As many of you know, DumpaDay.com is owned and run by my wife and I. My wife however, also owns and operates her own recipe website, PictureTheRecipe.com. On her site she creates amazing recipes as well as takes all her own photos and even shoots her own Youtube videos of her recipes. Her office that she uses has been in desperate need of a makeover since she started working in it. It was carpeted, which isn’t the ideal flooring for cooking and taking food photos. Also my wife is pregnant and sitting for hours at a time working on the computer isn’t good for her. So we decided to just do a complete remodel of her office and change everything in it that she’s been wanting to change for a long time. As well as get her a desk that she could sit at, as well as stand at if she wanted. So that’s what we did. This was the way her office was before the remodel. As you can see, the carpet was old and had some food stains on it. Her desk, while functional, wasn’t great for her to sit at for hours. And the table where she’d take her photos and shoot the videos didn’t have a lot of room around it. Getting to the printer, or her background boards wasn’t easy. These were the things we are hoping to change.



First, we started by building the shelving system we wanted to go around the new stand up desk.

Next, we ripped out the old carpet, laid down a thin layer of foam and then put in the new flooring. It all went really quickly actually. It was a simple flooring and it all just snapped into place.



After the flooring was in we started bringing in the shelving. The thing with her new shelving system and standing desk was it wasn’t an “L” shaped desk. It would only take up one wall, and not two walls like her old desk. Which really opened up the room. And since the shelf was from floor to ceiling, it gave her almost double the shelf space. And the big window, which she uses for the natural light for her photos was now completely open.

Once we had everything moved in, it was just a matter of adding a few details of things to make her office easy to work in, and easy to clean up.



Here you can see her desk go from a sitting desk to a standing desk. She’ll work for an hour or so sitting down, and then take a break from sitting by simply pushing a button to raise the desk and then she’ll stand until she gets tired. All while never having to take a break from her work.



When we put her table back in the room, we didn’t put it in front of her big window. Instead we put it on the opposite wall. She does her cooking there. As you can see it’s closer to the closet full of all her dishes. For her final photos, she has another small table on wheels that sits just under the big table, that she can wheel out and sit next to the large window for her natural lighting. By doing it this way, it really keeps the room more open.

We also had some extra wall space in which to hang all of her backgrounds for her photos. She used to just lean them against the wall, however over time, they would bow, or bend making them difficult to use. So now we hang them, making it so they stay straight.


Lastly, she wanted to be able to grow her fresh herbs year round. And now that her large window was open, we thought it would be fun to build a quick little cart on wheels that was skinny enough to not really take up much room, yet would be able to hold some of her favorite herbs she uses often. After digging around in the shop we found some scrap wood and built the cart.


Here are some of the photos and recipes that she’s created.

Click Here For Complete Recipe

Click Here For Complete Recipe

Click Here For Complete Recipe

Click Here For Complete Recipe
She’s now been using the office for a couple of weeks and absolutely loves it. Everything that she uses daily is at her fingertips. She doesn’t get sore from sitting for hours on end at her desk, and most importantly, everything has its place. Which makes keep it clean and functional is very simple. Well, that’s it. Thank you for checking out our project. We really enjoyed it. If you are interested in the standing desk you can click the link below to see the one we bought. This isn’t a referral link, we haven’t been paid at all, or given anything in return for promoting this desk. We just really like it and thought others might as well.
Click here to check out the Standing Desk