A charming idea for a home office that could also double as a coffee table or a bench at the foot of the bed is found inside a chest or trunk. With some imagination any vacant spot in your home big enough for a cedar chest can be converted to a home office. With little more than creative thought many pieces of furniture, not normally used for offices or desks, can be converted to a useful work area for personal or business use.  A cedar chest or even a foot locker can easily provide not only sufficient work space but much needed storage space for a mini home office. These enclosed offices are perfect for paying bills, journaling and even crafting without the need for a full office.

A solid wood cedar or hope chest needs only minimal work to transform it to workspace:

1. Inside the wooden chest place a hanging folder file case. These hanging folders and files can not only be used for what they were intended for - file records - but can be used to hold scrap booking or printing paper, notebooks or pads and many other home office supplies.

2. For quick memos you may want to wood glue in a small white board to the inside of the lid.

3. Next to the white board you can affix a pre-fab padded and beribboned French bulletin board to securely display postcards, photos and reminders.

4. Wooden cutlery holders or wooden boxes can be stacked inside to hold pens, pencils, stamps and other office miscellaneous.

5. If your trunk or locker does not have drawers or trays you can use wood glue to attach a strip of molding along each side of the interior, a few inches below the rim. Then you can rest a wooden tray or cutlery holder to be filled with office supplies. These trays can easily slide out of the way to reach the files or boxes below.

6. Don’t forget to place a cushioned lap desk on top, hidden underneath or inside of the chest for easy writing projects.

7. Place a comfy ottoman beside the trunk for level seating.

Now you have turned your well designed and functional Amish chest or trunk into a filing cabinet and storage cubby, a bulletin board for memories old and new, as well as a mini office.

Tags: Amish, Cedar Chest, craft storage, filing cabinet, foot locker, Furniture, home office, Hope Chest, mini office, Ottoman, Storage, wooden chest, workspace

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 16th, 2008 at 11:45 pm and is filed under Cedar Chests & Trunks, DIY Projects, Decorating Ideas, Furniture Uses, Home Office Design, Organization, Storage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.