Nursery Progress: Step 1

Our little townhouse is only 2 bedrooms, but luckily each of those bedrooms is HUGE. I'm talking 18x20 huge. Our master is lucky enough to have a ginormous walk in closet (mine) and then a regular sized closet (J's). In the spare room, there are 2 normal sized closets, as well as two large windows, so it gets a ton of light.

The spare bedroom served as a office/guest room for the first 2.5 years we lived here. It was plenty big for my big antique rolltop desk, a large bookshelf, plus a double guest bed, nightstands and a large bench at the end of the bed. When I got pregnant, we tossed around the idea of turning that bedroom into two bedrooms, since it was so large, plus with the placement of the windows and closets, each new room would have a closet and a window and they would each end up being pretty good size rooms.

Well then the pregnancy hormones came out and I realized I didn't want to be undergoing a huge renovation to our bedrooms while I was pregnant. I didn't want to have to wait until all the construction was done to begin decorating and building the nursery. I didn't want to have drywall and molding take over our entire upstairs. But our issue was this - I NEED a separate office space since I work from home. But without building a 3rd bedroom, where could my office go?

Several ideas were thrown around - maybe we could put my office in the living room? Not ideal. Turn my walk in closet into my office? Umm no thanks! None of these ideas were thrilling me, so I turned to Pinterest (obviously!) to search for office space ideas. Then I found it:We have a regular sized closet at the bottom of the stairs in our basement. It's mainly a catch all for everything that doesn't go anywhere else and it was in desperate need of being cleaned out anyways. As soon as I saw that picture, I knew I wanted to turn that closet into my office. It was perfect - out of the way, quiet, large enough to have all my office stuff fit. J wasn't so convinced (he didn't think I would like sitting in an closet all day) but once I found more and more pictures of closets being turned into offices, he got on board.

We spent a weekend purging the crap from that closet and moving what we did want to keep into other places. Once the closet was 100% empty, we realized it was actually a really deep, big closet! I decided I wanted to paint the closet a fun color to make it more like a room and less like a closet - we ended up painting it the same sage green color as the guest room, since we had the leftover paint. Then we headed to IKEA (the small storage experts!) to find a small desk, shelving and organization supplies so that we could turn a blank slate into an organized and functional work space. In addition to my office, this "room" is also where we will store all our files/paperwork, so it sort of has to do double duty.

So here's my NEW wonderful, organized, cheerful and private office! I've been using it over over a month now and I'm still obsessed with it every time I open the closet doors.Here's what you see when you walk down our basement stairs - the closed closet doors. But there's an office behind those doors!Ta-Da! My new office! Tons of storage and organization - and it's cute!
Another view from the other side. Yes, my printer has to sit on the floor, but that doesn't really bother me because I barely use it. I love that we were able to hang my bulletin board on one side and do the shelves for storage on the other side. Plus the main shelf at the top provides so much storage! That's where all our house files and my book collections (i.e. trashy romance and vampire books). Close up of the shelves. They are functional, but I also tried to find storage options that were also cute, hence the chevron basket from Target that holds all of our computer cords, cables and plugs, etc. And Jake was able to wire the closet in the corner for electricity, internet and a phone line! So the office is seriously fully functional, which is great and the wires stay hidden on the side of the desk.

It really is like we gained an entire room with adding this closet office. It was also good because it required us to go through all our paperwork to get rid of the junk and file everything away properly. Having everything fit into this tiny little space forces us to stay organized, which I love!

We also wanted to spend as little as possible on this new little office and I think we were pretty successful. Here's a budget breakdown:

Desk (Ikea): $69.00 (It's the Micke desk)
Shelving (Ikea): $15 (we got the most basic brackets they had, which came in at $1.99 each, plus 2 of their basic shelves)
Magazine files (Ikea): $3.99
Storage Boxes with lids (Ikea): $9.99 for 2
Assorted storage bins (Target): $35
Lamp (Target): $19.99
Desk Chair: Free (my parents had an old chair that they gave us)
Faux Plant and Holder (Ikea): $5.99
Total: $158.96

Everything else we already owned, so that's a really accurate budget total. So we gained an office and the babies room got cleared out for $160. Now that the nursery is pretty much empty, the fun part of decorating can begin!!