Moving things around

We have had this computer cabinet in our house for many years. It has served us well.  We like to have the computer in one of the main family spaces in our house so this worked because I could just close it up when people were coming over.

But I never thought it looked very good.

Recently (well, a few months ago) the computer that was in this cabinet stopped working.  The kids started using my laptop for homework and all the other useless crap they do on the computer.  So the cabinet became a spot to shove stuff when we wanted to hide it. Except, as you might notice, the cabinet has windows so things aren't really hidden very well.

I finally decided  this weekend to get rid of it.  If my son is always on my computer in the dining room, why do I have an ugly cabinet in my family room?

I cleaned it out, which was the worst part and probably the reason it sat here so long, and I posted it online.  It sold within a few hours.

I brought up my white cabinet that has been sitting in the basement doing nothing.  Ok maybe I didn't bring it up, but I had my brawny men do it for me.

I still love this cabinet.  Something about knowing that you made something yourself (I didn't make it, but I altered it drastically so it feels like I made it) just bonds you to a thing.  Or at least that's what has happened to me with this piece of furniture.  I would link to the blog post about this piece, but it was so long ago that the blog no longer exists.  In a nutshell, I took a big tv armoire and cut it in half from top to bottom to make it more shallow, took off the upper doors and added shelves, relocated the feet (since two of them got cut off with the back of the cabinet) and painted.  Frank thought I was nuts when I first had the idea, but it turned out great.

The pine computer hutch was picked up Sunday afternoon and the room already looks so much better! Brighter and more spacious.  The pine cabinet was much deeper and took up a lot more visual and actual space.

Now I just have to figure out what to put in it.  The bottom section has all of Carter's school books and stuff that was in the computer cabinet. The top will hopefully be a mix of pretty and functional...but that's hard to pull off...at least for me.  So it might not end up being that pretty. haha!

In other news, remember the cork board covered in all of my fun Christmas cards?

Well, I took down the Christmas cards but never quite decided what to do with the cork board.  It is usually a big mess of mail, important papers, coupons and such. And I was really hoping to have it look less disastrous...

Instead, we have started using the little clothes pins to hang mail and coupons on the board.
Not the look I was hoping for...but that's what happens when you don't have a plan!