Elena’s Office

Posted in Blog on 02/03/2010 08:17 am by Sarah

The client:

Elena has been trying for years to get her office to a place that would work for her family.  With two adults and two children and millions of papers every day, the family needed to find a way to deal with those papers.  She loves bright colors and wanted her space to look classy and pretty as well as functional.

The problem and solution:

This corner is full of projects, artwork, and documents to be archived. It was the most frustrating for Elena because there were a lot of things that couldn’t really be thrown out or moved to another room. There was a huge pile in the corner that really bugged her.

Before

After

Here is the same corner organized. Many of the art supplies have been put into different bins than before. The family history documents were moved to the attic and the historical pictures were put in boxes and later we’ll tell you where we hid them in the office. Eventually the plan is to scan all of those pictures and store them online.

Ever since we did this to the top of the file cabinet it’s stayed uncluttered. I mostly kept the file cabinet the same but put it into the other corner.

Before

After

Here is the same corner- we moved the shelf from the entryway and the table and chairs from the kitchen. We basically pulled all the black furniture from around the house.

The desk is actually functioning pretty well right now despite the papers everywhere. That organizer is working nicely. It could use improvement though.

Before

After

We’ve moved most of the things that used to be on the surface of the desk to the shelves behind the desk. It still gets cluttered here but not nearly as badly. We got the shelves from Elena’s sister for free because she was moving. We spent a little money on containers for the supplies. The wire organizer holds all the papers that Elena deals with often. The black organizer is for the papers her husband deals with. Ideally that’s where all the papers go until they are filed or thrown away. The lower part of the shelves are hidden by the desk, and that’s where all the pictures to be scanned are hidden. We hope to have a little more money soon so we can send the rest in to Fotobridge.

This corner holds magazines and office supplies. Elena was not fond of it.

Corner 3 Before

After

This corner is the biggest change. Elena no longer stores any boxes or piles of papers on the floor. Everything is up off the floor so that she can glance around and see carpet. It’s very nice. Elena’s great-grandmother painted the painting of the baby.

When choosing the color of the walls we took into consideration the colors already in Elena’s house and the fact that it needed to bring in some warmth. We knew with all this black furniture that she needed a strong color to balance it. It looked very bright originally but with all the black it’s toned down.

The red is reflected in the curtains, and the green is similar to the kitchen color…

After

After

Overall we paid about $375 for everything, including furniture, organizing boxes, and paint and painting supplies. The IKEA shelf was $85, and then we probably spent another $70 on nice boxes. Nice boxes are so expensive. The remainder was on painting and misc supplies, some of which will be usable for other projects.