How Cool is That?

Susan wanted her work area pared down, large shelves moved out of the way so she had more room to walk around.  That meant she had a clear wall now and we debated a lot about what to do with it. Blackboard chalk? Too much dark.  A metal sheet for a giant magnetic board? Too expensive and too heavy.  A giant cork bulletin board? Yes.  Oops.  Heavy. Expensive.  Not to mention there would be big holes in the wall if we took it down (Do we know "I've been thinking..." is part of her life and seems to always mean something with tools involved?).  That's a sort of no-no in our apartment building.  Yes, we could do it but...

Browsing around an Office Max store she spotted these foam boards (picture above shows them at Walmart).  Lightweight, and cheap!  It's a thick foam core board with a thin layer of cork.  We bought some wood lattice-like strips (like a yardstick size/thickness) at Lowes and hot-glued them to the backs at the top, middle and bottom of each board.  Then I needed just one screw at the top and bottom of each, attaching through the wood strip for stability.

Then it was off to Ikea to get the table top and Krille roller legs (the legs cost more than the table top!).  This is the third table we've attached these legs to and they are really smooth.  The picture shows her area before she's had a chance to scatter stuff everywhere -- you don't want to see it now.

We will add a 24x30" raised section to the table at the left end, on Ikea Capita legs.  You can barely see them on the right in the second picture, raising up a different top.  This will give her a standing-height work surface on half of the large top. ( In our experience you do not want to use the Ikea adjustable legs, they are just too wobbly.)  If you add a second top area on Capita legs you wind up with all the space under it to put more of your stuff that you never manage to put away.

Here's this guy's answer to the more expensive flat-file cabinets: