It’s Time for Your Dream Office!
How much time do you spend in your home office each day? 1 hour, 3 hours, 6 hours or more? If you spend a lot of time in your home office then you should consider giving it a total re-design. Having a clean and inspiring environment is essential to being healthy and working to your fullest potential.
I will point out some tips, resourced and show you a bunch of cool home offices to get you started on your office re-design. When you are done with your new office you will never want to leave!
How to get Started
1. Research
Check out other peoples office’s, research colors at the paint store and browse office furniture stores and websites so you can get a solid idea of what you want your office to look like.
2. Take measurements and Start Planning
The last thing you want to do is find a cool piece of furniture and then find out it doesn’t fit. So measure your room to see what kind of space you are working with.
3. Prep Work and Painting
Chances are you will need to do some prep work and this could include tasks such as filling holes, removing wallpaper, adding a primer coat of paint to the walls and so on. Once your room is prepped head over to your local paint store to get your paint, rollers, masking tape, brushes, pans and so on so you can paint!
4. Find Your Main Furniture Pieces
Now that your room is painted and ready to go you will need to fill it in with some of the important furniture pieces such as a desk, chair, cabinets and maybe a bookshelf. Feel free to add whatever pieces you want, but cover the basics first and try not to crowd your office.
5. Test Different Layouts
Try moving your furniture pieces around a lot to see what layout will be the most comfortable for you.
6. Accessories
Now its time to accessorize and give your new dream office that final touch. There are lots of great accessories out there such as plants, vases, candles or maybe you already have some cool items to display, but don’t forget less is more!
7. Do Some “Spring Cleaning”
The key to a great office to to keep clutter to a minimum. We all have tons of stuff, but do you really need that garden gnome with a missing arm on your bookshelf? ( Weird example, I know) A lot of people have what I like to call “Pack Rat Syndrome” and this is when they just cant get themselves to throw anything out. A nice solution to this is to have a garage sale, or donate some items to your local Good Will.
8. Organize Your Paperwork and Computer Files
The paperwork can pile up fast now a days and the same goes with computers files, so make sure you take some time to get organized and don’t just make this a one time event.
9. Develop Better Habits
Now that you have a great new office that is clean and organized you will want to keep it that way. You will need to get in the habit of cleaning your office on a regular basis. You will feel much better if everything is clean, organized and well designed!
10. Don’t Forget to Leave
Your new dream office is probably pretty awesome now and you may be working harder and better then ever, but you still need some fresh air. So get out and have some fun!
cool-offices.jpg
Other Useful Tips
1. Try not to eat in your office, you don’t want crumbs in your keyboard!
2. Find some cable organizers to de-clutter your computer area and look into wireless electronics.
3. Open your window once in a while for some fresh air and natural sun light.
4. Get Sirius Satellite Radio or create a big iTunes Playlist so you can listen to your favorite music while working.
5. Get a paper shredder to dispose of important paper work.
6. Buy a white board to write down important tasks or get a notepad.
7. Get some sticky notes and use them as important reminders.
8. Dedicate a spot in your office for your wallet, keys, phone and other important items so you always know where they are.
Tips for Working With a Tight Budget
Don’t worry there are still plenty of ways to create a great office without buying new furniture or electronics.
1. Hit up garage sales, you will be amazed at what you can find. Don’ be afraid to take old furniture and refinish it so it will look brand new.
2. Find some flea markets; similar to garage sales flea markets can be a good place to find great items at low prices.
3. Check classifieds online such as Craiglist. People usually sell stuff for cheap and there is even a free items section where people are just giving stuff away.
4. Watch some shows on HGTV like Design on a Dime for tips on making the most of your design budget.
5. Have your own garage sale to raise money towards your office re-design.
6. Sell your old computers and electronics so you can put money towards your new gear.
7. Save all your change each day in a container and then cash it in after a few months.
8. Bring those soda cans and bottles to the recycling center you would be surprised how much you can make!
Cool Office Furniture and Accessory Stores
Crate and Barrel
CB2
Ikea
The Container Store
A final Note
If you don’t’ feel comfortable tackling this project on your own see if you can find an interior designer with reasonable rates to help you or ask some of your friends for their opinions. It seems like a large project, but with the proper planning, it can be a lot of fun and it will really make a difference in how you feel and how you work while in your new dream office!
Some Cool Offices
Feel free to post about your own plans or share photos of your own office with us!
Showing posts with label CB2. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CB2. Show all posts
Friday, February 15, 2008
Thursday, January 17, 2008
CB2 is Not the Quality of Crate and Barrel
Hello Everyone:
As many of you know I am the President and founder of EZ Furniture Assembly and Interior Innovations, and NYC Handyman INC. I started this companies myself with almost nothing but a few screwdrivers and a passion to succeed. Well, I can't believe we're going on 3 years and I have learned so much about every RTA (Ready To Assemble) company & their products. I have over 500 books related to furniture assembly, interior decorating, handyman tasks, remodeling projects, etc, and have become what many have called an expert in the industry. However, as I have mentioned several times that we basically follow the flow of general contracting in respect to our months of overwhelming appointments to months like now where we have to call our phone just to make sure it's working. Anyway, to date I have seven full-time technicians with a minimum of 5 years direct experience. I spent most of my time the last few years multitasking where I was doing everything from Project Manager, lead technician, Lone Technician, Accountant, and Customer service Rep. However, I dropped the ball in obtaining commercial accounts to keep us working in these dead months. Anyway, that is another story which should be interesting. The title of this story is " CB2 id Not the Quality of Crate and Barrel", so that's what I intend to write about. I think!
Anyway, all of my technicians work on a piece rate where we bid the price and they receive a % of the total. The faster they do the jobs the more money they make, but they are not paid a cent for any call backs that are a result of their workmanship. Thank God I have a great crew who very rarely gets a call back and when they do it is normally either a result of something they did, like put their bowling balls on a lack shelf from Ikea that is only attached to sheetrock and meant to hold only up to 10 Lbs. There are some companies that our company refuses to do and refers them to other assembly services, most are from Target and Walmart. They sell the same name products with a name that escapes me right now, but we have had nothing but trouble from their furniture because it is so cheap and poorly made I would actually advise the customer to return the item and spend the extra $50 bucks at ABC store and get a quality product. These products would come damaged, missing parts, made of the cheapest particle board, and use plastic slides for the drawers which never lined up with the holes or worked correctly. The bottom line was I felt in the beginning that we will do every job no matter the profit as long as we got our name out there and showed the public the quality workmanship we provided. Well, that didn't last long nor did many great technicians because they would be sent to do a job that required the assembly of two computer desks and one dresser, but what would normally take them 3 hours at most was taking that and sometimes more per piece. I had guys getting home three O'clock in the morning after working 17 hours and making only$70.00 with their % so i ended up giving them the entire amount so the company was making nothing. We were losing money!! I made a decision that we would no longer accept any assembly jobs from either target or Walmart except Walmarts outdoor swingsets and playsets that are high quality.
This brings me to the story about CB2. I have always recommended Crate & Barrel and felt that they made a top quality product that would last many moves and whatever else came it's way. They would sometimes use real wood or MDF ( Medium Density Fiberboard ) which many people get confused with " Fake Wood " or particle board, but in reality a good quality MDF can be much better than a solid wood piece for many reasons that I won't get into today, but believe me if you do your homework you will see why. Finally.... about 2 weeks ago we got a call to assemble a CB2 biscuit low dresser which was priced quite high, but you normally get what you pay for. Since it is so slow i decided to do the job myself because I hadn't done any of the CB2 products and secondly I needed the money. So I set the appointment and arrived at the customers home and was shown to the area they wished to have the dressers assembled. Each dresser was made up of two boxes which were heavy as hell which is a good sign of quality MDF. I opened the boxes which were not stapled but glued with a hot glue gun and made my job of opening the boxes pure hell because I couldn't just run the razor knife down the side in fear of scratching the wood. I finally got it opened and separated each piece which had no numbering or marking to identify which was which, but when you have been doing this as long as i have you really don't need them. I finally found the directions, only they were for a biscuit dresser that was not at all the same but they all work on the same concept. So I always start by inserting my cam screws and locks first and then put the puzzle together. This is my method others guys have their own. I am cookin' along and am down to 4 cam locks which is enough to do 2 more pieces but I had 6 left? Hmmmmmmmmm. So as I explained they had given the wrong directions which normally wouldn't matter except the two main pieces had about 20 holes each for cam screws but in reality after trial and error found they only took 8 each. Why might you ask, my guess is that like their competition many of their pieces are versatile and what makes a top to a dresser here might be the wall to an entertainment center elsewhere. After about 2 hours I completed the first unit and was left with extra pieces which is not a good sign, but they were actually doubles of 2 drawer sides that couldn't go anywhere if they wanted to because there was no room on the drawers and no more hardware. I inspected the piece and noticed that every piece had extra holes for cam screws and locks and some dowels. I went ahead and put the second one together with ease because I already finished CB2 101 an hour and a half ago. I pointed out the extra pieces and all the extra parts and the worst in which I forget to tell you, the bottom of the drawers were made out of what Crate and Barrel sometimes uses for a back piece because it holds no weight and is really just seen from the inside with the back against the wall. This is paperboard which is at best 1/8" think which they were kind enough to take to pieces glue them together and use them as the bottom of the drawers. I put my screw gun in as an example of the poor materials used and almost snapped the it. I also forgot to tell you that all of the drawer bottoms were short which showed about 1/16 of an " of peek through space which i recommended my customer's buy either an epoxy of black silicone to match and fill in the space in each drawer. Then they explained that's why it must have been so cheap at CB2 compared to the products at C and B.
My conclusion is this, which might be wrong so don't hold me to it. But it is my belief that CB2 which is a division of C and B is given last years leftovers, returns, damaged furniture and retain the good pieces, and maybe even extra stock and use this material to make CB2 furniture. I mean I see it at Ikea all the time where they use the side panel of a Pax unit in a entertainment center and a ton of other things, but they don't send extra pieces or have a unit with 3 dozen extra holes with the wrong directions. All b.s. aside, if they were able to figure it out and get it together it would take them at least 20 hours, broken up after work and weekends your looking two weeks of all their spare time assembling 2 dressers! That's nuts! C and B has a good idea to recycle and reuse their unsold furniture at a lower price by creating a separate division and utilizing what they already have, but this was not thought out all the way through and even though it is a separate entity everyone associates CB2 with C and B and with just plain out poor thought, workmanship, and respect for their name and product is just terrible for lack of a better word even if the furniture is cheaper, it's junk with their name associated with it. I seriously think it would have been much better if they opened up outlets that sold last years unsold, damaged, or returned furniture at lower prices then the customer would know what they were buying and do their best to separate the weeds from the flowers. But when you pay a nice penny for what you presume to be just a different style of C and B when it's nothing more than recycled leftovers, and returns, that's just wrong!
If you have experienced the same issues as me i would love to hear from you. And if you disagree i want your opinion too! I just simply drew a conclusion on what I saw and used my years of marketing and furniture assembly experience to arrive at my conclusion.
Christopher Purnell
EZ Furniture Assembly & Interior Innovations, LLC
As many of you know I am the President and founder of EZ Furniture Assembly and Interior Innovations, and NYC Handyman INC. I started this companies myself with almost nothing but a few screwdrivers and a passion to succeed. Well, I can't believe we're going on 3 years and I have learned so much about every RTA (Ready To Assemble) company & their products. I have over 500 books related to furniture assembly, interior decorating, handyman tasks, remodeling projects, etc, and have become what many have called an expert in the industry. However, as I have mentioned several times that we basically follow the flow of general contracting in respect to our months of overwhelming appointments to months like now where we have to call our phone just to make sure it's working. Anyway, to date I have seven full-time technicians with a minimum of 5 years direct experience. I spent most of my time the last few years multitasking where I was doing everything from Project Manager, lead technician, Lone Technician, Accountant, and Customer service Rep. However, I dropped the ball in obtaining commercial accounts to keep us working in these dead months. Anyway, that is another story which should be interesting. The title of this story is " CB2 id Not the Quality of Crate and Barrel", so that's what I intend to write about. I think!
Anyway, all of my technicians work on a piece rate where we bid the price and they receive a % of the total. The faster they do the jobs the more money they make, but they are not paid a cent for any call backs that are a result of their workmanship. Thank God I have a great crew who very rarely gets a call back and when they do it is normally either a result of something they did, like put their bowling balls on a lack shelf from Ikea that is only attached to sheetrock and meant to hold only up to 10 Lbs. There are some companies that our company refuses to do and refers them to other assembly services, most are from Target and Walmart. They sell the same name products with a name that escapes me right now, but we have had nothing but trouble from their furniture because it is so cheap and poorly made I would actually advise the customer to return the item and spend the extra $50 bucks at ABC store and get a quality product. These products would come damaged, missing parts, made of the cheapest particle board, and use plastic slides for the drawers which never lined up with the holes or worked correctly. The bottom line was I felt in the beginning that we will do every job no matter the profit as long as we got our name out there and showed the public the quality workmanship we provided. Well, that didn't last long nor did many great technicians because they would be sent to do a job that required the assembly of two computer desks and one dresser, but what would normally take them 3 hours at most was taking that and sometimes more per piece. I had guys getting home three O'clock in the morning after working 17 hours and making only$70.00 with their % so i ended up giving them the entire amount so the company was making nothing. We were losing money!! I made a decision that we would no longer accept any assembly jobs from either target or Walmart except Walmarts outdoor swingsets and playsets that are high quality.
This brings me to the story about CB2. I have always recommended Crate & Barrel and felt that they made a top quality product that would last many moves and whatever else came it's way. They would sometimes use real wood or MDF ( Medium Density Fiberboard ) which many people get confused with " Fake Wood " or particle board, but in reality a good quality MDF can be much better than a solid wood piece for many reasons that I won't get into today, but believe me if you do your homework you will see why. Finally.... about 2 weeks ago we got a call to assemble a CB2 biscuit low dresser which was priced quite high, but you normally get what you pay for. Since it is so slow i decided to do the job myself because I hadn't done any of the CB2 products and secondly I needed the money. So I set the appointment and arrived at the customers home and was shown to the area they wished to have the dressers assembled. Each dresser was made up of two boxes which were heavy as hell which is a good sign of quality MDF. I opened the boxes which were not stapled but glued with a hot glue gun and made my job of opening the boxes pure hell because I couldn't just run the razor knife down the side in fear of scratching the wood. I finally got it opened and separated each piece which had no numbering or marking to identify which was which, but when you have been doing this as long as i have you really don't need them. I finally found the directions, only they were for a biscuit dresser that was not at all the same but they all work on the same concept. So I always start by inserting my cam screws and locks first and then put the puzzle together. This is my method others guys have their own. I am cookin' along and am down to 4 cam locks which is enough to do 2 more pieces but I had 6 left? Hmmmmmmmmm. So as I explained they had given the wrong directions which normally wouldn't matter except the two main pieces had about 20 holes each for cam screws but in reality after trial and error found they only took 8 each. Why might you ask, my guess is that like their competition many of their pieces are versatile and what makes a top to a dresser here might be the wall to an entertainment center elsewhere. After about 2 hours I completed the first unit and was left with extra pieces which is not a good sign, but they were actually doubles of 2 drawer sides that couldn't go anywhere if they wanted to because there was no room on the drawers and no more hardware. I inspected the piece and noticed that every piece had extra holes for cam screws and locks and some dowels. I went ahead and put the second one together with ease because I already finished CB2 101 an hour and a half ago. I pointed out the extra pieces and all the extra parts and the worst in which I forget to tell you, the bottom of the drawers were made out of what Crate and Barrel sometimes uses for a back piece because it holds no weight and is really just seen from the inside with the back against the wall. This is paperboard which is at best 1/8" think which they were kind enough to take to pieces glue them together and use them as the bottom of the drawers. I put my screw gun in as an example of the poor materials used and almost snapped the it. I also forgot to tell you that all of the drawer bottoms were short which showed about 1/16 of an " of peek through space which i recommended my customer's buy either an epoxy of black silicone to match and fill in the space in each drawer. Then they explained that's why it must have been so cheap at CB2 compared to the products at C and B.
My conclusion is this, which might be wrong so don't hold me to it. But it is my belief that CB2 which is a division of C and B is given last years leftovers, returns, damaged furniture and retain the good pieces, and maybe even extra stock and use this material to make CB2 furniture. I mean I see it at Ikea all the time where they use the side panel of a Pax unit in a entertainment center and a ton of other things, but they don't send extra pieces or have a unit with 3 dozen extra holes with the wrong directions. All b.s. aside, if they were able to figure it out and get it together it would take them at least 20 hours, broken up after work and weekends your looking two weeks of all their spare time assembling 2 dressers! That's nuts! C and B has a good idea to recycle and reuse their unsold furniture at a lower price by creating a separate division and utilizing what they already have, but this was not thought out all the way through and even though it is a separate entity everyone associates CB2 with C and B and with just plain out poor thought, workmanship, and respect for their name and product is just terrible for lack of a better word even if the furniture is cheaper, it's junk with their name associated with it. I seriously think it would have been much better if they opened up outlets that sold last years unsold, damaged, or returned furniture at lower prices then the customer would know what they were buying and do their best to separate the weeds from the flowers. But when you pay a nice penny for what you presume to be just a different style of C and B when it's nothing more than recycled leftovers, and returns, that's just wrong!
If you have experienced the same issues as me i would love to hear from you. And if you disagree i want your opinion too! I just simply drew a conclusion on what I saw and used my years of marketing and furniture assembly experience to arrive at my conclusion.
Christopher Purnell
EZ Furniture Assembly & Interior Innovations, LLC
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About Me
- ezassembly
- I am a person who has had a rollercoaster of a life, with more downs than ups. I spent several years in marketing in which I started entry level and left Regional Marketing Director. I was blessed with a little princess and deiced my life needed an over haul so I started EZ Furniture Assembly & Interior Innovations, LLC with no more than a few screwdrivers, a shoebox of past due bills and a passion to succeed at something I found I really enjoy. Today I run NYC's top professional furniture assembly & kitchen installation companies, and am considered an expert in my industry.