Bribery at Its Finest

Some of you may know my husband, Devon, though most of you probably don’t. The background information you need on him for this story is that his love language is “acts of service.” You also need to know that he downright hated my day job.

I worked for nine years at a daycare center. I have a teaching degree and being there with my daughter fit right into what I needed from a job, until it didn’t. The pandemic changed things and the hours/requirements of the job started to take a toll on myself, my daughter, and (most of all) my husband. In his words, “You shouldn’t leave the house at 6:30am and get home at 7:00pm.” He began sorting through things at his job so he could get me home full-time.

One night at the beginning of fall last year, I was putting our daughter to bed and browsing Pinterest. I saw a built-in desk and I snapped a quick screenshot to send to Devon. I asked him if I could put something like that in our front room as a workspace for my shop stuff. I was expecting him to laugh it off because I never thought he’d say yes to such an endeavor, so imagine my surprise when the text I got back was “Yeah, sure, but you have to quit your job first.”

Of course I started planning immediately what I wanted this desk to look like because I was afraid he was going to change his mind. The only thing that really meant was that I was browsing Pinterest with more direct intent because I thought that there was no way I was quitting soon. Devon had other plans.

Once my husband has an idea in his head, it happens. He simply cannot wait. I’ve gotten birthday presents two months early. He arranged for my family to be in town while he proposed so I could celebrate with them, but Amanda wasn’t able to make it because he got the ring early and couldn’t wait for the weekend she was able to drive up. We bought our first house because he woke up one morning and said we were applying for a loan. It’s common knowledge in our family that if Devon has thought of something, buckle up because it’s happening, so I shouldn’t have been surprised at how this played out.

Devon, Amanda, and my parents joined forces in October to gift me my desk for my birthday. I was told in September because Devon knew I had a vision of what I wanted it to look like, so he told me I had to plan things out and get it ready for when people came to our house to celebrate. That left me three weeks. Ready to follow along?

Step One: Plan, Budget, Buy Materials

The planning was already done, it was just a matter of making sure that anything I purchased fit into the budget that I was given. That was tricky, not because of the budget but because anything I tried to find was the wrong size or not able to be delivered to the house. Here’s where I started:

I wanted shelves at the top, and that part was the easiest. I got three of the Ikea BILLY Bookcases in white. I wanted the shelves to be open at the back so I left the backing off. I also didn’t put on the bottom parts of the shelves, because I wanted to be able to utilize as much of the desk space as possible.

I also got kitchen cabinets from Lowes. They showed up early and took up a large amount of space in my garage for a week and a half before we actually got them installed. Oops.

The tricky part was finding something that I wanted to use for the actual desk surface itself. Ikea has plenty of countertop options that fit the bill in terms of space - I needed something to cover 96 inches of space and their surfaces are 98 inches. Getting it to the house was the tricky part - both of the options I originally chose were not able to be delivered. There’s no way an over 8 foot countertop was fitting in my CR-V. My “aha” moment came when I realized that I was searching for a white countertop without a guarantee that it would be the same white as the paint I’d worked so hard to match (more on that in step two). After that realization, it took me a grand total of five minutes to decide on this countertop that had enough fake-marble accent to distinguish between it and my paint color while still giving the clean look I was going for.

Step Two: Paint, Paint, Paint

I didn’t think matching paint would be so difficult! I wanted an exact match to the Ikea white. If you do a quick Google search for “paint match to Ikea white” you find a bunch of articles like “try this color to get close to Ikea white!'“ or “5 colors that almost match Ikea white!” but I’m too much of a perfectionist for that. I needed my paint to match completely. I finally found someone that posted a photo of the formula that Home Depot paint-matched for them. I saved that sucker and walked into Home Depot with it and a very patient friend that had been there with me twice already. The guy at the counter said that I made his job easier by simply showing him that formula, so if you’re trying to get Ikea white paint, take this photo with you!

Also, we didn’t sand the cabinets before we painted them. It gave them a rougher look and absorbed more of the paint. I don’t mind it at all, especially because I got to be lazy and not sand things, but if that isn’t your thing, sand your cabinets!

I decided at the last minute that I wanted to paint an accent wall behind the built-in desk, so I grabbed a can of “Black Magic” and painted three days before we were set to put up the desk. That’s also how I found out that I have textured walls and I needed more paint to cover it all (that was fun …).

Step Three: Cross my Fingers

There were a few reasons my family was coming to my house. One was to celebrate birthdays (we have five birthdays within a month of each other, mine included). Another was for a craft show for the shop. It was the first one that Amanda got to do with me, but it also meant that I wasn’t going to be in the house while Devon, Amanda’s boyfriend, and our dad put up this built-in desk. To say I was nervous was an understatement.

I wrote everything out as detailed as possible (even though Devon said the night before “I know what you want, you don’t have to be extra”). Our mom was staying home to watch my daughter, so I set her on “please make sure they put the shelves up at a ninety-degree angle” duty - since I hadn’t put the bottoms on, they were a little rickety until they got bolted to the wall.

It was done before we got back, there were no injuries reported, and my shelves were perfectly level.

Step Four: Decorate!

By far the most fun part of my built-in desk was putting everything away and adding my new decor to it. There’s so much storage in this thing and it’s better than I could have imagined. I mean, look at it!

By the way, when all was said and done, I asked Devon why he decided to gift me the desk even though I hadn’t quit my job. His answer? “Now you have the desk so you can quit. See what I did there?” I turned in my notice two weeks later. And that’s the story of how my husband bribed me into quitting my day job.