The living room desk area

Last you saw my living room, the one side looked like this:

This arrangement felt nice--although the chairs are in front of the bookshelves, it felt reasonably spacious.

However, I really wanted a desk.  I had my own desk area in our old apartment, and I miss that.  There is no room here for an office, and the spaces for even a small desk are limited.

I happened to own an ugly little table from Ikea that was the perfect size for between the windows. Voila, desk area!

Except....it feels cramped, and CLUTTERED.  Oh my heavens, does it feel cluttered. Its not just the vast sea of paper that I drown in on a weekly basis (wait till school starts!), but the setup just doesn't feel right. I lived with it for a couple of weeks, and while I appreciate the functionality of having a desk on the first floor, I really don't like the way it looks and feel. There is just too much furniture in that spot.

I moved the table out, and brought the secretary (previously on the other side of the room) over.

The scale works better, and it doesn't look as cramped.  I might wish that the secretary were not so close in color to the blue upholstered chair right next to it, but I can always paint the secretary.  That's way at the bottom of my list, though, right behind finish painting the kitchen and start painting the dining room china cabinet. Lots o' things waiting to be painted around here.

We'll see how this works out, the original bamboo table may make a comeback.  There's also a changing table out in the garage that would be a nice height and would give persons sitting in those chairs a place to rest their drinks. 

cords revisited

Last we saw my under the desk area, it looked like this:

(Ignore the above the desk area, please.)

Princess has taken to crawling under the desk and sucking on the computer power cord.  That didn't seem terribly safe, so I guess its time to deal with all the cords down there.  And by "dealing" with them I want to shove them in a box and forget about them. 

I had been looking for an inexpensive solution but hadn't really found anything quite right.  Then, a few days ago I was doing laundry in the basement, and saw this:

It belonged to my mother in law, but had been discarded because drawer front broke off.  Otherwise it was perfect--free, three drawers, one of which could be stationary since I planned on hacking up the bottom of the piece to put the cords in. 

I painted it white and spraypainted the plastic pulls red.

I painted the pulls red because 1) they were very cheap grey plastic and looked hideous, and 2) the credenza under the tv on the other side of the room is also painted white with red pulls.

I actually went to Target yesterday to pick up new pulls---yes, I went to Target for the fourth day in a row, we saw the big Buzz Lightyear yet again, and when we pulled into the parking lot the 4 yr old said, Hey! This is the Target we go to EVERY DAY!---but the six pack of pulls that I wanted were $22.  So, back home to the free plastic pulls. 




Luckily, the drawer front was easily reattached to the broken drawer, and it sits on the bottom now, and holds all the cords.  Since I don't need to pull the drawer out frequently, it should hold up ok.

The Mister sawed off the bottom third of the back of the piece.  I could have taken the back piece completely off, but its not the sturdiest thing, and the back piece helped make it more stable.  All of the cords are stuffed into the back and live in the bottom drawer. There is enough airflow so that the power cords don't overheat, since the back is open. 

And voila!  Cords contained, room for other stuff in the two top drawers. 

Of course, the Princess is already poking around back there, trying to get at the cords.