a girl needs her space, part deux.

Back in the bitty apartment, you might remember that I created a little 12 inch by 24 inch niche that I generously named my "workspace" (click here if your memory is foggy). It definitely worked for the space we had, but let's be honest, it was rather pitiful.

Now that we're in the new house and we have a bit more space to spread out, I set my sights on a new cubby hole for my workspace, albeit a bigger one. Right after we moved, I threw all of my office stuff into a black armoire that we placed in the corner of our den.

The good news was all of my stuff fit into one space comfortably and neatly, the bad news: it was terribly ugly and cave-like. Tragical. I had several ideas for brightening up the space, however. I thought about stenciling the back "walls" of the armoire in a bright, geometric print or "upholstering" the walls with fabric, but I couldn't find a fabric that I loved and I wasn't ready to take the plunge and order a stencil.

Y'all. PTL I didn't jump the gun and took my time finding the perfect fit for this projecto, because look what jumped into my buggy while I was at HomeGoods the other day:

That's right, a vinyl tablecloth. Translation: 8 yards of printed material in a fabulously classic color combo and geometric pattern...all for 4 dollars and 99 cents. You can't even find fabric for that price PER YARD and a stencil that would take hours and hours to apply is 8 times that, at best! I felt almost guilty about grabbing this up! Almost.

After emptying out my little armoire of all of my office goods, I began applying a bit of hot glue to the edge of the tablecloth and affixing the tablecloth to the corners of the walls.

After gluing the tablecloth to the top and bottom corners of the walls, I then trimmed off the excess material with a razor blade to reveal a much happier workspace interior!

I then used the remaining pieces of the tablecloth to wrap the edges of my bottom shelves and the drawer:

In order to fit all of my electronics (computer, printer, and Silhouette) and their endless cords, I needed to drill a couple of holes: one in the surface of the main "desk" area that would lead to a bottom shelf housing my Silhouette...

...and one in the back wall of the armoire for all of the power cords that would lead to a power strip behind the armoire.

I also fed a small extension cord through that I connected to my computer's charger so that I wouldn't have to go fishing for my power cord every time I needed to take my computer somewhere.

The desk and shelves were ready to be loaded up!

My final step was to paint the shelf that would be placed right above my desk area for some added storage. I decided on a high-gloss white that would coordinate with the tablecloth:

After allowing the shelf to dry for 24 hours, I installed the shelf...

...and loaded it up, too!

Talk about a happier home for my writing utensils...

...and binders!

Oh how I love, love, love my new workspace!

And you thought it was just an innocent ol' armoire...