Reclaimed Reception Desk

This might be my favorite project to date! A friend of mine has worked in salons for a long time and she does amazing work. I started going to see her when my hair was in need of correction after a scary experience at a chain salon here in Reno. Luckily, she was able to fix everything and I've been a loyal customer now for several years. Anyway, this year she opened her own place and asked me to build her reception desk (also, check out Sanctuary Salon if you need an amazing salon experience in Reno! She didn't ask me to plug her business or anything but I'm serious, it's amazing)

The customer had requirements for the size and needed multiple counter heights. She also had some very cool 100 year old cedar barn wood salvaged from the local area that she was interested in using. Other than that she left the design pretty open and told me to go ahead and be creative with it. I built the desk surfaces similar to the desks I created for another local business (desk project) and the entire desk can be disassembled into 5 pieces (front, sides, and 2 desktops) for easier transport and moving. I kept the front design simple as the wood was so pretty to start with that I wanted it to still be the main focus.

The cedar itself I simply sealed but did not stain as the original color was already stunning. For the desktop stain I matched it to hues in the cedar to tie everything together.

Installing the reception desk in its new home was fun as it allowed me a sneak peak into how the salon was coming along. I am in love! The entire place has a reclaimed but very fresh feel about it and I'm so glad this new desk fit right in to welcome her clients into the space.

Custom Bookcase

A family member needed a new bookcase in the kitchen for all of her cookbooks and she wanted it to be the same height as her cabinets.

This tucked right on to the end and is waiting to be primed and painted.

Creating Pantry Space

One thing that this house really needed was a pantry

Luckily we have a little under the stairs closet that opens to the kitchen. In the back of that closet is the access to get under our house so we added another door to the closet off the hallway to access that.

After the framing was completed the drywall went quickly

We added a new floor to the closet to replace the carpet and started attaching the shelf supports

Shelves and baseboards went in quickly. In order to not need a post on the inside of each corner we used sheathing clips to attach the shelves together

Our new pantry turned out great and it's super accessible.

Conference Room Desks and Console Tables

After we completed building 20 desks (here) the business needed to set up their conference room. These beautiful desks are 7.5 feet long so metal bars were embedded within the desk to help them keep their structural integrity. We also added electrical outlets to each surface for all of the inevitable laptops, etc that would be used in here.

I also designed two console tables for them. This one will hold all of the little electrical cables, remotes, and miscellaneous pieces that go with technology and conference rooms. The lower shelves slide side to side and can be moved to suit whatever is being stored.

This wider and deeper console table will be used for setting up coffee and food for business meetings and holding spare supplies. Like the other console table the lower shelves are adjustable (and removable) and can be rearranged to suit the storage needs. Now all this conference room needs is a little art and sound absorption.

My Favorite Dumpster Dive

A construction dumpster near my office had these sitting on top and while I'm sure they were part of some shipping packaging I still thought that it was a huge shame to toss them.

With a few cup hooks and peg board hooks it turned into the perfect shelves for my teenager!

Custom Built In Bookcases

In our last home I had installed a large built in bookcase. After moving to this home, as we tried to unpack, it quickly became apparent that it would need to be a high priority to create another so that we could find homes for all of our belongings.

With a base of 2x4s we can use prebuilt upper cabinets. The handles were swapped out to create a nicer look and I created this pretty counter top for a custom fit.

Building in the shelves took a couple of days and quite a few trips up and down the stairs to make sure that everything was the perfect fit

I was so excited to start unpacking everything that I got it under way before I even got to painting the walls or installing the base trim.

That created a home for most of my books but the kids' books still needed to have a home. This window alcove looked like the perfect kid nook for their bookcases.

With the window seat installed I started to build their bookcases on either side of the windows.

Two large bookcases with storage underneath will be perfect to complete their space.

All in all it took me most of a week to get this done but the end result is so pretty and all of our beautiful books have a home!

Triangle Scraps

I've been having a great time playing with my scrap pile. I used the chop saw to cut up a bunch of same sized triangles in varying heights.

And then I started playing around with all of the different ways to assemble them and stain them. This would be a cute ornament!

Ultimately I settled on one large art piece. This is as I started putting it together and picking the layout

And finally with a solid backing this turned out beautiful! Now I want to make one of these on a larger scale. Maybe a living room wall?

Bunny Hay Feeders

Our sweet bunnies needed a hay feeder and litter box that could accommodate all 3 of them. Since what we wanted in the size we needed wasn't available we decided to make our own. Ein and I spent the day in the garage working on these two feeders and they turned out so cute.

Clearly Hera approves:

The top even flips open for easy loading

Tea Light Candle Holder

I needed a centerpiece for my table when I was staging my last home. I cut a 4x4 down to about a 4x3 and then used a hole saw to make openings to fit my pretty blue glass tea light holders.

A little stain and it was table ready. Simple and cheap and just what I needed for staging.

Replacing the Fence

Our poor sad fence. When we bought the house it came with a nearly 30 year old fence. What you can't see here is that it's being held up from the neighbor's yard with extra boards. It's falling apart, dissolving really, and super short. I'm not sure if you can see it but along the top board there is also a metal pipe running the length of the fence. A previous owner thought that it would be a good idea to attach electrical to a fence (not at all to code) and we had to cut that off at the box and take it down.

Luckily, when a fence is super old and broken it also comes down quickly! Seriously we had this ripped down in about 30 minutes.

We decided to go with the metal posts that will hide within the fence, giving it a cleaner look.

We let the neighbor have the "pretty side" of the fence (I'm standing in their yard) as I just wanted a consistent view but didn't have a preference on which side I saw.

All total it took 3 and a half days. The first day was both of us and both of our neighbors, the second day the neighbor was there for a few hours, and then we wrapped up the rest of it. I got pretty good at hanging pickets. And it turned out so pretty! We still have two more fences to go but with all of this experience I think the next one will go a lot faster.

Peg Board Jewelry Organizer

We moved in two years ago and since then all of my jewelry has been sitting in a purse in the bottom of my closet which, as you can imagine, is not very useful. Digging for what I want and trying to untangle it from the mess drives me nuts. I've been meaning to create a jewelry organizer to hang behind the bedroom door and today I found some time in my schedule! It's just the perfect size to organize all of it and I can finally see at a glance what my options are!

Bonus: It hides behind the door when it's open but it also looks cute as a part of the decor as well.

Pac Man Wall Art

Now that we have so many teenagers (5!) we turned one of the rooms in our house into a game room. And of course a game room needs some game themed art! Initially I accidentally painted Blinky more purple-ish but my little sister set me straight as "He's the main ghost!". She had a point so I did a little color correction to set him straight, haha.

It turned out to be the perfect fit but now I'm thinking I also need to fit Mario in here somewhere...