board – $4

Two 16″ heavy duty white shelf brackets & screws– $19

Six decorative 12″ iron shelf brackets – $108

Wall anchors (if needed)

Wood stain, conditioner, and sealer – they’d be $24 but we already had ’em from the bunk beds

TOTAL SPENT: $201 (or $225 to buy everything)

You may notice that the decorative iron brackets were more than half of our budget, so if you’re looking to do this for less – that’s a great place to save money. We chose these for consistency since we have them in our laundry room and love them, but these similar ones would save you about $30. And these slightly smaller ones would save you $45.

Making The Desk

The desk is actually hung on some basic heavy duty white brackets that we picked up in Home Depot. They aren’t intended to be a decorative element (we wanted them to visually disappear) so we mostly just chose them since they’d give us a nice deep desk space while being strong and easy to install. The 16″ depth was perfect for the 18″ shelving boards that we found to use for the desktop (actual width = 17.25″ because wood is never the size it says it is – seriously, a 2 x 4″ board is only 3.5″ wide!).

I used my stud finder to make sure I could go directly into the studs for the strongest hold. Because of that, they’re not exactly equidistant from the side walls, but they’re only a few inches off, and in a room this small you’ll never be standing straight on or far back enough to notice. You could use anchors though if bracket placement was more important for your project.

I hung them so the top of the bracket was 29″ from the floor, making the final desktop a hair over 30″ – which is pretty standard for most desks. Then, after cutting each of my boards to the right length, I laid them both on top of the brackets.

I used two pieces so that the desk would appear thicker than just 3/4″ – which is the actual thickness of each piece of shelving. Once everything was stained (which I’ll get to in a minute) I screwed the boards together from the bottom and then secured them to the brackets. And to cover the seam along the front edge, I nailed in a 1 x 2″ piece of pine that we stained to match.

It blends PERFECTLY with the rest of the top because the shelving already appears to be made of several smaller planks. So it gives the whole desk a really finished look (and makes it a smidge wider too – bonus!). My only tip is to sand the outside edges of this face piece before you stain it. The rounded edge will be much nicer on your wrists and forearms as you type… like I’m doing right now for this post.

Hanging The Shelves

The reason for the shelving above the desk area was to inject that added storage element we wanted. We still have random junk around (extra bed sheets and towels, repair stuff like spackle and caulk, a few faucets we’re storing for the duplex, and instruction manuals/warranties for all the beach house appliances, etc) that we wanted a spot for. So we ordered more of the same iron shelf brackets that you may remember from our laundry room makeover (more on that room update here).

We hung the first shelf 26″ above the desk, which was somewhat arbitrary. It looked good and felt high enough that we wouldn’t knock our faces into it when we stood up. To secure it, I once again located the studs – one in the exact middle of the room (thank goodness!) and two at the outer edge. Then I used my laser level to mark level across the three locations.

When hanging brackets like these, don’t forget to also level the bracket itself. Even on things like a robe hook in the bathroom, if you don’t take the time to level the spots where your screws enter the wall, you could end up with a twisted looking piece of hardware in the end.

The Etsy seller that we bought the brackets from included the screws, which is super helpful. You’ll need a ratchet or hex screw head to attach them, but they’re super sturdy. Just don’t forget to make pilot holes first, which will help ensure that your screws go into the exact right spot.

Then we repeated the process for the second shelf, which we placed 18″ above the first one. That’s a fairly standard distance for shelves when you plan to put large baskets, boxes, or decorative objects on them. However if you’re just putting things like small paperback books or games, you might want to go with 12-14″ spacing.

Another thing we love about these brackets is that the wood shelves just rest in them – no permanent attachment or anything. So this is where we were after a couple hours of work (and where some of you saw things in our email newsletter).

Staining The Shelves

I know we’ve probably talked about staining a billion times, but I want to point out a couple of quick things. One: we highly recommend that you use some sort of pre-stain or wood conditioner before you apply stain. You can get enough for a project like this for around $4, it’s fast and easy to apply, and it helps bring out the wood grain in your stain job while discouraging blotchiness or an uneven finish. You can see the difference between conditioned wood (left) and raw wood in the photo below.

To apply it you just liberally brush it on with a paintbrush or rag, let it soak in for about 10 minutes, and then wipe off any excess with a paper towel or rag. Then you can go right on to staining.

The other thing we did in this project was mimic the color treatment we did to the wood railings in our beach house’s bunk beds. We spent a lot of time during that project testing stain samples to get as close of a match to the pine floor as possible and, since these shelves would also be in a room with the same old pine floors, we wanted them to look similar as well.

Turns out the magic formula is a base coat of Minwax’s Puritan Pine, followed by a light coat of Minwax’s Colonial Maple. That second coat adds an extra hint of red that mimics the old heart pine floors.

The photo above is from before I wiped off the excess Colonial Maple, but you can see a clear difference that the second stain color makes. Once everything was dry, we also did a few coats of protective sealer on everything before rehanging them on the brackets.

Storage & Finishing Touches

Once everything was done, Sherry was excited to load up the shelves and I was excited to see just how much use we could get out of this small space. As you can see in the photo above, it’s kind of a mix of pretty and practical. For example there’s a perfect nook under the desk to stash our suitcases once we’ve unloaded our clothes into dressers for our stay (which isn’t exactly beautiful but it’s amazingly practical not to have them sitting in the bedrooms getting trampled).

Almost all of the decorative items that you see (that vase with some fake greenery from Michael’s, the gold frame, the faux succulent, that painting Sherry got from craigslist for $7 a while back, the three woven baskets from Target last year) are things we already had on hand, but she did grab a few new items to add a little more organization/function. Namely the clock, the magazine files (which we filled with all of our appliance manuals and warrantee sheets), and the desk lamp.

Although our favorite item might be the brass crab that a reader sent us after she spotted it for super cheap in a thrift store and felt like it had to live at the beach house. And now it does! I just have to keep an eye on it because I think the kids might try to steal it and raise it as their own at some point. The claws move and the top flips open for the most minuscule amount of storage (ink well? paperclip holder? ring storage?).

Oh and the desk chair in the photo above is one that we used to have at our beach house dining table before we got the benches – so we had that on hand too (it’s this one in “gray”). And the armchair below is an old thrift store find that Sherry purchased years ago with a new blue cushion for added comfort.

All in all, we’re super pumped about having pulled this little functional nook out of nowhere in just a few hours of work. And despite having some varying opinions and debates about this room’s use for MONTHS, we’re both glad that we landed on the perfect mix of our preferences. I get storage. Sherry gets a chair to read in AND a Pack & Play stash spot. And we both get a bonus little office area to sit down and type up posts like this one.

Although Burger may secretly be the most excited about it. I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it when he wakes up from his nap.

P.S. If you want to get access to project ideas, behind the scenes happenings, and other DIY stuff that’s going on in our world BEFORE it hits the blog, just sign up for our free email newsletter. And thanks to everyone who has already subscribed – Sherry loves writing them up and hitting send. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201 appeared first on Young House Love.

Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201 published first on https://ssmattress.tumblr.com/

[endlessarchite]

Making A Built-In Office Nook For $201

I know, I know – the idea of adding a little DIY office area at a vacation home seems borderline ridiculous, but back when we were debating what to add to the other side of the pantry, a bunch of people said a little desk area for email or writing or reading quietly would be nice to have in a rental. We definitely considered it, but went with more cabinets for general storage in there (you can see it here). But we kept the idea of adding a little desk nook somewhere else in the back of our mind.

And if you get our email newsletter, you already know that we ended up opting to add a desk and some extra shelving to the small little upstairs front room – which also has room for a Pack & Play. It’s a small room, but man it’s packed with function. So we’re here to share exactly how easy the whole adding-a-desk-and-shelves thing was. Literally anyone can turn some unused wall space into a functional workspace that looks polished and built-in. And it doesn’t have to cost a lot or require a lot of complicated tools or building methods.

The room we’re talking about sits near the top of the stairs at the beach house and since it’s only about the size of a queen mattress itself, it never would have worked as a proper bedroom. I don’t really have any “before” photos of the room, but here’s the view into it when we first bought the house in fall of 2016:

Below is the current view of it. We still can’t get over what a difference the refinished floors made (yes, the floors below are the same floors as the ones above – we just sanded them down and clear sealed them). It also probably helps that the walls and ceiling are no longer crumbling.

We’ve considered a ton of options for that room, including making it into a little reading/game nook or a spot to stash a Pack & Play for a sleeping baby (Sherry’s original votes) or a super practical storage closet (my vote) but until recently it had sort of just been a holding room for junk. But when Sherry’s brother visited in July, it finally proved that it was the perfect small sleeping space for a baby in a Pack & Play (the room darkening blinds definitely helped, along with having just the right amount of floor space).

We just move the chair and side table into the front bedroom and plop in a Pack & Play. You can read more about that in this past newsletter (and see a picture of it all set up in there).

Putting the Pack & Play in there temporarily also made us realize we would still have PLENTY OF SPACE on the inside wall for storage (again, my vote) AND a little desk so we’d no longer have to plop our laptop in the middle of the dining table. And the best part is that it only cost us $201. Here’s how we did it:

Materials & Budget

Two 1″ x 18″ x 72″ planks of pine shelving – $40 (these are showing as $25 each online, but ours were $19 in store)

Two 1″ x 12″ X 72″ common boards – $30

One 1″ x 2″ x 72″ select pine board – $4

Two 16″ heavy duty white shelf brackets & screws– $19

Six decorative 12″ iron shelf brackets – $108

Wall anchors (if needed)

Wood stain, conditioner, and sealer – they’d be $24 but we already had ’em from the bunk beds

TOTAL SPENT: $201 (or $225 to buy everything)

You may notice that the decorative iron brackets were more than half of our budget, so if you’re looking to do this for less – that’s a great place to save money. We chose these for consistency since we have them in our laundry room and love them, but these similar ones would save you about $30. And these slightly smaller ones would save you $45.

Making The Desk

The desk is actually hung on some basic heavy duty white brackets that we picked up in Home Depot. They aren’t intended to be a decorative element (we wanted them to visually disappear) so we mostly just chose them since they’d give us a nice deep desk space while being strong and easy to install. The 16″ depth was perfect for the 18″ shelving boards that we found to use for the desktop (actual width = 17.25″ because wood is never the size it says it is – seriously, a 2 x 4″ board is only 3.5″ wide!).

I used my stud finder to make sure I could go directly into the studs for the strongest hold. Because of that, they’re not exactly equidistant from the side walls, but they’re only a few inches off, and in a room this small you’ll never be standing straight on or far back enough to notice. You could use anchors though if bracket placement was more important for your project.

I hung them so the top of the bracket was 29″ from the floor, making the final desktop a hair over 30″ – which is pretty standard for most desks. Then, after cutting each of my boards to the right length, I laid them both on top of the brackets.

I used two pieces so that the desk would appear thicker than just 3/4″ – which is the actual thickness of each piece of shelving. Once everything was stained (which I’ll get to in a minute) I screwed the boards together from the bottom and then secured them to the brackets. And to cover the seam along the front edge, I nailed in a 1 x 2″ piece of pine that we stained to match.

It blends PERFECTLY with the rest of the top because the shelving already appears to be made of several smaller planks. So it gives the whole desk a really finished look (and makes it a smidge wider too – bonus!). My only tip is to sand the outside edges of this face piece before you stain it. The rounded edge will be much nicer on your wrists and forearms as you type… like I’m doing right now for this post.

Hanging The Shelves

The reason for the shelving above the desk area was to inject that added storage element we wanted. We still have random junk around (extra bed sheets and towels, repair stuff like spackle and caulk, a few faucets we’re storing for the duplex, and instruction manuals/warranties for all the beach house appliances, etc) that we wanted a spot for. So we ordered more of the same iron shelf brackets that you may remember from our laundry room makeover (more on that room update here).

We hung the first shelf 26″ above the desk, which was somewhat arbitrary. It looked good and felt high enough that we wouldn’t knock our faces into it when we stood up. To secure it, I once again located the studs – one in the exact middle of the room (thank goodness!) and two at the outer edge. Then I used my laser level to mark level across the three locations.

When hanging brackets like these, don’t forget to also level the bracket itself. Even on things like a robe hook in the bathroom, if you don’t take the time to level the spots where your screws enter the wall, you could end up with a twisted looking piece of hardware in the end.

The Etsy seller that we bought the brackets from included the screws, which is super helpful. You’ll need a ratchet or hex screw head to attach them, but they’re super sturdy. Just don’t forget to make pilot holes first, which will help ensure that your screws go into the exact right spot.

Then we repeated the process for the second shelf, which we placed 18″ above the first one. That’s a fairly standard distance for shelves when you plan to put large baskets, boxes, or decorative objects on them. However if you’re just putting things like small paperback books or games, you might want to go with 12-14″ spacing.

Another thing we love about these brackets is that the wood shelves just rest in them – no permanent attachment or anything. So this is where we were after a couple hours of work (and where some of you saw things in our email newsletter).

Staining The Shelves

I know we’ve probably talked about staining a billion times, but I want to point out a couple of quick things. One: we highly recommend that you use some sort of pre-stain or wood conditioner before you apply stain. You can get enough for a project like this for around $4, it’s fast and easy to apply, and it helps bring out the wood grain in your stain job while discouraging blotchiness or an uneven finish. You can see the difference between conditioned wood (left) and raw wood in the photo below.

To apply it you just liberally brush it on with a paintbrush or rag, let it soak in for about 10 minutes, and then wipe off any excess with a paper towel or rag. Then you can go right on to staining.

The other thing we did in this project was mimic the color treatment we did to the wood railings in our beach house’s bunk beds. We spent a lot of time during that project testing stain samples to get as close of a match to the pine floor as possible and, since these shelves would also be in a room with the same old pine floors, we wanted them to look similar as well.

Turns out the magic formula is a base coat of Minwax’s Puritan Pine, followed by a light coat of Minwax’s Colonial Maple. That second coat adds an extra hint of red that mimics the old heart pine floors.

The photo above is from before I wiped off the excess Colonial Maple, but you can see a clear difference that the second stain color makes. Once everything was dry, we also did a few coats of protective sealer on everything before rehanging them on the brackets.

Storage & Finishing Touches

Once everything was done, Sherry was excited to load up the shelves and I was excited to see just how much use we could get out of this small space. As you can see in the photo above, it’s kind of a mix of pretty and practical. For example there’s a perfect nook under the desk to stash our suitcases once we’ve unloaded our clothes into dressers for our stay (which isn’t exactly beautiful but it’s amazingly practical not to have them sitting in the bedrooms getting trampled).

Almost all of the decorative items that you see (that vase with some fake greenery from Michael’s, the gold frame, the faux succulent, that painting Sherry got from craigslist for $7 a while back, the three woven baskets from Target last year) are things we already had on hand, but she did grab a few new items to add a little more organization/function. Namely the clock, the magazine files (which we filled with all of our appliance manuals and warrantee sheets), and the desk lamp.

Although our favorite item might be the brass crab that a reader sent us after she spotted it for super cheap in a thrift store and felt like it had to live at the beach house. And now it does! I just have to keep an eye on it because I think the kids might try to steal it and raise it as their own at some point. The claws move and the top flips open for the most minuscule amount of storage (ink well? paperclip holder? ring storage?).

Oh and the desk chair in the photo above is one that we used to have at our beach house dining table before we got the benches – so we had that on hand too (it’s this one in “gray”). And the armchair below is an old thrift store find that Sherry purchased years ago with a new blue cushion for added comfort.

All in all, we’re super pumped about having pulled this little functional nook out of nowhere in just a few hours of work. And despite having some varying opinions and debates about this room’s use for MONTHS, we’re both glad that we landed on the perfect mix of our preferences. I get storage. Sherry gets a chair to read in AND a Pack & Play stash spot. And we both get a bonus little office area to sit down and type up posts like this one.

Although Burger may secretly be the most excited about it. I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it when he wakes up from his nap.

P.S. If you want to get access to project ideas, behind the scenes happenings, and other DIY stuff that’s going on in our world BEFORE it hits the blog, just sign up for our free email newsletter. And thanks to everyone who has already subscribed – Sherry loves writing them up and hitting send. 

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The New Duplex Floor Plan

If you saw our before & after post about the beach duplex demo, then you know we’ve got some big plans for the duplex’s floor plan. We want to make the most of the given space – and we’re even adding on a smidge more – so it can sleep more people, offer more bathrooms, and generally improve the feeling of being in this cool old house. Before each side had only one full bath (!!!), so we’re hopeful that we have nowhere to go but up. So we’re back today with some floor plans to show you exactly what we intend to do. And the nerd inside of me is extremely excited about it.

If you’re new around here or aren’t sue what we mean by “the duplex,” you can catch up on everything in detail here. But the short version is that it’s a rundown duplex that we bought last fall to renovate and turn into a weekly vacation rental. It’s just one house away from our pink beach house in Cape Charles, VA, which is located on the Chesapeake Bay of Virginia’s Eastern Shore. So far it has just been gutted and once the weather starts cooperating, we’ll finally get to start rolling on exterior improvements like a new non-leaking roof and some new not-rotten siding.

The Before

The two halves of the duplex are nearly identical, just mirrored along the central wall that separates them. They have separate addresses and we intend to keep them separate so that they can be rented separately (although a larger family might rent both sides to have the whole house for a week). All of the changes we make will be the same on each side, so we’re just going to focus on the LEFT side of the house as you face it from the street. But again, each side will remain a mirror image when it comes to floor plan/layout. As for decorating them, Sherry thinks it’ll be fun to decorate them slightly differently. Think cousins and not identical twins.

But back to the floor plan. First of all, since it’s a common layout question we have been getting a lot on social media: we aren’t doing an interior door to make it optional for someone staying in one side of the duplex to open that door and have access to the other side. This isn’t possible due to code reasons, but the front doors of each side literally couldn’t be closer (and under a covered porch) so if a larger family rents both sides for the week it is basically the shortest walk ever to get from one side to the other:

Each side is a little under 1,300 square feet, and when we bought it each side only had two bedrooms and one full bathroom – all on the second floor. We don’t believe that was the original floor plan (it was extremely choppy with doorways and lights in very odd places) so we’re just doing our best to make the house feel more original, intentional, efficient, and less oddly closed off – since we’ll probably never know the original floor plan. Although we do know that the house has always been a duplex as far as we know. There are two lots and two different house numbers as far back as we can go. You can see before photos in this post & walk through it on video to get more of an idea about how oddly laid out things were.

Note: The pencil drawings we’ve been working on with our contractor were too hard to read in photographs, so we’ve recreated them as well as we can using free online software called HomeStyler and then we added our own labels in Photoshop. They are mostly to scale, but some details are approximate.

The After (or at least, The Plan)

I’ll take you through all of the major changes in a moment using side-by-side floor plans, but here’s an overall look at what we’re planning to do. When we’re done, each side will go from 1 bathroom to 2.5, and from 2 bedrooms to 3. And yes, we spontaneously break out in full body sweats when we think about having to tile all five bathrooms and install two kitchens once the walls go back up, so let’s not talk about that right now, mmmkay?

Downstairs Living Areas

I know it’s often easier to understand changes when you can see the before and after floor plans side-by-side, so that’s what we’ve done below. This is just the front half of the downstairs (the before is on the left, and the after is on the right, with numbered labels I’ll get into in a moment).

Here’s a quick summary of the big changes in this part of the house:

We’re opening up the wall that separates the stairs from the living area so that the entry vestibule gets more light and is less claustrophobic.

The living area is quite large (we’re not sure how the previous occupants used it) so we’re planning to use the back half of it as a casual dining area since it will be right off of the kitchen. Exact furniture plan TBD, but we love Chris & Julia’s open dining room & living room.

To create better flow and sight lines between the kitchen and the dining area, we’re widening this doorway.

Since the current downstairs has no bathroom, we’re turning this large closet area under the stairs into a powder room. A few people said they worry about bathroom smells wafting into the dining area but my parents have a beach rental with an extremely similar layout and it works out really well. Anyway doing something smelly wants to go upstairs instead of doing it right off of the living area anyway. Is that TMI? Probably. But the point is that we think it’ll work out nicely.

For reference, this is what that space is looking like at the moment.

And here’s an inspiration photo of how we’ll open up the side of the stairs, which was formerly enclosed all the way down to the first step:

  image source

Downstairs Kitchen Areas

The back half of the downstairs was pretty hardworking before, but we’re making it work even harder – incorporating laundry, a larger kitchen, and even a “mudroom” zone for people coming in from the back door. There will also be an outdoor shower by the back door, so people will wash the sand off there, then enter through the mudroom, and toss their towels into the washer or hang them up in the mudroom area. We are hopeful that the combination of an outdoor shower and a tiled room to enter through with laundry/mudroom capabilities will keep a lot of sand out of the rest of the house.

Again, looking at the before and after plan side-by-side, here are the highlights:

We’re moving the kitchen into the larger former dining space so that we can greatly increase storage, counter space, and even add a dishwasher. Exact layout TBD, and we may incorporate a small (maybe movable) island or baking cart in the center.

The former kitchen (which wasn’t the original kitchen location, since that area used to be a side porch) will become laundry/pantry space. We think it will be nice to continue the cabinetry in here to visually extend the kitchen, but we’ll be adding pocket doors so that it can be closed off – especially if laundry noise needs to be muffled. Plus, we just love pocket doors in these old homes. They feel original and cool (even if they haven’t always been there, like the ones we added to the back bedroom in the pink house).

This back section of each side was fairly unused apart from the water heater and a toilet (just on the right side, kinda sitting out in the open). Since it opens to the backyard, we want to create a space for sandy gear and towels just beyond the outdoor shower.

We’ll also put a utility closet back there that can hide stuff like the HVAC system and a tankless water heater.

Here’s a view of the old kitchen that was in that former side porch when we bought the house. The future mudroom and utility closet will go just beyond the right side of where these creamsicle-colored cabinets once were.

And since we’ve landed on “mint” as the accent color for this project, we’re thinking the pocket doors that will go in this doorway (which, again, will separate the future kitchen from the future pantry/laundry) might look something like this charming door from Yellow Brick Home’s kitchen… just two of them since the opening will be double wide like the one above.

Upstairs, Front Bedroom, & Hall Bath

Moving upstairs, let’s start at the front of the house:

Just like downstairs, the space up here hasn’t really been used to its maximum potential (we believe things were constantly being chopped up/changed/moved just based on some odd light placements, etc). And since maximizing the beds and baths is important for a vacation rental, this is what we’re planning to do:

The area at the top of the stairs is very cramped and feels cut off, so we’re giving it a more spacious landing without losing the linen closet

The bathroom up here was unnecessarily large, so we’re basically splitting it in half to make a more modest space that’s still large enough for a tub/shower combo (probably a drop-in tub with a tile shower surround).

By splitting the bathroom and stealing a little bit of space from the main two bedrooms, we’ll be able to create a third sleeping space (similar to our beach house’s bunk room, but probably a little larger).

Not much is changing in the front bedroom. It will get a hair smaller and we plan to re-orient the closet. The closet has a beautiful window in it (the one with the diamond grill pattern seen from the front) but the old owner had it boarded over and covered with drywall (!!!) so they could run a closet bar across the opposite wall. To uncover the window and let the light shine in, we’ll move the closet bar to the wall across from the window (where it will be hidden from view in the bedroom thanks to being tucked into that nook) and use a pocket door, which we hope will encourage people to leave it open and let the light shine in.

This is what the view from the front bedroom looks like right now, so you can kind of see how the bathroom will be split:

Upstairs, Back Bedroom, & Master Bath

This is the area of the house where we are actually adding space, which is going to earn us another full bath that is also an ensuite. Woot!

But there is more than just an added bathroom going on back here, so here’s what you should take note of:

This “bump out” on the back of the house already exists downstairs (remember the mudroom and utility closet?) so we already have approval from the town to continue that footprint upstairs and bump out the second floor to match it. The cheapest way to do an addition is to build on top of something that already has a foundation/footers, so we’re excited to just pop the second floor out. It won’t be a huge bathroom (probably just a walk-in shower) but we always love having our own ensuite bathroom when we travel, so we think it’ll be a big bonus.

Since we’re losing the existing back window (it will become the bathroom door) we got approval to add a new window so that we don’t reduce natural light in this bedroom.

This room was already very long, but by stealing some square footage for the bunkroom it got even more elongated. So we landed on the idea of adding two built-in closets (with drywall and proper doors) on either side of the side window. It makes the room shape a bit more natural and gives the room the closet it still needed – plus we think we may use the other one as a locked owner’s closet.

We used this same trick in the pink house, but by pulling the bedroom door into the hallway a little bit (in this case to line up with the linen closet door) it creates a “vestibule” for the inswing of the door. Since the bed will likely go on that right wall (facing the window bench) this means the door doesn’t open right into the nightstand.

And to give you an idea of what we mean in #3 about the window bench, here’s an inspiration picture that Sherry dug up to get excited about this spot. We might leave it more open underneath for people to tuck suitcases (or, if we’re really ambitious, we could make it a flip top bench with linen storage underneath).

image source

This is what that bedroom originally looked like (that’s the window that’s becoming a bathroom door) so we’re looking forward to making it feel more “masterful.”

I’ll leave you guys with one parting look at the full “after” floor plan:

If it’s like the pink house, we know this is not likely to be our last iteration of these plans. We’ve done most of our tweaking already, but some things are dependent on how some construction shakes out. For instance, this plans assumes we can make room for the upstairs HVAC in the attic. That’s not a certainty yet, so it could throw a wrench in our plans. We’ll keep you posted…

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