Brittany Frost: Taking My DIY Skills to Work

Obviously as a florist I get to be creative at work (proof 1, proof 2), but a couple weeks ago I got to be creative about rebuilding, repurposing, and redecorating at our anchor store. This building had been a flower shop for over 50 years and thus had been used and abused. So while Ron, my boss and stepdad, was gone for a sort ski trip. I made some changes (with the help of my whole team). One fixture that was a little worse for the wear was our delivery table. No one still living remembers anything before this table, some drawers barely opened and it last received a fresh coat of paint more that 10 years ago - it was time for retirement.

Before

So we took it out a tore it apart with crow bars! -What every florist dreams of doing at work.

And that's what was underneath ... gross! We needed a table with lots of storage and roughly the same dimensions (12ft L x 4 ft W x 3ft T). I chose four 5ft sink base cabinets in unfinished oak from Lowe's, to put back to back to achieve 10ft L x 4 ft W x 3ft T.

We stained the oak with Kona by Rustoleum, for a deep rich and very forgiving color. And 2 coats of oil-ehanced polyurethane, for protection and easy clean up. The top is 2 separate pieces of ~~MDF (or is it particle bard I can hardly tell the difference)~~ particle board (thanks Jer), with laminate and oak trim stained to match. When the tops are removed all four base cabinets are seperable. The design room looked more like a woodworking shop than a flower shop for the 3 days we worked on this. Basically every surface was covered in plastic and used for staining, sanding, etc. And everyone on the staff helped: delivery drivers would go and pick up materials, designers and office personnel would stain and polyurethane (and paint - I'll show you that in a second). It was fun to work together on a big atypical project and hopefully everyone now has ownership in the work we did and will work to keep it nice in the future.

My husband is so wonderful and joined the team as our carpenter each day after he got off work. He and I put in some long nights to get it done but I really like the way it turned out. Now it looks like a piece of furnitute that has a place and a purpose.

After

And true to form I cannot let one project be enough. I decided that while everything was torn up anyway I might as well update our "break area," which was more like dysfunctional microwave storage in a hall way to the office and broom closet.

Before

Scary right? So we modified a counter top (in matching laminate to the new delivery table), to function as a "break bar" with stools. It is great because someone can actually sit down without being in the way of traffic. The computer counter that it backs up to was a mixture of sweet (sarcasm) 70's style paneling and raw 2x4's so we painted that purple to match accent walls that are other places in the store and to unify this area.