An Armoire or Hidden Office?

We've been trying, unsuccessfully, to get rid of a huge armoire for the past month. At first we thought we could get a couple hundred dollars for it by selling it on Craigslist. The only offers we received were people trying to scam us with some kind of money wiring scheme. Next, I tried calling a few donation services only to discover that they no longer pickup furniture. The armoire was a hand-me-down from my parents and has lived in four homes in its life.

Other than it's massive size, there is nothing really wrong with the piece. It just has such a large footprint that our small sun room is constantly in it's shadow, so to speak. So we downsized to this console table and are planning to upgrade to a flat screen TV which we'll mount on the wall above.

Last weekend, Jared's mom suggested converting the armoire from a TV stand into a workspace. Brilliant! My thoughts are to move it into our basement and place it in a corner behind our sofa in an area that has been completely neglected. I could give the entire piece a fresh coat of paint and make some minor tweaks to the inside to turn it from a huge waste of space, to a fabulous workspace! Clearly we aren't the first to have dreamed up this concept...

Here are some similar work spaces:

The Verona Office Armoire from Ballard Designs:

The Eastman Secretary, also at Ballard.

I've even come up with a design plan for this re-purposing project. It includes new hardware, a fabric covered bulletin board to cover the hole from the TV, and lots of fun storage bins and boxes. I would be able to use this space to store scrap booking materials, fabric swatches, magazines, catalogues, you name it. And the best part is that when I'm not working on anything, I can close it up and no one will know about the clutter behind the scenes! WAHOO I can't wait to make the move and get started!

Hidden Office - by coffee22 on Polyvore.com