The Ikea Linnmon Desk: A Home Workstation Dream

Linnmon desk Adils legs

So it’s no secret, I love to craft. And with my blog and Etsy shop successfully up and running, I find myself working from home more often than ever!

I have always had a home office workstation ever since I can remember. When I was young, it was my place to do homework. I would come home from school every day and sit there until I was finished with my work so I could go play.

When I was in college, it was the cheesy dorm, solid oak wood desk. It sat at the foot of my bed and I sat there to write every paper (and sometimes just to hide from my roommate who sat at her bed 4 feet away). Nonetheless, I spent a significant amount of time there.

When I moved up to San Francisco, my desk was a small, white Ikea desk (that I think was made for children and is now discontinued). I used it as my home base for my sales calls, as my computer docking station, and (sometimes) as my vanity for getting ready for a night out on the town.

We don’t even realize it, but our entire lives we spend a significant amount of time at our home workstations. I only came to this realization when I started Miss Bizi Bee, and my home workstation became my main place of work. I began to pick apart every detail, and wish for things it did not have. I even made myself a custom storage organizer to add to my workspace, and give myself room for my growing collection of craft supplies.

But as time went on, even my little additions weren’t enough. My ultimate fantasy (that was often perpetuated by my husband’s grandiose stories) was having an entire room as my home office. Filled with bin organizers of craft supplies, a large crafting table, and a separate desk for my office affairs. It was the ultimate dream. But alas, it could not be reality. Not only did our house not have enough room (I mean, who has an entire extra room for their craft supplies, especially in the Bay area) BUT I was also on a budget.

I had recently quit my job, and was trying to build a new, tiny business. I couldn’t be spending thousands of dollars to pimp out my office space. Nope. So I went where I always go when I need something reliable, yet affordable: Ikea.

Using some furniture I found at Ikea, as well as a few other pieces from Target and Amazon, I turned my tiny workstation into a dream come true (within reason). It didn’t take up an entire room (so I still had room for a guest bed) but it felt much larger than it every had, and I had much more storage than ever before possible.

How did I create storage (and seemingly more space) in a room that stayed the same size? Simple. Read below for the furniture I chose, why I chose it, and some quick design hacks I used to turn my workstation into a home office dream!

The Ikea Linnmon Desk Top with Adils Legs

linnmon/adils

I had done some research online, and narrowed it down to a few Ikea desks. I went to the store to check them out (on a Friday night, after 6pm of course, to avoid the crazy crowds). I was pretty certain I wanted the Linnmon 59×29.5″ table top. But when I saw the 79×24″ top, I knew that was the one. Let me explain why.

If you have the room, always go with the longer desk. Why? How often do you ever work on the back half of your desk? 99% of the work you do is in the front 3/4 of your desk (less if your desk is deeper). By getting a longer (yet shallower), I was expanding the surface area I would actually be able to work on, while still having the back part of my desk to keep things like my printer, Silhouette Cameo, and sewing machine.

Additionally, I would have more space UNDER the desk for storage. Again, with storage, you don’t want to have rows of boxes. Getting to something you need in the last row is always impossible (and you try to avoid it as long as possible) With the desk being spread out length wise, I had room for wider storage bins (and more of them) without having to stack them one in front of the other. They would all be easily accessible, all the time! Yahoo!

And although the 79″ Linnmon top is double the price of the 59″, I still bought it (for all the reasons mentioned above). It is sleeker (and more versatile) for all home crafting and office needs.

As for the legs, you need 5 for this table (1 for each corner and one for the center of the table). I LOVED the look of the Sjunne legs, but they were $15 each (an extra $75 to add to the Linnmon desk). The Adils legs were only $4 each, so I choose those.

They looked pretty cheap online, but when I attached them to my desk at home, they really looked sleek! I was very pleasantly surprised. And they were super easy to attach. Yahtzee!

Once that was all together I moved on to my storage solution…

Large Floating Shelf – Lack Design

LACK

Now, for the second part of my redesign, I decided I needed storage both ABOVE as well as BELOW my desk (to maximize my space). And to maximize the length of the desk, naturally, I needed a very long shelf above it for storage.

Ikea has these LACK shelves that I absolutely love. I used them in bulk for my living room fireplace makeover. And they come in a variety of sizes. So while I used the 43″ shelves for my living room, I decided to go with the 75″ one for my workstation. It fits almost perfectly over the Linnmon table top. They look like they were made to go together.

However, I don’t have very tall ceilings. If you do, take advantage and stack floating shelves in a pyramid above your desk. Start with the 75″ Lack, then use this 60″ Amazon floating shelf, and finish it off with the 43-48″ Lack. It’s a cool shelf design that will not only give you more storage space, but will add a whole new and modern dimension to your workspace.

I didn’t have that much height, however, so only 2 storage shelf for me! That was ok, because what I did for my storage solutions was brilliant. You can’t find them pre-made anywhere, and they’re a simple DIY that will make your workstation POP!

Printed Storage Boxes

DIY custom boxes DIY storage boxes

Ok you guys, here’s where the fun DIY stuff starts. I needed a few boxes to store stuff in, but I didn’t want something plain white, or kraft, to just BLAH up my space. So here’s what I did. I bought these cardboard boxes from Ikea (but I wish I would have bought these filing boxes from Amazon instead- they’re bigger and cheaper).

Anyway, you get the idea. Get some sturdy cardboard boxes with lids. Then, I got some pretty contact paper that matched the blue hue of the other decor within the room. And just like in my storage organizer tutorial, I covered both the bottoms and the tops of the boxes (separately, of course) with the contact paper.

I also did the same thing for a pencil/pen holder – except I made it from scratch! Yep, a little styrofoam board, glue, and the same contact paper so everything would match. Super cute! Here’s a quick step by step how I did it:

Step 1:

DIY custom boxes DIY custom boxes

  • Measure out how wide/long you want each wall of the box to be, and mark 4 equal size squares/rectangles on your foam board (mine were 5×3.5″
  • Then, use an X-acto knife to cut out each piece.

Step 2:

DIY custom boxes

DIY custom boxes

  • Take your glue gun and glue each piece together at the sides (making perfect side seams).
  • Once the sides are glued together, put it on top of one last piece of foam board, and use your X-acto knife to cut out a piece to fit perfectly on the bottom of your box.
  • Again, put hot glue on the bottom of each side and attach it to the bottom piece of the box. Now, you are read to cover it with your choice of contact paper.
    • And if you’re just covering pre-made cardboard boxes, begin at the next step!

Step 3:

DIY custom boxes DIY custom boxes DIY custom boxes DIY custom boxes DIY custom boxes

  • Place your contact paper on your desk (sticky side up). Then, put one side of your box directly onto the sticky paper. Press firmly down before you roll the box onto the next side – attaching that side to the sticky contact paper. Press firmly down, and repeat for all 4 sides of the box (the bottom does not need to be covered- it will take care of itself later).
  • Once you get to the last side, cut the contact paper to fit (leaving a little extra that you’ll fold over).
  • Finally, use your scissors to cut the contact paper in each corner of the box (both top and bottom). Then, fold the excess contact paper around the bottom of the box, and into the center of the box (covering every side, inside and out).

DIY custom boxes

Super easy, right? I repeated Step 3 for my pre-made cardboard storage boxes. Here’s the BEFORE and AFTER looks:

DIY storage boxes DIY storage boxes

And before I knew it, I had incredibly cute storage boxes to place on top of my long shelf! Woo hoo! Now things were coming together! It was time for my storage for UNDERNEATH the desk.

Storage Solutions- Revamped!

storage sterilite cart

The needs of every home office are totally different. But I REALLY wanted some wide and deep storage for my larger items (ie: scrapbooking paper, padded mailed envelopes, etc). My new boxes were great for the little things, but I needed room for larger items.

And when you want to hide something, where does it usually go? Duh- underneath the bed! So naturally, my large, bulky office items were going to go underneath the desk. But in an organized way (after all, it would be visible). So I decided I needed some longer, deeper drawers and bins to fit that bill.

I went hunting (per usually) and found a couple, inexpensive items that I could dress up to fit the room.

First, was a wide, 3 drawer Sterilite cart. It is only 24″ tall, and the desk is 27″ high, so it as a PERFECT fit for under the desk storage. Yahtzee! The initial one I found was this one. It had blue drawers and would fit in perfectly with the decor in my room. But it was 3 times the price of the clear one. Ugh! I could fix it though…by dressing up the drawers with contact paper just as I had done for my chevron desk organizer. Perfect! One down, one more to go!

sterilite cart

For the last bit of storage, I thought about getting one more Sterlite cart. But then I found this. It’s a 16 gallon white “recycling bin” from Ikea. The Sortera. It has a removable lid, and would be perfect for bulky items that just didn’t fit in drawers! They also had similar ones, that stack, on Amazon. With these, I would be getting more for my money. But I didn’t have THAT much need for storage (and stacking all 3 would be taller than the desk, so they would have to go side by side) so I went with the Sortera instead.

And again, I dressed it up with a little contact paper, just to tie it into the rest of the decor. Hooray! Everything was coming along.

Sortera

My Organization Wall

To really maximize all the pace at my workstation, I needed to utilize the wall behind my desk. After all, not putting anything useful there was such a waste of space, am I right? I decided I needed these few things:

The whiteboard would enable me to take and keep important notes at my disposal. The cork board would enable me to organize miscellaneous papers and receipts that I would normally lose or forget about. And the calendar helps to keep me up to date and on task.

They were each were the exact same size (14×14″) and fit beautifully along the wall behind my desk. It also gave my workspace some much needed dressing up! A bit of flair, so to say. And the desk lamp, well, that one is self explanatory. Everyone needs a little extra light in their workstation. And this one was sleek, didn’t take up a ton of desk space, and had an easy dimmer. LOVE!

Office squares desk lamp with dimmer

And now, one could “technically” call this workspace complete. But not me. No, I needed one last bit of me in this space before I could call it done. So, how did I accomplish this? Well, I decided to add a custom banner to the bottom of my shelf. Adding decor to your workspace not only personalizes it, but makes it much more pleasant to look at when you’re staring at it all day!

Cute Star Banner

To tie everything together (and make my home workstation not stand out like a sore thumb in my guest room) I decided to add a cute bit of flair. The colors of the room were blue (obvious from the contact paper above) grey, white, and brown. So I wanted something to fit in with that color scheme.

I got this brilliant idea from my many friends that had recently had babies. Almost all of them had some sort of banner in their children’s rooms with their names on them. Now don’t get me wrong. I didn’t want  to monogram my office, but I was intrigued by the banner idea. So I went with it.

I had the idea of stars because it was different from the norm, but an idea where I could also incorporate a grey/silver color and have it fit with the room. When all was said and done, I was extremely pleased! Go ahead and judge it for yourself:

Cute, right? And it was completely NO SEW, so it’s really easy for anyone to copy. If you want to make something similar for your office space, here are the steps you’ll need to follow.

Step 1:

DIY star banner

  • You can download the star template I used here. Print the stars out on think cardstock. Then, cut out your cardstock to use as your patterns to trace the stars onto fabric.
  • Take your erasable fabric pen, and trace the stars onto your fabric (making sure your fabric is folded in half do you get a FRONT and BACK for each star you trace). Then, cut them out.
    • I used 3 different patterns of fabric for this, and used 3 stars from each fabric. There is very little fabric used, so you can get the discount fabric squares from the fabric store to use for this project.

Step 2:

DIY star banner DIY star banner

  • Next, take your double sided iron on adhesive tape, and cut it to fit on the edges of the back of the star (place the tape on the wrong side of the fabric).
  • Place the top piece of the star and put it on top of the transfer tape (so that the right side of the fabric is facing you an the wrong side of the fabric is up against the transfer tape), and apply heat and pressure with your iron. It will only take 5 seconds for the transfer tape to take effect.
  • Cut around the edges of your star to remove any excess fabric or adhesive tape. Set aside, and repeat step for the rest of your stars.
    • You’ll need 9 total stars to fit on the 74″ Lack shelf.

Step 3:

DIY star banner DIY star banner DIY star banner

  • Take a small hole punch (mine is 1/16″) and punch 2 holes near the top of each star.
  • Then, take your twine (I had to thread my twine through an embroidery needle to get it through the small holes) and thread it in and out of the holes to string your stars onto the twine.
  • Once all your stars on on your twine, make sure your twine is the length you want it to be, cut it off the roll, and then put a knot at each end.

Voi La! Now all you need to do is hang your banner and you’re all set!

Once I had my banner done, my new home workstation was complete. This was the final result:

linnmon desk

I was in love! I finally had enough space to work without feeling cramped, and all my “stuff” was properly organized. I would say this was a huge success for me! If you want to see the drastic difference, here’s a quick before and after for you:

office linnmon

So if you’re looking to update your home work space, hopefully this post helps to give you insight on a few products, and tips and tricks to make it your own. And if you like mine enough to want to copy it (I’m flattered), here’s a recap of all the things you’ll need to get:

Desk:

Storage:

Wall Decor:

Banner:

Miscellaneous:

 

Comments

  1. says

    Ooo… I’d never heard of the Sjunne legs but I just Googled them and I see them on Amazon and they are so hot. I wonder if IKEA still has them. I might splurge.

    I hadn’t considered the 79″ table. I’m just working on my MacBook, recording voice acting and filming YouTube.com/joshrachlis videos. I’ll also have a drawing table, and I guess my scanner, for when I draw on paper. I wonder if I’ll need a desk that long. It’s going in the spare bedroom that I’m turning into a home studio. (Which has been my dream too!)

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