The Office: Reality vs. Goals

Our office is not done yet, but it has come a long way since the last time we showed you our progress! Since the room isn’t even close to being finished, I’ll show you photos of what it looks like right now and discuss our goals for each space.

Current Reality: My Workspace

FYI: The teal on the walls is a lot more teal-ish with more green in it than what is shown in these photos. The light is from IKEA and we recently painted the ceiling a light gray (hard to see here), much better than the ugly builder white that was there before.

Goals for this space:

• I need to start working on the yellow office chair very soon – we just finally found a good place for our sewing machine, so I’ll set that up and get started re-teaching myself to sew before tackling the office chair.
• See that blank wall on the right side? I want to use two of our frames and put a cork board in them and cover them with fabric. (Similar to what Amber did for her craft room) I’m not sure whether we’ll go with a fun patterned fabric or use a simple cloth and paint gold stripes on them like in this photo from Lonny:

• The L glass desk. I’ve had this glass desk (bought from Office Max, I think) since my college days. Blah. Someday, when our garage is cleared out a bit more, we’ll find a wooden desk on Craig’s List (hopefully free! so many free desks are posted on there every day) with lots of storage. It won’t be a L shape, so we’ll have more space for…
• A little cute sofa/daybed that pulls out into a bed for guests. It’ll be under the bulletin board. I really like this one from CB2, but we’ll see.

Current Reality: The Back Wall

Argh, I’m still struggling to take photos when the sun shines through the window. This room gets really bright during the day, so I’m grateful to these cute birch tree curtains from IKEA that filters out a lot of the light. Perhaps I should try taking photos in the early morning…? Whatever, I’ll try again later.

See our honeymoon map hanging proudly? It’ll be moved down just a tad bit to make room for our cute yellow clock. Not much else to do in this space, except…

Goals for this space:

• Finding a rug that goes well with the curtains, but that brings in color. I think a gray/white/black rug would be easy, but I want more color. I’m considering this rug, in citron from West Elm.

• And of course, the shelves on the right need a lot of organizing and binders and etc. We’ll get on that soon… I’m even thinking about spray-painting our mismatched binders WHITE. Dumb or genius? Not sure yet.

Current Reality: The Closet Bookshelves

The shelves are up! But still not done yet. Sigh… We had to stop our progress this summer to load it all up so we could clear up space for our baby shower. Now we need to unload this again and continue work… But we’re focusing on the nursery for now, so this will have to wait. Again.

Goals for this space:

• Obviously, finish all the shelves. We’re done with the front shelves, now we need to work on the side (on the right) shelves. We will need to add brackets as well.
• Buy trim and attach it to the front of the shelves to make it pretty.
• Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of touch-ups!
• I want a cute, cool light in there. Right now, all that’s there is a big bulb.
• I know it will be GREAT once it’s done! Just can’t wait…

Current Reality: The Left Wall

The art is from Hobby Lobby and… that’s it. Oh, and do you like how we left the smoke alarm hanging? Very cool. We put the screws in a ziplock bag when we painted the ceiling recently and put it in a safe place. Too safe of a place, obviously, since we can’t find that darned ziplock bag.

Goals for this space:

• There’s not much to do, since it’s our “walk-through” space. But I want to do something to jazz up that art. I want to add a little yellow in there. I’m thinking about painting the twigs yellow or adding a yellow mat, or SOMETHING.
• And maybe something above the door. I love how Kim and Scott of Yellow Brick House puts art right above their doors, like so:

Current Reality: A Few Close-ups Just Because

These are photos of my favorite spots in the office.

The owl was picked up by my brother and his wife in Bolivia and the vintage Art book was grabbed (for free!) from the school library. I love the book because its bright and happy and reminds me of my mom.

See the magnets? We made them a long time ago with the caps of one of our favorite beers, Stella Artois. Ah, beer… Cold beer on a hot day… One month-ish left!

I love this little thing that we got from Z Gallerie and use as a pen/pencil holder. Although I do have to say that we need to get prettier pens/pencils…

And my constant companion while I work:

She’s cute, but not when she’s walking right in front of the laptop and begging for neck scratches. Lady, I’m working here!

Speaking of work, I’d better get my butt back up there and earn my keep.