Office reveal... for now.

Up until the past month or so, my office/ guest area has been a big old hot mess. I used the room occasionally to do some sewing, and we kept the laptop in there about half the time. The furniture was all "make-do" furniture, but really nothing that I would have chosen for myself. For example, we were using the center part of a giant 1980's wall unit (with VHS storage) as a laptop desk. it was huge and incredibly non-functional and messy.

As I've recently mentioned, about a month ago I found out that we're staying in Dallas until at least July of 2014. Since we love this little house, and we hate moving, I decided that we would no longer just make do with furniture that didn't make any sense... we needed to make the space ours and make it useful.

Here's the sorry excuse for a work area I had before:

That semi-nice looking desk was actually a crappy piece from Bombay outlet about 10 years ago that was way past its prime. I had already frankensteined some giant bolts into one of the legs to keep it from falling over, and it still had to lean in a corner in order to really be at all sturdy. We were also seriously lacking in storage, as evidenced by the piles and bags that are evident underneath our old desk. not pretty.

And our new work area:

we can spread out. we can work side by side! we have room for all our books, my yarn, Ethan's leather samples, and the occasional Lego motorcycle. The desks and bookcases are from the Expedit line from Ikea. We were originally going to get one large 5x5 unit behemoth, but they have been out of stock all over the country for about a month. So we decided on 2 2x4's stacked with 2 2x2's. I think I like this better in the long run, and it will be more versatile whenever we DO move out of this house, and as our family grows.
The chairs are probably my favorite part of the room. They're the Pollock Executive Chairs that I got for $19.19 a piece from Garland Thrift.


Isn't my little sterling silver toast-rack-turned-mail-holder cute? This was from Salvation army one fateful morning when I got a TON of awesome stuff, and then wondered if I was maybe becoming a hoarder.

I have already shown this picture before, but why not show it again? this is the thrifted bench and mirror that I made over. This wall is where the behemoth wall unit used to sit and do absolutely nothing.


on to the bed area, which is still a work in progress.

this was the daybed before. It was okay-looking in this picture, but in reality, it only looked acceptable as long as no one sat on it. The cover would constantly shift forward, and it was too short, so there were about 6 inches of ugly exposed trundle bed at the bottom of it. Also, I was sick and tired of all the beige.


This is my for-now solution. I took a Fjellse bed and sawed off the headboard to make it into a platform daybed.

I need to figure out what type of fabric I want to use to upholster the frame and make a matching mattress cover and pillow covers, but in the mean time I'm using just plain old cheapo sheets.

In my mind, it's going to end up looking something like this:

but with back pillows. Am I crazy? possibly. So crazy it just might work.

This room makeover has completely changed where we spend our time in this house. The room used to be a combination of storage area and wasted space, and now we use the room almost as much as we use our living room. Great for a morning cup of coffee, a nap (I hate napping in my actual bed for some reason), or working.