Tag Archives: home-office-reorganization

Before and After Home Office Reorganization

First of all, thank you to those who viewed RiverCliff Cottage in January. My little blog had 1300 views for the month according to Google Analytics. Do you know how good you have made me feel? I am no one, but you took the time to look me up. I am so thankful. Basically, you’re like a piece of chocolate! Yum! You are delicious!

On Saturday it snowed, and then it continued to snow until the early afternoon on Sunday — a day to stay at home. I know I’m repeating myself, but let me say it again…I love snow. We did not have church. My worship experience occurred outside this morning with the camera following a breath of clean mountain air. Thank you Lord for showing us this once again!!!

Midday, I went upstairs and surveyed the office reorganization mess. I orginally talked about our home office reorganization here. Determined not to continue talking about it yet not doing anything, I decided to get the “Office” part of the home office at least 90% complete today.

I think I’m at 90%. Here’s what it looks like as I write this post…

Here’s the before of Michael’s side of the room…

Here is the after of his side of the room…

I’m happy with the results. Most of it was pretty straight forward — cleaning, sorting, discarding and organizing what was left. The printer and old desktop computer and monitor have gone to Office Depot. When we made the purchase of the scanner (here), Office Depot accepted them for recycling. Mike is a “keeper” and he had about 100 woodworking magazines which I happily discarded! It freed up space for notebooks on our house maintenance, health care, etc. to be put out of sight.

Now that I’ve cleaned and organized the area, you can see the nice desk as our shared workspace. I love this desk!

Mike made the desk for the two of us. I have my side and my drawers, and he has his side and his drawers. (Whoops…that all just sounds risque, doesn’t it?) It’s made of walnut, white oak, red oak and sassafras. We don’t really share it well as he encroaches on my side of the desk. Still, there is the thought!

I used a full can of black spray paint on this redo. Don’t those chairs look better black? I have no problem mixing woods but this room has so much wood…floors, desk, file cabinets, bookshelves…even the blinds are wooden! By spraying the chairs black, it gave them an opportunity to show off.

I took a look at the picture frames around the room and gave them a bit of spray, too. I didn’t want them all to be one color, but if they were brassy, they got a new life in red, black or silver. Here’s a couple that were brassy gold…now they are more cohesive with this busy room!

This one went from gold to bright red…

I even spray painted the cardboard boxes where loose pictures or CDs are kept! This box had been a hideous mauve and green…I had it hidden in the bottom unit of the bookshelf. If you look down in the “before” picture of my side of the room, you’ll see it. Ugly! Now, it’s back living the good life on the upper shelves.

The world is a better place with a full can of Krylon or Rustoleum (or chalkboard spray paint).

Here’s my side of the room before…I took this picture right when I started cleaning out the bookcase so I have the trashbag in the floor! Basically, this looks like a wreck.

And here’s the after…ahhh…I feel better just looking at this! This is a place I can work!

Here’s the whole office area again…

There are blocks in the top of the window…they’ll say “Organize” when I get the letters on them. That’s all part of my plan!

But now…it’s time for a….

Thank you for reading RiverCliff Cottage. Do you like the office redo? I bought the pillows, the lampshades, one decorative box and spraypaint to give this room new life. Beyond that…it was just elbow grease. I’m just wondering why I let it go so long?

Pop of Red and Other Stuff

This is a Seinfield post. It’s all over the place. First, let’s start with the home office reorganization/redo. Do you like that red pillow with the black chair?

I like it.

I got that pillow from Target this morning. By 11:40 am, I had made two trips to Bristol from Mendota! Mike and I went to town in the truck early to avoid the crowds since it was predicted to snow. He dropped me off at Walmart at 7:15 am while he went to Lowe’s. We were home by 9 am. However, as we were returning home, headed down Nordyke Road into the valley, I knew I was going in the wrong direction. I should have went to town alone as I wanted to go to TJ Maxx and Target to look for a few things for our home office reorganization/redo.

So…I got home, unloaded the groceries, tidied up the house, saw Patsy at the Mendota Post Office and headed back to town. I wanted to get there before the snow started.

Can you see where I’m headed with this room. It’s a working space, and it’s primarily khaki, white, red and black. However, since it is a working space, I’ve changed the couch slipcover to be denim. Danette, who will be doing the slipcovering, will be coming over this week provided (1) the creeks are not out; (2) the river is not in the road; and (3) it is not snowing. All three of those conditions have to be met in North Carolina where she lives and in Mendota where I live.

Introducing the denim which will be on the couch….

Add the burlap pillow I’ve had for years. I’ll probably use this on the couch and I may stencil a “B” on it. The lanpshade on the floor is also going to be used, and this picture does not do it justice. I love it. Whimsical.

So…that is where the room is headed. There will be some red and black checks here and there, too. The lampshade is a bit feminine,so you may be wondering how my husband feels about that. The answer is that he probably will not notice it! So long as I’m happy with the room, he doesn’t care. He’s got his shop and he likes that more than anything.

Speaking of the shop, Jenna, Ashley and Mike are all down there today. They’ve been working on a few projects such as…

My entertainment center. Here’s the wormy chestnut top to the entertainment center.

After working on this, it’s important to have a major hit of sugar and peach tea. Check out Ashley after her first drink…I pride myself on introducing them to Pal’s peachy tea. They’re liking it more and more. Soon, no trip to Bristol will be complete without a swing through Pal’s!!

They are also working on some shelves for Helene…here’s what this looks like thus far…I love these young women! They are going to help me when Mike has his knee replacement surgery.

More later. Time for a nap with Gracie.

Happy Snowy Friday and Office Reorg Update

Happy snowy Friday! I adore these serendipitous holidays where nature has everyone slow down a bit. We’ve had a wonderful day staying indoors.

I went upstairs this morning and took a few pictures of our home office which is my current “big” project. No one is going to say I took performance enhancing drugs to get through fast. Small steps. Bits of progress.

Chairs look a lot crisper spray painted black. I think a little red lumbar pillow will look great in this chair.

Chair painted Black

If you can get around all of the mess I have pulled out in the above picture, you’ll see how the newly painted black chair looked BEFORE when you look at the picture below. Just imagine all of the junk gone and picture how GOOD the chair looks black in this spot. I know..it takes some imagination.

While you’re using your imagination, imagine the couch slipcovered in white denim. I’m ordering 14 yards today!! The labor for this will be $400. I’m saving $100 per week for four weeks.

Bookshelf all neat and organized in the picture below. A place for everything and everything in its place. These bookshelves are over 30 years old now. They are a little out of style. They were purchased at Ethan Allen and are really sturdy. They work!

And my file cabinet…all tidied up with the Cricut on top where its handy. I’ve organized all of the drawers, too! I like these little wooden file cabinets. Mike and I each have one.

You can see the green rug in the above picture. That rug will be shampooed and rolled up for storage. It’ll come out again some time in another room, but the rug that will go in it’s place is a neutral natural “cream” color. Imagine…the natural rug, the black chairs, the wood pieces all accented in black and red. I’m starting to see it!

Accessories will make this a sweet space. New lampshades, a red throw, some burlap, plants, black and white checks…you get the picture. Lots of cleaning, throwing away and organizing still ahead.

I’m also looking around the house and seeing what I have that I can reuse. I had a wrought iron “curly thing” that I’d hung above the entry way in the dining room. It was a distressed yellow color. I painted it black. It’ll go behind the couch. See the post it note for Mike!” He hates those things!

How are you spending this snowy day? Are you crafting, reading, cleaning, sleeping or eating? All of them sound good to me!

After the January 2013 Snow

Hi! Baby it’s cold outside! It’s been a wild week. I had no internet on the onset of last week due to a transmitter being replaced up at the Mendota Fire Tower by my pals at IGO Technologies. They did the replacement while our area received 6.5 inches of rainfall!

Here’s where my internet comes from…on top of Clinch Mountain!

Twenty four hours after the repair, we received 6-7 inches of wet (and beautiful) snow resulting in no phone service, no electricity and no internet. The phone service returned in 48 hours, the electricity in about 72 hours, and the internet, FINALLY, today!

The wet snow had trees down everywhere. Here’s a few on the side of the road going up Nordyke Road leaving Mendota. The scenes below repeated over and over on all of the Mendota roads. Thank goodness some folks had chainsaws as the road crews had too much other stuff on their hands.

And another…

And another…yawn!

We are so fortunate that we have a generator (check out this post). However, to keep from using so much propane, we are careful about our electrical usage during outages. I didn’t spend a lot of time working on my home office organization project because it’s in a different “zone” in terms of the heating system. However, I tried to do a few things…

I have all kinds of photo albums from the time when we didn’t have digital photography. Look at them! (If you can get past the trash I have on the floor in this picture…sometimes you have to drag it out before you can clean it up!)

I am putting most of the albums in the lower part of the bookshelf behind doors. However, there were a few that I could not get in there. I went back in time to the era when I had to “wrap” my rented school books. Do students still rent textbooks? I don’t know!

Took some ordinary mailing paper and a very ugly pink album..

Using my skills developed during my years as a textbook renter!

Taped down the sides here…

Here ya go! Still a work in progress..it doesn’t look like it will look with a bit more tweaking…but you can see where I’m headed.

While slow as molasses, this is a good winter project!

Plans for Office Organization Redo

We got up in a dither of excitement today. The river was rising fairly rapidly and the creeks were out of the banks. I didn’t go to work — was afraid I couldn’t get back home.

Here’s a picture taken in front of our house early this morning. The river has continued to rise. This just screams at us to get in the truck and go look around, and we did.

I appreciate the rain — especially since there is drought in so many areas of the southeast United States.

Here’s a creek up the road “a piece” from the house…looks like a little lake.

It would have been a great day to hang out and surf the internet, but it was down today, too. Back up now…finally! Sort of…it’s actually going off and on.

I did a little work on a long-term project which is our home office reorganization. It looks like this now, and Mike says he thinks it looks fine. I hate it.

He has a computer that does not work and a printer that does not work. There are at least 150 wood working magazines and he has binders that say things like “Electronic Gate” or “Generac”. He gets to keep the notebooks but the magazines need to leave. I thought the best way to get him to go along with my idea to “redo” the home office was for me to start working on it. Admittedly, my side is a mess,too.

Here’s my side of the room…see that trashbag on the floor? I’ve gotten rid of a bunch of stuff.

I have plans for my side and for Mike’s side and for the whole room. No shortage on ideas here.

My plans are inspired by these…you have to have a start.

There’s a few things in this room that will be slow to change. The red couch is going to be slipcovered white, and I haven’t even bought the fabric so that won’t be completed for 6-8 weeks or even longer.

Do you recall when I spoke about having a chair and ottoman slipcovered? Here’s that post. I was going to move it to the downstairs master bedroom, but I’ve decided to leave it up in the office and use the same white on the couch. That is my only big expense in redoing this room.

Here’s how the chair turned out. Don’t you love it. I can pull these off and wash them.

Shifting rugs around, organizing and making those bookshelves look nice, getting rid of stuff we don’t need or is torn up…those things can take place over the next few weeks.

And I’m sure some chalkboard spraypaint and regular spraypaint will be involved!