Expedit Prison

That’s the view from my new “office.”

We’ve used an Ikea Expedit Shelf as a room divider between the “lounge” and the “living” portion of our main living area since we first moved in.   So in order to create an office space that still provided some separation between home and work, we decided to fashion a sort of cubicle to conceal my desk and junk.

Since I failed to take any good "before" pictures, here's a general idea of how the area that's becoming my office used to look (at Sara's Baby Shower last year.) You can see the original Expedit serving as a room divider on the right edge of frame.

Step one was getting a second six foot tall by six foot wide Expedit to supplement the first, which we accomplished yesterday.   Step two will be hacking that Expedit down to a 3×5 cube version to allow for a doorway through which to enter the office.    Step three will be outfitting said office with the storage necessary to contain my obsessive note-writing and inspiration-boarding without allowing it to overtake our entire place.   (We haven’t quite gotten to step three – but contrary to my nature, I’m trying to do this in an organized fashion rather than just pulling all my junk out of the current office and seeing where it falls.)

As of now, I’m sitting in a prison of black-brown particle board.   The two six-foot shelves butted up next to each other barely allow room for my big belly and I to squeeze through, so it feels like I’m being held captive at my desk.     We’re also saddling ourselves with the challenge of trying to ensure that our “cubie” stays confined to the space behind our couch (not the couch pictured, we’ve since acquired a sectional) to keep the lines as clean as possible.

Progress as of this morning. Outlook not-so-good.

While the prefab Expedit inserts are certainly a part of the plan, they’re $15-25 bucks a pop, so we’re looking for some more cost-effective storage options including a trip to St. Vincent DePaul for a suitable filing cabinet to match our steel vintage desk, and possibly some wallpaper or fabric covered Lekman or Drona boxes (also from everyone’s favorite mecca of affordable Scandinavian home furnishings.)   I also loved the idea for record storage that I found during this morning’s epic Ikea Hack google-a-thon (Scott rightfully insisted I find out what’s inside this particle board monster before we start sawing it open.)   It’s sure to be an adventure.

This will be our first “hack” so if you’re interested to see the results, check back – I for one hope to have it completed before the end of the week.

Update:  Scott Rules.

He came home from work to find me struggling to write in my little box of boxes, so he sent me off to swim at his Mom’s while he completed this project in an afternoon.  (Don’t worry Vince, he structurally re-enforced it.) He also took photos of every step of the process since he knew I would want to document it.   Which I do, but not today.    We still have a lot of work to do to get my so-called office in shape, but at least this most daunting portion of the project is done!   Yay Scott!