Remember when I showed you my nice, newly built desk that’s all pristine and clean and fantastic?
Well. That’s all fine and dandy, but the other side of the room — the side I was too embarrassed to show you — has been looking like this:
Oh, the shame. If the desk side of the room were the pretty face with fresh makeup and whitened teeth, this side would be the armpit.
It’s the unshaven armpit of my office.
It didn’t look like this due to laziness.
Okay, part of it was due to laziness.
But mostly, it’s my indecision that’s the cause of the hold-up once again.
I’ve definitely decided to paint the bookshelves white. I’ve definitely (kind-of-sort-of-I-think) decided to stain the long wall shelves that will go above the long part of the desk a dark-ish color. Although, I’ve since read that pine doesn’t like to stain dark very well, so now I’m considering painting them once again.
I also love this rug and want to have its babies:
“Tapestry” by Company C. See it on my Pinterest page.
I could use something like this to cover up the horribly old and stained carpet in the office, but the more I look at it, I actually kind of want this for my kitchen.
And that doesn’t really matter because it is so far out of any rug budget we’d have if we actually had a rug budget, that I probably can’t afford to even look at it, let alone visualize it in any of my rooms. So if you’re aware of a good knockoff or know how to knockoff any of the multiple online stores that carry it and get away with it, please let me know.
Anyway. The good news is that I’ve at least managed to tackle some of that organizational nightmare that’s going on in that corner. The bad news is that I don’t have time to show you right now because they don’t seem to like it when I show up to work looking like someone who woke up terrified in the middle of the night because her husband’s work pager was going off and now has to deal with the fact that he’s leaving town when there’s a hurricane coming our way.
But that’s another story.
Obviously I’ll need something to keep me busy this weekend, so let me know if you have any more office ideas!
Well it turns out that quiz might have been on to something, because while I’m not an alcoholic per se, I would prefer to sit down and kick back a glass of vino while discussing the latest book I read over perusing the interwebs for office inspiration photos and staring at paint swatches. Which is why it’s been… erm… 4 months since I declared I’d be decorating the office and have done exactly 1 thing: bought a desk.
It’s not that I’m lazy. It’s just that I’m so indecisive, I could probably spend so much time looking at a dinner menu that the table next to me would have sat down, ordered, eaten, enjoyed some after-dinner drinks, smoked a couple of cigars, went home, had sex, and gone to sleep.
I never know what I want! As the style quiz correctly determined, I’m into “Cozy… not oversized… a handcrafted gem.”
Yep. That’s me.
I’ll admit it — I’m not hugely into the all-white/beige/cream trend that seems to have taken over the design blogosphere. I mean, sure it looks gorgeous, but is it really all that practical?
For my lifestyle, NO.
I like warm colors. I like comfortable. I like reading a book in an over-stuffed arm chair with a crocheted blanket thrown over my legs. I don’t love cleaning, I don’t own stacks of design magazines, and I definitely don’t collect little white ceramic animals and vases.
So why the heck did I buy this ultra modern, clean-lined, super white desk?
And more important, why am I painting another one to match it?
I guess it comes down to functionality. I have a very cluttered mind, which, it stands to reason, would result in a very cluttered home office. Therefore I think, when I ordered this desk, that I had a vision of a clean, minimal design, highlighting function, organization, and productivity above all else.
The problem? These all require dark, bold wall colors, and I am not repainting this sucka.
I realize I didn’t clean up any of my junk, including the fugly dog kennel, but here’s how the office looks now:
View right when you walk through the door. See that pull-up bar in the lower right corner? Yeah… I can almost do half a pull-up now. Probably because the pull-up bar lives on the floor. Should I keep this painting? I’m thinking I could pull some colors from it to use in the rest of the room.
Turning left… Yep, that’s my new desk, buried under junk from my trip to IKEA and an old office chair I wasn’t able to sell. See that closet on the right? There’s another one directly across from it. I guess the architects designed it like that so there could be a window between to let more light in the room. Those old computer towers in the lower left corner will be going away. Eventually.
Turning left some more… Wow, that’s embarrassing. Here you will see no less than 3 camera bags sitting on the floor, my blue college trash bin, and a $10 bookshelf filled with… can you tell?… Justin’s Star Wars book collection. I plan for the long desk he built to go on this wall in order to form an “L” shape with the existing desk.
Then, I think I’ll put some open shelving above the long desk with my IKEA file storage boxes, and maybe a bulletin board and/or some other organizational items on the wall in front of the short desk.
And one more turn… For some reason I neglected to take a photo of the wall to the left (or immediately to the right when you walk into the room. It currently contains 2 more cheap-o bookshelves with my books.
So there you have it. Here are the issues I’m willing to address:
Wall Shelves. I’ve already bought the wood for 2 long shelves to go on the wall with the entrance to the room (above photo) above the long desk. Should I stain them or paint them? What color? Remember, below them will be a white desk, and on them will likely be white boxes and magazine folders from IKEA. So white shelves are not an option. I’m all whited out.
Book shelves. It would be a huge pain, but I’m willing to paint these. Should we keep all 3? I like the idea of setting up a “library” corner in the corner of the room you view right when you walk in (right side, first picture). Should I paint them? Should I keep them together? Should they all go on one wall? In the corner? What?!
Lighting/Accessories. I might be able to swing something by way of inexpensive desk lamp or ceiling light, but the budget is pretty tight on this project. Like… nonexistent. Like… I’m kind of at the end of my jobless grace period. So I pretty much have to work with some paint and what we have.
Painting. Should I keep that painting? If so, where should it hang? Should I use it for other colors in the room by way of accessories? Looking through my Pinterest inspiration photos, I’m noticing a trend with a burnt orange color and/or a bold green. Orange is in that painting; green is not. (*I take it back — green IS in the picture! It’s in the leaves of the tree right in the middle.) Here are some of my Pinterest photos:
I love this kitchen from the movie, It’s Complicated. Maybe I could paint the book shelves a rusty green and have the burnt orange as an accent color somewhere??
Another photo with natural, rustic-looking wood has me thinking I should paint the book shelves a crisp white and distress and stain the wall shelves above the desk to look like the desk in the photo above.
This one’s slightly different, but I love that muted blue color, which also happens to be in the painting.
Let me ask you. Did I already screw this up by painting the walls gray? By buying/making white desks? By being an idiot when it comes to design??
Tranquilla.
In retrospect, I probably should have tried to find a great piece from a thrift store and refinished it to get the used-but-loved look I’m pretty sure I like but have never been able to achieve (aside from the puppy teeth marks on my ottoman legs). And I definitely should’ve come up with a design plan before getting started. You think I would’ve learned with the kitchen!
Bottom line?
I need help. And I’m counting on readers like TileTramp and YOU to help me.
So? What should I do? Besides say “screw it” and pour myself a glass of wine at 10 a.m. because it’s just an office? (And that quiz thought I was an alcoholic. Puh-leeze.)
We really haven’t been doing a lot around the house lately.
And, I’m ashamed to admit, the closet (which admittedly had more to do with putting off other things I should have been doing than actually making a closet look nice) isn’t even done yet. But almost.
I promise.
Sort of.
My avoidance of all topics home related is most definitely not because everything is finished. I could share a list of the things we still need to do before we could ever hope to sell this place, but then I’d probably start crying and my tear-soaked keyboard would malfunction and I’d have to add to the list yet another piece of electronic equipment that’s crapped out because it can’t handle being around me and my hormones.
By the way, I love the fact that being a woman allows me to blame all irrational behavior on hormones.
What? You think it was immature to throw my POS cell phone across the room? Well it was the hormones, bitches!
What? You think I made the waiter feel bad because I cried when he told me they’re out of tiramisu? Well don’t blame me – it’s the hormones!
Love it.
Anyway.
Like I was saying, the fact that we haven’t been working on house projects has nothing to do with the fact that we’re done. Far from it. It’s just that with Justin working his butt off to get promoted (and coincidentally inviting me, of all people, to fancy events) and me gallivanting off to exotic places like Costa Rica, Miami, and Nebraska, (okay, they can’t all be winners), we just really haven’t had the time. Or the money. Oh, and my whole quitting my job to “find myself” and make a huge career change thing is actually fairly time consuming too. And I’m talking about writing – not waiting tables.
But I thought you should know that I’ve finally taken another step towards completing the office. That photo you saw of the paint job above is the room in its interim phase. I was just taking a breather before moving on to the next step.
And what is the next step, you might ask?
Organization, organization, organization.
Oh, and I want it to be pretty.
The overall mental plan for the room is to build a new work surface, create a wall of shelving and storage, and paint the existing bookshelves. If I can find a deal, I might replace the ugly fan with a new light fixture. I’m working on a very strict budget here, so the goal is to make this as comfortable and functional of a workspace as I can (since I will mainly be working from home), without spending more money than I’ll be making in a year.
This means we’re getting rid of the two cheap-o desks that were given to us out of pity by another Airman when we moved into our very first shoddy apartment and had only a bed frame with mattress, an old trunk (used as a coffee table), and an entertainment center to our names. (Yes, we knew what was important.)
Seriously. We didn’t even have a couch.
So those old desks will either go on Craigslist or we’ll donate them to some other poor military person just starting out. (Have fun with that, friend! The debt-less road to materialism is a long one.)
The tentative plan in my head is to jerry-rig a new L-shaped desk into a corner of the room. The long branch of the “L” will be constructed using filing cabinets (I will need lots of file storage) and some type of narrow-yet-long table top component. As you can tell, this part is yet-to-be determined.
It looks almost exactly like this desk from West Elm, but at just over $150 including tax and shipping, the Overstock version is less than half the price:
The shallow drawers will be perfect for some pens, a couple of notepads, and some of the electronic-y type computer equipment (DVD drive, external hard drive, etc.) that doesn’t need to stay out all of the time.
Not a bad deal, huh? Although West Elm does have an awesome mirror version of this desk that I think would look pretty damn sweet in the office. But, at $599, it’s just a little out of my budget. And I’m pretty sure it doesn’t come with a maid who will stand next to it all day to wipe off my fingerprints and tell me to get back to work when I distract myself by squeezing pimples and checking for food in my teeth in its reflective surface.
Plus, I hate to think of all the bad luck I’d have when I crack one of the mirrors by throwing my cell phone too hard across the room.
