Home Office Project… Time suck. Potential for death…

Last winter (yes winter) I got inspiration for our home office. The objective was to hide the gun safe that had overtaken the physical and visual space in my once super-cute shaped room.

But, as par usual, building a cabinet around said gun safe wouldn’t do.

Oh no.

I needed this…

Thanks again Pinterest for making regular life suck.

Really though... I was doing this for Justin. I mean – wife willingly plans a rustic office space complete with antler chandelier??? Score one for Justin.

I wanted the chandelier, I wanted the barnwood ceiling, I wanted it all.

So after the holidays and some research we started our project. I figured it’d take us some time to get it done – we'd be done by March tops.

Step 1: Secure the Ceiling.

This involved attaching particle boards to the ceiling that we’d eventually nail the barn wood to so that we wouldn’t have to worry about hitting a stud each time.

I’ve mentally blocked out this step because significant cussing and ranting was involved. So… pretty much my advice is to ensure there’s plenty of beer in the house during this step.

Step 2: – The Barn wood.

…Well I couldn’t afford that. I mean really, of all the abandoned falling down barns in Texas and places wanted $1,000+ for my little project?? (And if you read this and write me later that you could have found it for me for way cheaper or for free I will punch you in the face. Not. Kidding.)

Ok, I could still get my rustic look with pallet wood… maybe not as historic or fancy to call it barn wood but it’d do.

...Until several places I went to wanted to charge me $15/pallet…

Apparently I was wearing my “Rockafeller” outfit when researching this project. That and I blame Pinterest for driving up the interest/price in pallets.

Ok… so I’ll have to really fake this.

Yes… you are looking at fence pickets...

Painted grey, white-washed, and later glazed… sorry no step-by-step pictures because I was likely covered in paint.

FINALLY, Step 3: Finishing this sucker.

Justin and I got the first row down pretty quickly. To date we were behind schedule because I had to “make” my own barn wood but I was certain this was going to go fast.

Then on the 4th row… 

Justin fell off the ladder…

I focused on trying to catch him. He, thankfully, focused on throwing the nail gun that was directly headed for my skull… I mean really… I can’t go out with a story of “death by home-improvement project.”

We called done for the day week and both shakily grabbed a beer while reflecting on our almost disastrous moment.

After our nerves had calmed we did the project little by little and we FINALLY finished!

… 6 months after we started.

We still have touch-ups to do… then adding crown molding to really finish it off. I expect to be done just in time for our theoretical kids to go off to college.

Oh and the safe is still sucking up the physical/visual room space.