Total Transformation: The Office

I did a quick painting project on a small bookshelf for my office last night (which I'll show you in a bit), and it got me thinking that I really should fully document that room's renovation in a post.

I started digging through the pictures that we took of the house before and right after we closed, and I honestly had kind of forgotten how much of a total shithole this house was. Seriously, most sane people would have walked in and bolted out the front door. But, luckily, we saw the massive potential in this place and decided to take a chance. But man oh man, it was a complete dump.

The family we bought the house from had owned it for over 50 years. After the mother passed away, the family rented it out. When we went to look at it, there was a family renting it with two small children. I can't even imagine letting a child sleep in this place the way it was. Yes, it was bad.

Be prepared, the next few pictures are not for the faint of heart.

This is the office before closing, when it was a little girl's "bedroom":



The water damage was from years before and the roof had since been replaced. But the room still had corroded wallpaper, paneling on one wall, dirty lace curtains, and generally looked like a crack house.

After closing, when the room had been cleared out and the tenants had moved, it was still a scary sight.



As with the rest of the house, we pulled down the ceilings, walls, and paneling and put up fresh new sheet rock.

Here's the room after it had been sheetrocked and primed:



The transformation was already astounding. Then came the paint, in a cream color that I selected. I forget the exact name now, it was "beach" something. It's a nice color... cheery but not overpowering.



And here's the office now, completely new and without any trace of the prior disgustingness...






It's not so bad spending my 40 hours a week working in here now... :)

Remember that the desk started off as just a simple unfinished wood piece that we finished and customized.



Branden finished it in a dark stain and I found a fun clock knob to add to the front.



Around the same time I also painted an ugly laminate bookcase and added a patterned fabric to the back.





It was a big pain in the butt, involving lots of polyurethane, but I'm really happy with the way it turned out.



I also used the same fabric to cover the bulletin board next to the window and tie everything together.

So that brings me to the project I worked on last night, that you can see a sneak peek of in one of the above photos.

I've had this little bookcase for ages, and back when I was probably 13 or 14 I decided to "enhance" it by adding some gold metallic paint to it...



Since then, I've moved it around with me from apartment to apartment but never did anything else to it. A couple of fresh coats of white paint later, and it looks very different!



It's a nice space to display some things in my office, and pretties up that corner a bit more, which I'm always a fan of.

In case the earlier pictures weren't enough torture for you, here's a view of this side of the office back before we closed and the renters were still using it as a trash heap living here:



...and now...




It's really hard for me to believe that this is the same room, or the same house for that matter, as when we bought the house in June. It's only been seven months!

I hope to do more of these "total transformations" posts for each room in the house, so stay tuned for those!

Couch and office details!

As I hinted to earlier, we got a new couch for the living room. And sold our old couch in a matter of hours for an easy $60, thankyouverymuch. (Branden didn't think it was worth the trouble of trying to sell it and was convinced nobody would want it, so he can eternally suck it while I make off with my winnings. I used the money for groceries for us, but still. I felt victorious anyway.)

Anyway, here's the cranberry couch in its new home.





I picked up some pretty new throw pillows on the cheap! Gotta love a $5.99 price tag. I like the pattern and they're actually a soft almost velvet fabric, so they're nice and comfy.



Before these pillows came into the mix, the burgundy curtains that we already had were clashing big time with the red couch. Once these were added though, it made the color difference not so bad. The curtains aren't ideal, but for now they'll have to stay since curtains are like 50 bagillion dollars. I don't get why they're so expensive. I wish I knew how to sew!

In office news, I covered my ugly cork bulletin board with some leftover fabric from the bookcase project. It actually turned out pretty nice and it's a heck of a lot prettier to have in front of your face all day. Here's the ugly board before:



And after about five minutes with a staple gun:



So easy. Here are some more details of the office, which has really come together. It's not so bad working in here all day!





Working at home full time is definitely an adjustment but having a nice, organized office to work in all day makes it so much easier to stay focused and on top of everything.

The weather the last couple of days has been so hot and sticky, it was like July all over again. Very strange, but it seems we're back to fall today. We got a new patio set for the front porch, which we've been enjoying a lot. Lucy loves hanging out on the porch, watching the neighborhood and putting her nose to the wind.



Soaking up the last rays of summer sunshine!

Office is ready!

This weekend was nonstop. We busted ass and finally finished refinishing (say that three times fast) both my office desk and bookcase, unpacked and filed a bunch of things that needed to be stored in the office, moved in a new couch, moved out the old couch, shampooed the new couch, shampooed the living room and upstairs hallway, got a new patio set for the front porch, and still found time to take a long walk at our favorite wildlife sanctuary. After all that work, I need another weekend.

First, the desk. Branden has been painstakingly staining, varnishing, and waxing this thing to perfection.
Remember, this is what we started with?



Here's what we've got now, after many hours of work:





I love it. This one was definitely Branden's project, and he did such a great job getting it ready for me! What a sweet guy. :)

I picked up a fun little knob for the desk drawer for a reasonable $3.95 at a local decor shop. It reminds me of Alice in Wonderland, which is definitely why I like it. It all came together really well.



Next project was the bookcase. Man, what a pain this was. The surface was made of that really shiny wood veneer, and I just couldn't get anything to stick to it. Let's refresh our memories with what we started with:



Well, here it is now, FINALLY finished!



In retrospect, I think a light sanding before I primed may have helped, but I'm not even positive that it would have made a big difference. After a coat of primer and two coats of paint, the lightest tap would pull all of the paint off, right down to that damn shiny veneer. Out of ideas, I finally used some polyurethane on it, and that helped to seal everything in. The surface isn't indestructible, but it certaily has held up so far so that's a relief.

For the inside panels, I cut two of sheets of poster board to size and then hot glued fabric on to them. Once the panels were in place, I glued them to the inside of the bookcase.



Because the panels fit snugly to begin with, and because the shelves would add even more support, I only needed to glue around the tops and bottoms of the two panels. It was an annoyingly long project, but I'm really pleased with the result. I measured and cut wrong a couple of times, so if you were to tackle a project like this and actually measure right the first time I think it could be relatively painless. Live and learn!

The room is finally ready for me to sit here 40 hours a week. And the timing was right down to the wire, since I start working at home on Wednesday! There's still some more projects planned, like a complete closet upgrade with new shelving and added storage, window treatments, and a bulletin board.

Remember that new couch I mentioned? Here's a sneak peak...



Cranberry! More on that switch later!

Everything and the kitchen sink

It's crunch time around here. I have just over three weeks to get my office in order before I start working from home full time. Prior to a few days ago, the office had been the dumping ground for our still numerous unpacked boxes and things to find homes for. So we've finally gotten down to business on this room.

The color scheme I decided on way back is cream (walls) and chocolate brown, with white and bright green accents. I got my color inspiration from a photo on the back of a paint chip. Don't judge me.

We picked up an unfinished hardwood desk and have been staining and finishing it the past week or so. Here it is before we started working on it:





And here's the desk, in progress, after a couple of coats of ebony stain:



(Notice the piles of boxes still in the corner...)

Branden topped it off with a coat of mahogany to bring in some more brown tones. Now it just needs a few coats of varnish and a sweet decorative knob for the drawer, and it will be ready for my 40 hour work week!

The next office project is painting this bookcase:



I'm going to prime it this weekend, along with the matching filing cabinet that you can see in the very top photo. I'm not sure which color I'll make them yet, but I'm leaning towards white. I want to adhere some decorative paper to the inside part of the bookcase--something graphic in my color scheme--to give it a little extra interest. Hopefully I can find something good!

Moving on from the ongoing office project, my crazy need to organize had me tackling something that has been driving me nuts lately: under the kitchen sink. Here's the chaos I was dealing with:



It was enough to make me pretty much homicidal every time I opened those cabinet doors. "How did it get like this??" I asked myself. So, I picked up some cheap bins at Target for around $5 each and spent some time reorganizing. I know it's a super minor change, but the result makes me so much happier.



Ahhhhhh. So calming.

And yes, I know I'm crazy. But these kinds of things make me happy. So suck it.