The “Cloffice”?

The TV Room Closet, before

The TV Room Closet, after

It’s the end of the January Cure, and the end of my project.

Like my special project for the Kitchen Cure almost three years ago, I set my sights a little high.

For the Kitchen Cure we demo’d and rebuilt a wall, added a cabinet between the wall studs and painted, all within a month’s time. Whew! It was tough but totally worth it.

For this Cure, instead of choosing a project that would take a few hours like Apartment Therapy suggested, I stripped the paint off the woodwork, we patched and painted the walls and installed shelving to create a little bill-paying spot in our TV room closet (hence the title of this post: Closet? Office? Or Cloffice?!).

I held off on varnishing the woodwork because of the strong odor, so that’s something I’ll still have to do, but for all intents and purposes it is DONE and I’m thrilled with the outcome.

Let me take you on a little tour of my 15-square-foot cloffice. It’ll be tight but I think we can all squeeze in.

The area to the right of the closet door is a little deeper than the space to the left, so that’s where the desk is located. I have all my old photo boxes stored here, my slide scanner and my old-school Polaroid camera and film.

The desktop is the IKEA drop-leaf table that was on my Project List to remove in the kitchen because we never used it. It was about an inch too wide for this space, but Pete cut it down for me. It’s nice to be able to fold it down if I need to, and I love being able to reuse something in another way (especially when it doesn’t cost a penny!).

Now looking to the left of the door, the bulk of my shelving stores the slides I want to digitize, most of which contains photos of the year I spent studying in Austria — yes, it was long before digital cameras existed — and all the slides that my late father took when I was a kid. The file boxes store product manuals and warranties of everything we own (and I sorted through and got rid of the ones we no longer have), and my home idea box, which includes paint chips, articles I saved for gardening, remodeling, decorating, etc.

For a couple of finishing touches, instead of the flimsy string pull-chain for the closet light, I bought this decorative pull-chain.

And I added this clip and wire doohickey that I found at IKEA and clipped some Polaroids I took at the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio in Oak Park.

I can close the door on all of it, but for now I really like to leave the door open and admire it!

Tagged as: Apartment Therapy, closet, completed projects, January Cure, photos