diy desk updates

I'm trying to organize and decorate my office a bit better - One thing is, I'm not overly happy with this wall of bulletin board and have considered taking it down. But taking it down would perhaps damage the wall, so I'm not sure whether to live with my design mistake or succumb to my OCD about it. Anyways, apart from the look of the office, one of the things I needed to address was organization.

A month ago I decided to make the DIY desk slightly larger. I needed more space to store orders waiting to be shipped. To give some background in how I run my shop, I use these dollar store stackable baskets to organize orders. When an order comes in, I place items in the basket. Sometimes orders have products that have different production times (stamps take 14 days to make, whereas I have gold glitter ribbon in stock) so in order to make sure things stay together an gets it's own basket. If you've ordered from me, your order has likely been in one of these baskets. It's an amazing little system that has meant that orders get shipped faster, there is less product wandering around my office and order mistakes have 99% dissapeared. Little steps that help me as my shop is shipping out more orders on a weekly basis.

How we designed this desk was was similar to how we did my desk, but it actually was a lot easier. More after the jump.

1. Shelving unit - out of kitchen cabinets
We needed to find shelving that was less deep than the cabinetry we used for the main desk portion (Ikea Besta cabinets), as we have a door to the storage room that isn't visible in the photos above. So instead of the base cabinets for the main desk, we used Ikea upper kitchen cabinets (Akrum) that are 12" (which is standard for upper cabinets) These were shallow enough that allows for the storage room door to open but deep enough to store my order baskets.

2. The top - Pine from Lowes
We did the same design as we did for the main desk. I used the same stain but we bought the wood from Lowes (Home Depot's wood cutter was broken) I also skipped the sanding step that I had done meticulously for the main desk as this part of the desk wasn't going to be where I was resting my hands - so I didn't mind the "rough" feel that I would have without sanding. I'm not sure what happened but we used the same stain but the wood tones are a different. It's kind of weird but not enough for me to worry or redo anything.

3. Leveling it
Aubrey raised the cabinets using scrap wood under the cabinetry to get it to the same height as the other cabinets, factoring in the new wood top. To hide the planks of wood we placed to raise the cabinetry up, we slid in a baseboard, to hide the makeshift legs.

I appreciate that 99% of you don't have a need for a space for order processing. But the same design can be  done for a living space. Get Ikea kitchen cabinets, don't buy the doors, install the shelves and add a wood top. Ta-da! Awesome "built in" bookshelf/consolve table.