Nook Makeover

We moved into a small place. Small space living is hyped as being all hip and urban, but at the same time it is just so darn SMALL. So we've had to be smart about how we are using our space. One of the ways we decided to do this was to use the little nook in the wall as a workspace and a home for some of our books and stereo.

Here is a photo of the nook shortly after move-in. SO BAD.

We sketched up some really simple plans, and talked about how to make it, and what materials to use. We landed on the idea of salvaged wood. That stumped us for a while since it can be less straightforward than it sounds to acquire useable salvaged wood. And then it hit me. My dad has a pile of old fence boards in the backyard. All old. All the same size. All free. All the time.

The next hitch was that I just can't pop over to my parents' house any time I want to get supplies for a new project. Lucky for me Joel was headed back to Edmonton the next week, so he drove back a stack of boards. First thing we did was clear out the nook to get it back to a clean slate.

Then, we sanded and stained the boards, since they were a dusty red colour that just wasn't going to work in our space. I did this on our balcony. We chose a black stain and polyurethane combined for a glossy and durable finish. It took a few coats.

This is me staining the trim that we planned to use in place of brackets. Partly because our wall-stud situation around here is sketchy. They are strangely spaced and very difficult to find. So we hoped this would be less noticeable if we had to do some weird rigging to get it to work.

We ended up having to saw all the boards and trim by hand, since we no longer live near anyone we can borrow power tools from (miss you, Dad and Scott!), and even if we could borrow them they are pretty loud to use on the balcony. I spent an entire afternoon sawing and sanding, and ended up with a weird limp arm thing going on that night. It felt almost detached from my body. Here is a picture of Joel sawing trim late into the night.

And then, once everything was really dry, it was time to put up the trim brackets.

And then to model our new tiny desk with a super weird expression.

Obviously, it wasn't anywhere near done until I decorated the heck out of it and Joel got his tech-savvy hands on the stereo. Every time I take a photo of something in our house to blog it, it makes me see new things I want to change, but here it is for now, with its super-functionality.

 And a close up shot of the desk area, with the perpetual calendar that I made last week. I chalked a grid onto some black paper and framed it, then used a white eyeliner pencil to write in the days and month onto the glass. That way, at the end of each month you can just wipe the white pencil off the glass and update it to the next month.

And here is a shot of my computer set up on the computer stand, with this blog post up on my screen. Whoa.

So, that's about it. A tiny nook makeover that's made our lives a little more organized.