Work

Towards the end of last year, I attended a meeting at work where our Branch Manager was talking about shooshing up an empty office in our building and using it as a new business office for our Sales Reps to genenrate new business as our economy for advertising sales has slowed down since mid last year. Its been tough on the girls and sourcing new business has becoming few and far between.

Anyway, the office that she had in mind was full of junk from our move from our old offices, old desks, cupboards and the old pigeon holes that we had up on the wall at reception at our previous offices.

I opened my flapping lips (as usual) and said "OH Like Pimp My Pigeon Hole!?" and she thought this was a brilliant idea. Before I should say anything she said "OK Gillian Run with It. Get a committee together and come up with something".

Well, I got a very reluctant committee together, as it would mean slotting this project planning in between our already hectic workload. I could see I wasn't going to get much assistance as we talked about things they were keen but when it came to actually doing the stuff - it never materialised.

After a few sleepless nights thinking of what I could do with NO BUDGET. Then... at 2am in the morning I thought of converting the room into a toolshed. And so "The Toolshed" was born. It would be a concept that was different and I could do a lot with. It tied in with our business - home enhancement, home improvement.

It could be designed with things we had lying around in our own toolsheds or garages because I had NO BUDGET for this project.

I came up with a logo in my head and one of our PR ladies (who's an absolute whizz on AppleMac and photoshop), designed this logo for me. It was using our company colours and I could use it throughout the room and on the files and documents that needed to be use in the office.

"Inspiration Station"

The lightbulb poster was also designed as I wanted to put a poster up in one corner to generate "new ideas". This office would not only be used to geneate new busines but to generate new ideas to share with the entire team in order to motivate them to reach their targets.

I proposed this concept to my boss and she loved it. She showed it to our MD who loved it so much and was so impressed by the idea he contributed a small BUDGET towards the room. He gave me R1000. Well, its certainly not much but it would pay for printing of posters and some odds and and bobs to make it nice.

Weeks went by and I got one of our suppliers to donate some cocktail tables and stools for the room. I also started collected things from home: old tools, tin cans, old toys, a bean bag, an old ladder, hard hats...

The Toolshed is a work in progress but we are about 80% finished. Here is some of the pics

This will be the corner where the laptop sits on top of the cocktail table
This is the Ideas Corner with the coloured lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling (the ladder) still needs to come in this corner.

This is the hardhat corner - where I have suspended three colourful hard hats from the ceiling and the bookshelf with the files and the magazing rack with opposition publications

This is the doormat outside the office

This is the Milo Tins that I brough from home and stucks some brick print on them to make them look funky. We are going to use the tins for stationery and office supplies. I lined the old bookshelf with this DC Fix which looks like aluminum - very funky.

Finishing touches need to be made - the bean bag put in, the ladder, the garden trellis which we are going to mount on the far wall to use to hang motivational posters from (as we are not allowed to prestik to the walls) We are only renting the offices so we can't do too much damage...

Will post final pictures next week.