Hacking Elfa Shelves for My Basement Office Nook

I finally made progress in my basement office nook.  Once again I turned to my favorite storage solution for a rental – hacking Elfa shelves to create streamlined storage that easily blends into the decor and saves space.

The shelves are hung in my basement office, which is really just a corner of my basement rec room.  But the shelves, along with the 6-foot hairpin leg desk I built, create a defined office space.

I painted the shelves white to keep things simple, because the ceiling is low in the basement.  I planned for three shelves because I thought I had a lot of supplies and papers to store. Now that they’re loaded with my favorite books and office supplies, I am surprised by how much empty space there is.  This is not a bad thing, though.

We don’t have decorative shelves anywhere else in the house – so it’s nice to finally have a place to display a lot of little items that mean something to me.  A lot of the containers hold note cards and stationery.  I try to surprise people with real mail regularly.

Do you ever find yourself slumping your neck over when staring at your computer?  That’s why I have the bottom shelf holding my monitor – to make it higher up for good posture.

The best part of this project was hanging up my painting of Charlie.  She inspired me to start this journey with Janery, so it’s fitting that she looks over me as I work.  Isn’t the painting fabulous?  Kim at Yellow Brick Home does the most amazing pet portraits.

Shelf details
What did I mean by hacking Elfa shelves?  I painted and sealed “select pine”  1×8  boards from the hardware store for the shelves, but they’re hung on the Elfa easy hang system from the Container Store.  It’s the same approach I took in the nursery, and you can find a detailed tutorial here.  As a renter I splurge on the Elfa shelf system because it only requires holes in the very top of the wall, and the whole system hangs off of the top rail.  You can change things up easily without hurting the walls more.

There’s a few more details I’d like to complete in order to call my office “finished.”  I need to find a rug, a desk chair with good back support, and I definitely need to cover the ugly window that leads to nowhere.

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