I thought I’d start this post with a pretty photo…
On the weekend that just past I found myself with a spare couple of hours so I thought I’d clean up my office.
It was so bad I couldn’t bring myself to document it photographically. Lets just say that even the dogs avoided it. I think they were afraid that they’d get lost among the piles of stuff and would never be fed again.
Since I’m not a ‘do half-a-job’ kinda gal, I had to do it right.
That means, as we all know, make a bigger mess so as to reduce the mess.
In order to clean and tidy up, I had to move some things outside the office. Into the kitchen, the hallway, the bathroom and the guest room. Lucky Wayne wasn’t home.
In fact, that’s partly why I tackled this project at all, cause he was out! As it happened, he got home before I finished and tripped over the office chair in the entry, knocked some folders off the kitchen bench, and skinned his knee against the sewing machine in the hallway. Lucky he didn’t need to go into the bathroom or guest room cause that would have necessitated grapple hooks and pick axe.
No wonder the guy hates leaving me alone in the house!
See, my office is a small room. Not tiny, but small. Big enough to almost hold most of the bits and pieces I need for my hobbies.
Its also got a ton of furniture in it, including two filing cabinets – one is Wayne’s of course since we first set up the office to share…. I have since moved his office into a corner of the living room.
I need all the space I can get!
So, two filing cabinets, stacked on top of eachother in a corner. An antique cabinet, a wall of shelves, a new cabinet with lots of small drawers, 2 desks (one is a real table, the other is a closet door), 2 old junior school desks, boxes, crates and suitcases.
You see the problem.
Though I didn’t want to show you how the office looked before I started, I’ll show you how it looked about halfway through:
I decided I no longer wanted the corner desk layout which took up two full walls. I moved the table under the window and took down the filing cabinet tower on my own (do not try this at home kids!) then pushed, heaved and persuaded the filing cabinets onto the right side of the room to hold up the door/desk.
Now… once I had some empty floor space I couldn’t help but look at the carpet. The filthy disgusting dog peed carpet.*
*Long story. I am not one of those dog hoarders who lives amongst dog pee and poop. I am a dog lover who has house trained dogs, but all dogs sometimes have accidents of the vomit variety. And my partner owned two un-house trained dogs which I brought into the house as part of the family. Thinking I could train them. I gave up after I found one pee stain too many in the office where they’d been sleeping. They were out but the carpet remained.
So, I did what any obsessed DIY-er would do. I started ripping up carpet.
Somewhere in the middle of this I thought to myself “I’ve done this three times before. Why am I doing it again?”.
The answer is simple. I hated the salmon, pee stained carpet. I want it gone. From every room in the house. But Wayne will kill me if I start ripping up the carpet in the living room when he goes out for an afternoon so I’ll do a room which doesn’t affect him…
Its not finished. Wayne came home so I had to start putting things back into the office or face a slow painful death. Plus I’d have had to move furniture again to expose more carpet to rip up and I was tired. I did manage to remove about 1/3 of the carpet.
The timber floors are old and rough, they will need sanding and polishing. I like the old look, but they will need a good clean and a coat of estapol or something to keep them clean. But it does look like a studio floor now!
Meanwhile I sorted out the shelves and made them prettier to look at by hiding away the ugly binders in filing cabinets and putting documents and other stuff in suitcases and rustic containers.
Wayne’s antique map of South Australia still hangs above my desk.
I love my little square crate. I’ve had that one since Melbourne. For years it held my oil paint tubes.
I bought this little aqua bird in a dollar store cause I loved the colour and found this broken little wire thingy at the tip shop. They look good together till I do something else with the wire thing.
I bought this cloche at Target a few months ago, added in some sticks, a bird I bought at the Shabby Market, a real nest and one of our tiny chicken eggs. My burlap flowers sit in an old wire hanging plant basket. Sorry about the blurry photo…
This pottery measure thingy (that really is the technical term) was given to me by Merrill before she left for the mainland. I knew I could do something with it. Its now a jewelry holder.
All in all, it was a productive weekend!
z
junk4joy 
