hey it's abby and as promised i'mexcited to be back today with the reveal of donnie's organized and very masculinehome office. i was so excited for this project because i wanted him to have aspace that was all his own. in our townhouse his office was this darkcramped little 8 by 8 corner of the basement so now he finally has his dreamoffice that he's always wanted. he would ask me for opinions here and there butfor the most part all of the design and organization ideas and everything waspretty much donnie's. i had very minimal say in it so let's go ahead in and iwill let him give you the grand tour. after i cleared out my office i thoughtit was a good time to upgrade the window
and door trim. with our new house buildall the windows came with a basic window sill but nothing around the edges andthe top of the windows so i added craftsman style trim around the windowsand doors and painted them white which i think really stands out next to the graypaint we used in my office. the paint color is called chain reaction frombehr. it ended up being a little darker than we thought it would be but wereally like how it looks in this room. i also installed bamboo shades that matchthe ones we have in our sunroom and living room. before we get to the neworganized shelves i'll show you my new desk area. years ago i built a standingdesk out of pipes and an ikea desk top. it
was nice but there are just times when ireally wanted to sit i did a lot of research and decided to get a motorizedstanding desk from a company called fuli and my model is the jarvis. it's a 60inch wide desk and has a bamboo top. the legs and frame are the natural colorwhich is just unfinished metal instead of metal that's been painted. the bestthing about this desk is that it has programmable positions and can move upand down to the right height just by pushing the buttons so over the courseof a day i'll move it from standing to sitting multiple time so i'm reallygetting great use out of it so far. now moving over to the wall of shelves we'llstart at the bottom and work our way up
one thing we really like about theseshelves is that they don't sit on the floor getting everything up and off thefloor just makes the somewhat small office feel a little bit bigger it'salso easy to keep the floor clean this way. for the bottom row we use 16 inchdeep shelves. so the idea for this bottom row is just have a place for all of myvideo equipment. we just started making youtube videos a few months ago but it'samazing how much stuff we ended up with from lights to microphones cablesbatteries and just all sorts of other stuff. we need all of this equipment tobe somewhat mobile and easily able to move from one room to another orwherever we are shooting so i organized
everything into these bosch l boxes. theboxes are actually toolboxes but because they come in so many different sizes andsnap together i thought they'd be perfect for organizing the videoequipment. i also used abby's label maker to labeleach box so i know exactly what's in everything without opening them up. ican't tell you how much better it is having all this equipment organized thisway. no more searching around for little parts or cables. everything has a placeand when it's time to set up for filming it's easy to just grab the boxes i needand head to the right room. also with kids, it's nice that the equipment is alittle more protected and not just
laying out. the bottom row is also wherei have the wireless router and a little hard drive bay that we use for videostorage. i did my best to bundle up all the cables and zip-tie everything niceand neat so it looks a little more organized. moving up i have two rows ofwire mesh drawers deeper drawers on the bottom and then a row of shallow drawersabove. these drawers are about the greatest thing ever. they feel reallysturdy and roll in and out very easily. it's nice that you can see into thedrawers through the mesh to get an idea of what's in each one just at a glancewithout opening it. you can buy these little label holders made specificallyfor these drawers that snap into place.
i'm still changing things around alittle bit so i haven't labeled everything except for the ones that i'mabsolutely sure of. now i have to say at first i wasn't convinced about beingable to organize things in these drawers but that was until i found these drawerdividers made to match these wire mesh drawers. the dividers are really greatfor the shallow drawers. in one drawer i keep all the little office supplies anda few other things and without the dividers it would just be a big mess butdividing it up into four little rows really makes a big difference. above thedrawers i use a row of 16-inch shelves again just like on the bottom row. thisis the right depth to cover the top of
the drawers i decided to use this row ofshelves for commonly used things. it's at the perfect height to get to easily. soon the left side i have a row of little clear document holders from thecontainer store. these were actually recommended to me by the person at thestore who helped me design my shelving unit because they come in so manydifferent sizes and are really inexpensive. i think they're a great wayto organize documents but i also organize some magazines and notebooks inthese. the little clip on labels help me know where to putthings. right now i even have a couple empty containers. nothing wrong withhaving some extra space for the future.
then right next to these clear containers i have a little spot for my two cameras and lenses. there's only onethere now because i'm using the other one to film but i really like havingthem right there kind of on a little display shelf but it's also nice to beable to just grab them really quickly if i want to film something and then forthe rest of this row and the next two i have nothing but books. these are 12-inchshelves so they're recessed a little bit compared with the drawers and the bottomshelves and i think that's really the perfect depth for books it's nice withalpha that you can buy little bookends that snap into the shelving uprights andyou can also buy bookends that slide
over the front of the shelf. the onesthat slide over the front of the shelf are a little more versatile because theycan move back and forth on the shelf whereas the other ones can only clipinto the operate so you're limited on where you can put them. on the second topshelf it's another 12 inch shelf i have some boxes with pictures and a few otherboxes that some of my electronics came in. it definitely doesn't look the bestto have a row of boxes up here but for me it's more important for my office tobe organized and functional than just look a hundred percent perfect and i amreally excited about the top row of my wall of shelves. it was reallychallenging for me to figure out where
to store all the long and heavy videoequipment like lights and tripods and mic stands. before i redid my office ijust had everything piled up on the floor because they're so big and bulkyand they didn't really seem to fit nicely anywhere so i actually went intomy design meeting at the container store and told them about the issue and sherecommended i use ventilated shelving for the very top row. so the ventilatedshelving are just metal wire shelves. i honestly think this is a perfectsolution. i use a little stool from ikea to get to this stuff and then the stoolcan sit nicely out of the way when i'm not using it. because the shelves are thewire ventilated type they're super
durable so i don't have to worry aboutscratching anything up and i can also see from below what's on the shelves. atboth ends of the top shelf i use a little row ofhooks that snap into the brackets so this space is a bit high but the hooksare a good place to store my backpack on one end and then in the other end i havemy fly fishing rod. so that is the main wall of shelving in my office. it reallyis crazy how much i can fit into this space i think we did a pretty good jobmaximizing the space but at the same time i don't think it feels too crampedor crowded or anything like that. now i'll show you what we did on the otherside of the room. so this is where i sit
and read and drink my coffee and lookout the window so what we decided to do here was use alpha just to kind of matcheverything but we used a configuration where the bottom shelf acts like alittle end table with a lamp this little shelf was perfect for the books i'mcurrently reading and also a great place to set my coffee while i'm in the chair.so with this new setup i use the platinum color metal alpha grate thatjust snaps into the uprights and then from this grate i can hang littleshelves and little clear storage containers as well as hooks and allsorts of other things i'm sure this arrangement will evolveover time but it's really super easy to
move things around on this grate. andthen the top of this little reading area i have a narrow 8 inch shelf just withsome decorative books. to finish things off in my office i hung up some picturesthat i already had. these two pictures i took years ago the top one is from wheni went backpacking through denali national park in alaska and the bottomone is a picture i took while canoeing through the everglades with my collegeroommate. above my chair i have a reprint of a topographical map from denalinational park and then on the other side of the window i hung these two picturesi made when i was a little kid. my mom found them a few months ago and had themframed for me which was very nice.
i think the bright colors look nice inmy office. i can't tell you how excited i am about my new office.i'm realizing now that when a space is organized and set up the way you want,you just naturally want to spend more time in there and so far i've beenspending a ton of time in my office and i just feel so productive and organizedwhen i'm in here. so if you couldn't tell donnie is just alittle bit excited about his office. i think we hit our two primary goals forthis space which was for it to be organized and for it to be masculine. i'mso glad that donnie has a space that's all his own that is functional andperfectly meets his style. before you go
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