How to corral and camouflage wires and other tech

We got our internet service upgraded over the weekend (yay! for being able to watch a video without it stopping after five seconds!), but when the serviceman left, I was left with this:

A giant new modem and even bigger wireless router. In my living room. The old modem and router plus all associated wires used to fit within that smallish basket, but now... not so much.

Baskets are my favorite way to corral wires, power strips and all that other small tech junk we can't live without. They make a tangle of messy wires look just a bit tidier.

So I grabbed a new larger basket on sale at Michael's for about $8. I was just happy to find something in the right dimensions that would fit underneath the table legs without a lot of searching.

Baskets don't conceal everything completely, but this stuff gets hot! Devices need to breathe. Put them inside something with a lid and you're probably asking for trouble.

I did the same sort of thing in our office next to the desk. Not the most beautiful thing ever, but easy access if something needs to be moved or unplugged.

p.s. I realize a closet or a cabinet might be a better hiding place for this stuff, but this is an old house, where outlets and phone jacks are not always in the most concealed of places!

Office / sewing room mini-makeover reveal

It took me a while, but our office is finally re-assembled and ready to show you!

Overall, I know it doesn't look that much different from what was there before. All of the furniture and artwork went right back where it was. Might be uneventful, but it works well in this configuration and I wasn't looking to do a major overhaul.

So what did change? The walls went a light shade of aqua. Well, three of them did anyway. I kind of underestimated the amount of paint it would take, so the fourth wall got white instead. Plus the marred ceiling got a clean white coat of ceiling paint. All the paint was leftover from other projects. So that didn't cost a penny! It has certainly lightened up the space and the semi-gloss finish bounces more light around.

The most notable change other than the new office chair was nixing the cubby shelf I used to have above the sewing table in favor of some cuter storage. I finally hung up the house shaped shelf I picked up thrifting two years ago (!) as well as a small printers tray I nabbed earlier this year to make the spools of thread easier to see. And I added a new chalkboard. More on that in another post.

I also went through every box, bin and drawer to get rid of all the excess or unnecessary things. And I caught up on my filing (boring) and shredded a bunch of old documents. Feels good to be organized!

Everything's so tidy and neat, makes me want to get sewing! I may or may not have started on another quilt. OK, I did. Instagrammers get sneak peeks! Follow me @lansdownelife if you are so inclined.

Mini office makeover: Desk upgrades

During this mini office makeover, I'm realizing I never blogged about how we upgraded the desk. Previously, we had this $100 Office Depot special with a metal base that was wobbly beyond belief. It had no storage and didn't leave a lot of leg room. (Plus it had a place for a computer tower and keyboard tray that we didn't need anymore.)

So last summer, we roadtripped to IKEA and picked up a couple of these metal drawer units (HELMER). They were super affordable at $40 each and offer so much storage, I don't think all the drawers are even full.

The old desk base went out to the recycling, but I kept the thick glass top, which was still in good shape. We set it directly on top of the drawers, but it needed an inch or so more height to be ideal. A year later, I finally took some action on that.

I found a couple of pieces of wood (that were actually already stained and sealed, leftover from my DVD shelf project). I sandwiched those between the cabinets and the glass top, and played around with the placement until everything felt stable. I didn't use any fasteners or anything; the glass top is heavy enough that it stays put with normal use. That small difference adds just enough height to make it more comfortable for typing, etc.

Not crazy beautiful or anything, but I think it looks nice enough. And it didn't cost anything.

With the desk taken care of, we also swapped out the shabby 12+ year old office chair. This new bungee chair is shorter, visually lighter, plus a ton more comfortable. It hugs your back and is seriously pretty great.

I'm still working on finishing a few new details for the room. Stay tuned!

Office paint sneak peek

The painting in the office is coming along, but it's not quite finished. Most likely delayed by all of the junk shuffling we've had to do in lieu of emptying the room completely (no space to do that). I also made a promise to myself that I wouldn't put anything back into the room that doesn't belong in there, so that's slowing me down too. The purging continues!

I still have one wall to do (out of frame), but the new color has really freshened up the space already. Hopefully, I can get it finished up and put back into some functional state this weekend.

Next up: Mini office makeover

This is our basement office. It's the only finished space in our basement, and you have to walk through unfinished space to get here, but Dan and I both use it pretty regularly. (Dan, for MBA schoolwork and guesting on podcasts. Me, for sewing and storing random project supplies.) It's basically the same as the last time I showed it to you, but messier. Now I want to make a few changes.

It needs a purge, a good scrub, some organizational systems put in place, a new desk chair and oh, a new paint job. I've never liked this weird shade of beige that was here when we moved in, but it wasn't offensive enough to top the priority list. Its day has finally come, though. The walls are an odd, drab tone that I swear was matched exactly to one of those standard beige outlet cover plates. See what I mean?

I want something lighter, fresher and with a bit more energy. So dipping back into my paint stash, I'm going to go with the same barely aqua I used in Elise's closets. There's plenty of paint left and shades of blue are supposed to be conducive to creativity. So it's a win-win.

The ceiling also needs to be done. It has a bunch of random smears and scratches. I usually detest painting ceilings, but this one is only 6'9". Meaning, I can touch it while standing on the floor. That's short! I'm thinking that might be easier to deal with. I'm going to try and find some paint I have on hand already that will work for that too. Gotta use up that stash!

I'm gearing up to start painting this week when I get some free time. Dan spent hours on Sunday moving things off of two of the walls. This small room is pretty packed with stuff, and there's really no space to move it all out completely, so we're going to have to tackle it piece by piece as we can shuffle things around.

See the last office makeover >>

See details about the office artwork >>

Found, repurposed and handmade artwork in our office/studio

I'm really happy with the way our office turned out. It's kind of a catch-all, but I think all the elements work together and it gives me the opportunity to show off a lot of things that didn't fit in elsewhere in our home.

I've had this vintage metal sign in every one of my post-college apartments, so I was glad to finally display it in our house. Like many of my "antiques," I got it from my grandpa, but I'm not sure how he came about it.

The plank above the desk looks to be part of an old shipping crate. It was originally a shelf in our bedroom closet, and when we ripped out the existing rod and shelves to install a closet system, I discovered the address written on the underside. No date on it, though. I love the thick painted handwriting and the peeled off label.

These next two items are mixed-media paintings that I did five or six years ago. I don't do much painting (for art's sake) anymore, but I'd like to get back to it sometime.

This is a portrait of my parent's yellow lab, Haley (next to some old letterpress blocks).

And this one is Nixon, of course. For a while, I was fascinated with the idea of preserving personal memories in paintings, though I don't think many of those ideas came to frution. But this is one that did. When I was little, my grandpa used to have a poster of Nixon in his basement, his teeth looking like a hockey player, blacked out with electrical tape.

I don't know if this is true, but it's what my grandpa told me. His parents lost a lot in the Depression, so the phrase was surely more descriptive of that than of Nixon, but I paired the two ideas anyway.

The Siamese cat light on the desk is a vintage 1950s TV lamp. Early televisions were very dim, requiring all the room lights to be turned off. Enter the TV lamp as a way to bring in some ambient low light to an otherwise dark room. Very kitschy.

This mailbox was on the front of our house when we bought it, but we replaced it with something bigger that could hold magazines and packages. I saved it because I like the envelope shape and thought it could be a cute place to stash stuff.

Office/studio: Functional and fun

I've slowly been working to transform our basement office/studio from a cold, dysfunctional, disorganized mess...

into an inviting, inspirational and fun space for studying and creating. It's a mis-matched look, but I think all the pieces came together really well.

This room truly is a compilation of leftovers and things that didn't fit elsewhere in the house. The record player table is an old unused end table that was saved from the dumpster and painted. The small black box holding records was formerly a printer stand.

The sewing machine table was once a dining table in small apartments. The red chair was a madeover dumpster find.

It's so nice to have two clear workspaces available. Dan's been using the desk quite a bit while he's doing MBA classwork.

Much of the artwork and accessories were still in boxes from when we moved more than two years ago.

The only recent purchases were the "Make Art" print and the Nelson repro clock (a TJ Maxx find).

I wasn't crazy about the stain color on the closet doors, but once I got the sewing machine table in and the plank of wood above the desk up, the closet doors didn't stick out as much.

All the red accents just sort of fell into place without any effort.

I debated whether or not to re-paint, but ultimately decided I didn't want to waste my time. The wall color is super drab. (I think previous owners of the house must have color matched the paint to a beige outlet cover plate. Not kidding.) But I was able to brighten the space with art instead of paint and I don't even notice the beige now.

I still want to change out the computer desk and bulky gray desk chair, but the space is organized, functional and a whole lot more pleasant than it was before.

Stay tuned for a later post with details about some of the artwork.

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Read more posts about the office.

Transit pass artwork

Since 2003, either Dan or I (and for a few years, both of us) have commuted to work on St. Louis' Metro light rail system. We're big fans of public transportation for environmental reasons, but riding a train isn't always glamorous. Actually, it's never glamorous. And a lot of times, it's pretty annoying (enduring bad weather, long travel times, crazies).

 

I started saving our monthly passes several years ago and had amassed quite a fat stack. I wanted to do something with them to commemorate all those long commutes, so I decided to make a piece of artwork for our basement office.

I found a piece of thin, but rigid plastic in my stash to use for a backing. It's the same kind of plastic they use for notebook covers, but a little thicker. Who knows where that came from.

I cut a small hole in it so I could hang it on the wall.

Then I tacked down all of the passes in a shingle-like manner so all the colorful parts were visible. I wanted a design that we could add to as we accumulate more passes.

Not really living room-worthy artwork, but it does bring a bit of color to the drab walls of the office.

A space for sewing (and other stuff)

Check out my cutey-cute little sewing space in our newly carpeted office. I wanted to set up a dedicated space for my sewing machine. No set-up time equals more time for actual projects!

I built this little cubby shelf out of four wooden shadowboxes from Michaels. I've had them for quite a while, but never got around to using them for anything. I glued them together and then gave the whole thing a coat of semi-gloss paint. I made sure to hang it high enough so that I could slide the sewing machine underneath it if I want to use the table top to work on other types of projects.

This pretty space will certainly inspire me to tackle more sewing projects!