In part one, I told you a bit about how I bought furniture at garage sales, even got free furniture at garage sales, and then how my husband brought home a rusted piece of junk someone had the temerity to call a filing cabinet. I didn’t see the possibilities that laid beneath that rusty exterior. My husband did. He brought home a quart of free purple paint (also from work – he works in a sign shop) and started in on it. He was carefully applied the paint, and after it dried, I could hardly believe it was the same cabinet he had brought home. It had really cleaned up well. The drawers still screech and stick when you try to open them, but since I have never used it for anything that I need to get into regularly (I use it for long-term storage,) this hasn’t been a problem for me. It sits in the corner, shiny and pretty and completely free. My favorite kind of filing cabinet.
I now have a printer stand (free), printer ($37 at Wal-Mart – been going strong for 2 years with no problems yet!), two lamps, and a partridge in a…Oh, I mean a pretty purple cabinet. That left the most important aspect of a home office still open: The desk. I just did a search for it to see if I could find it still at Wal-Mart, and sure enough, it’s there. They have it priced at $73.92 now, but I’m fairly certain I only paid about $65 for it. Either way, with a matching small bookcase, it’s not a bad deal, although more sturdy desks have certainly been made in this world. Then again, I was going for cheap, not sturdy. 😛
Being a fan of Wal-Mart prices (if not Wal-Mart quality) we also bought a whiteboard there so I could scribble notes to myself, make up to-do lists, plot out my stories, or just doodle. I think that ran me about $10.
Last but not least, I bought some material from Wal-Mart to decorate my closet with, which ran me about $4. Did I just say “decorate the closet”? Yes, but you’ll have to wait for next blog to find out what I’m talking about.
The total cost of my office for a TV stand, two lamps, a desk, whiteboard, corkboard, fabric, bookcase, and filing cabinet came to an amazing $126, way under budget. So I blew the rest on a stapler, hole punch, and the nice pens I just love. 😉
I know that I was really blessed to receive several things for free (even the things that I didn’t think I wanted) but if I had blown the budget on a nice presidential desk with all the trimmings, it wouldn’t have mattered how many other things I had received free, I still couldn’t have made it for $150. You have to be willing to see possibilities for things that others may not see (a TV stand can be a printer stand too – there’s no law against it) and buy things where other people may not be willing to (garage sales are my friend) in order to set up a home office on the cheap. I didn’t buy the nicest or the best, but the items certainly do their job, and I think the final product is pretty cute.
Speaking of cute, check out my next blog, where I tell you how I brought all of this together, and placed it neatly into a closet.