$100 Room Challenge: Closet Office Desk and Shelves
It's week 3 of the $100 room challenge and we are well on our way to creating my very own closet office! If you are just joining me, I'm participating in the $100 Room Challenge hosted by Erin from Lemons, Lavender, and Laundry where a room is updated for just $100 in just one month.
Check out week 1 and week 2 posts if you want to catch up!
This week we are FINALLY tackling the actual design of the desk and shelves. You may be asking yourself why I'm setting up the office first when I haven't even painted the closet yet. Well, for two reasons, 1) I wanted to make sure my plans would actually work and 2) my carpenter, a.k.a my dad, has to go out town so I need his skills to help me before he leaves!
For a recap, below are my plans for the space:
First stop is a trip to Home Depot to get all the necessary materials. Get ready to say goodbye to most of my budget!
We decided to use 2X2X8's for the support of the desk and shelves in order to allow for ample support for the desk and shevles to rest on. These are going to be attached right to the wall on the studs with wood screws.
We spent quite a bit of time selected the perfect strips, making sure they were super straight. Taking the time to this now will save you a lot of work when you are in the middle of trying to install.
Next up was trying to decide what material to use for the actual desk. When making my plans and layout, I assumed that I was going to have to figure out a way to connect several boards of pine to come up with the 2 inches in depth that I wanted my desk to be. My dad suggested that I look at plywood as he was convinced that not only would it look cleaner, but that I could also get all of the additional shelves I wanted with just one sheet of plywood. I have to admit that I wasn't thrilled about the idea of using plywood because all I could picture was that rough surface that you sometimes see on attic flooring or garage shelves. Boy was I WRONG!
I found the prettiest sheet of plywood I've ever seen! It's 3/4 of an inch thick and has the smoothest surface, ready for me to stain! Are you ready to see how we managed to get all of my shelves AND my desk from one sheet of plywood?
Amazing right? I even got an additional side shelf that I wasn't expecting, meaning more storage for me! Since we already knew our measurements, we just had the plywood cut at Home Depot which saved us TONS of time. Once we got home we quickly started working on setting up the supports and were able to get most of it set up in just a couple of hours.
Since I had my layout already done with all the measurements listed, installation was a breeze. We started by marking all the studs on the wall with a pencil. This made the installation of the supports a lot easier because all we had to do was measure the height of where we wanted the support and then simply drill the support into the stud with screws.
I had already taken the time to decide on what side I wanted my printer, Cricut, and sewing machine to be and knew how much space I needed in between each shelf, so the installation for the shelves went very fast as well.
We later changed the support on the left to extend the entire 8 feet in front of the closet opening to provide even more strength. This allowed for the table to sit on top of the supports without requiring extra brackets. The support extra supports will also prevent the table top from bowing over time.
The shelf at the very top of the closet needed extra supports, so I used two shelf brackets that I had left over from the DIY shelves we did in my husband's office and then purchased two additional brackets. Unfortunately, Home Depot didn't have the same two brackets that I already had, so I had to purchase these white ones (see below) and quickly spray painted them bronze to match the ones I already owned. We then placed the non matching ones on the corners of the shelf, where no one will be the wiser that they don't match the front two shelf brackets.
It feels so good to be finished with the build! I'm now in the process of sanding everything down and prepping for painting!
The Budget...so far!
**This post may contain affiliate links, please read my full disclosure here.**
NuWallpaper Makarresh Wallpaper - $0 (already owned)
1 Quart of "Infinite Deep Sea" by Behr Marquee - $19.36
1 Sheet of Plywood - 3/4 in. x 4 ft. x 8 ft - $39.98
5 - 2x2x8's - $9.70
Box of Screws - $7.48
2- shelf brackets - $9.56
Bronze spray paint - $0 (already owned)
Money Remaining: $13.92
The Plan for this Week:
- Patch all holes and lightly sand
- Paint closet
- Paint shelves
- Stain desk and apply polyurethane
Are you excited to see how it turns out?
Join me every Wednesday for the month of January where I will share my progress with the final reveal on January 31st! Sign up below if you want to make sure you don't miss a thing and receive an email reminder with every post! (but don't worry, I will never spam you!)
I'm getting super excited as the challenge is almost over!
Want to see even more transformations? Check out below for even more ideas of what you can do with $100 from these amazing group of bloggers!
