March Part 1: Projects

One of my professors taught that Interior Design is all about solving problems. When it comes to interior spaces, I feel like I'm a good problem solver. I don't always know all the aesthetic aspects of interior design that most people think of--throw pillows, accents, and the decor part, but I am really good about making spaces work. This is a problem sometimes, because I'm always thinking of ways to make the spaces in our home work better for us. Thus, we always have projects around the house. 

When we were in our Fox Hollow house, our bathroom was a problem space, and the space behind our bathroom door was wasted space. Die hard readers may recall when we changed our bathroom door into a barn door so we could take advantage of the space in our bedroom behind the bathroom door. I searched KSL for weeks looking for the perfect sized make-up vanity to fit in that space, thus expanding some of the functions of our bathroom. Well, with the move to our new house, that small vanity that I carefully searched for seemed like it would fit much better in Rachel's room, so I was back to the drawing board to come up with a better solution for expansion of my make-up stand. I got a few drawers from IKEA, some furniture feet and new mirror from Amazon, and a new chair from Target. Eventually, the plan is to create new drawer fronts and install hardware to give it a less industrial look, but in the meantime, things are functioning better. Rachel loves this new look, "It's so modern!" And as I gave her my old vanity, she still looked longingly at mine, even with the excitement of having her own. 

Brian finished adding the section for big plywood (and less big plywood pieces) in the garage shop. 

Ta-dah!

Meanwhile, my craft room downstairs had been in a state of disorganization and construction since I put in big wardrobe cabinets back in the beginning of 2022, back before my heart decided to derail my life.  It was time to fix the issue of my desk and the big gap that the wardrobes created when I had to rearrange things. I came up with a pretty inexpensive and quick hack. I got two melanine pieces and had them cut to width at Home Depot (Brian was obviously the brawn behind this project. They didn't quite match up perfectly, so Brian cut the sides so they were flush. I screwed the two pieces together and added melamine banding on the edges to create a new table-top to the width of the space between the two wardrobes. 

I used some kind of special white filler crayon to fill in the knicks created from the cutting of the pieces. 

No there are no more gaps! Yay!

Brian got back to work hanging his pegboards. He landed on two IKEA pegboards and one regular pegboard. 

Then, we finally got around to working on the desktops for the new office make-overs. This involved gluing two 3/4 inch maple plywood pieces together for all the various tabletops we needed (and there were quite a few--6 double thick tops and 1 double thick top). 

The plan was to make two free-standing corner desks inspired by a Pottery Barn corner desk. Then, the rest of the table tops would go on IKEA pieces--two Alex filing cabinets, two Alex desk drawers (same style I used for my new vanity and down in my craft room), an Alex desk that Rachel and Gabe helped me put together back in February), and one wider set of IKEA drawers that once held items in our linen closet in Fox Hollow (that has not had a satisfactory home since we moved into this house). Here's a rough sketch of table top dimensions. The only variable is the wind.  

We went to MacBeath's in Salt Lake to get lots of beautiful maple for the desk legs. We planed some of the pieces and Brian ripped them down to the right lengths. 

The wood was so gorgeous, I told Brian he needed to model it better. 

And then I had to show him how to do it properly. 

With our weekends being taken over by other obligations (like dance competitions and other things that people like to schedule on Saturdays), we had to sacrifice some aspects of our Friday night dates for the project, so one such Friday, we Door Dashed dinner from one of our favorite Mexican Restaurants, and we set up a table in the garage so we could be away from the kids in the house. 

Finally, the pieces were all cut, and the table tops were all cut, and I could get started staining them. 

This took a lot of time--there was so much wood to stain. We wanted to be able to easily take apart the desks for if we switch things up, or if we still love them when we move, so we stained everything before assembling it. We were hoping to get it all stained by the end of March, but we just couldn't make it happen, so you'll have to see how it all came together later.