New Office

Day #7

We decided to turn our formal dining room into an office once we had our beautiful new big farm table that my dad made for the kitchen.

If needed, we will add a card table to accommodate more people.

So here is our dining room when we used it as an actual dining room:

The paint was called Sea Urchin green. I’m not sure why I didn’t move on when I saw that the paint chip I had
selected was called Sea Urchin. Yet I did. And then slapped it on the walls of my dining room. 

It took me awhile to find a picture of our dining room. I had to dig. This is Ellie’s ice skating theme birthday party three years ago.

While we were deep in our house construction project, the dining room became our kitchen.

I think this picture is blurry because 1) I was coughing from all the construction dust.
2) I was shivering because it was 20 degrees in the house.
3) I was crying because of all of the above.

It felt like we lived like this FOREVER, yet it seems like a lifetime ago.

Now this room is happily completely different as our office:

My dad brought over a desk that used to belong to his grandfather. So that makes it my great-grandfather’s desk.

My brother has had it in his family room for the last several years.

It weighs a ton.

Check out the panels!

It has so many nice, deep drawers.

I use one just for washi tape.

The girls BOTH can sit at this desk at the same time and do homework, which is what we wanted.

I don’t like having to move books to set the table for dinner.

I was going to have my dad build some shelves on the two walls flanking the window behind the desk when he was here but I decided to live with the space for awhile to see if I even need them.

So far, I don’t think we do.

I got this big bulletin board piece from friends years ago who wanted us to sell it at our yard sale. It’s such a solid piece, I just couldn’t sell it and asked to keep it.

I’ve painted it loads of times over the years. It’s been black, cream (I think), light blue and now white.

I’ve painted the cork with stripes, 

covered it in toille, 

chicken print material 

(I know, WHY?), 

drop cloth 

and now burlap.

I didn’t even hot glue it this time, just folded the burlap and tacked it on with gold thumb tacks.

I love how it turned out!

I’ve had fun playing around with it.

See those invitations tacked up? We have TWO weddings to attend this month! We haven’t been to a wedding in YEARS! So excited!

There’s the Chairs from the Curb sign Julie made me, which I LOVE!

This is how it looks today:

I painted a little wooden tray table white to keep my laptop charged and out of the way so the desk stays nice and clear for homework time.

I like where I moved the Chairs from the Curb sign--underneath an actual picture of a chair.

To the left (in the picture below) is what used to be the inside of a storm door we had on the front of the house when we moved in.

We went away to Fripp Island some 10 years ago and came back to find our storm door in the middle of our front yard.

The frame was rotten and a big wind just ripped it right off the house. Didn’t break a single pane of glass!

It was brown and I painted it black and never really knew what to do with it.

It sat in the basement for years.

I saw on Pinterest that someone had turned an old window into a message board and that gave me an idea.

So I painted the door with some turquoise chalk paint I found at Wal-Mart, of all places, 

propped the door against the wall,

attached a metal container of dry erase markers to a hook on the door with twine 

and we have a message board.

I decided to bring upstairs the piece my dad made us for our TV in the basement for our desk computer and printer. All the holes in the back of the shelf are perfect for the computer cords.

All one zillion of them.

This piece had been black.

It took SO MANY COATS of chalk paint to cover it even though chalk paint touts itself as the paint you don’t have to prime first to use.

Not in this case.

See how inconsistently it went on in the picture below?

And this was after a few coats!

I decided to use a dark wax to distress the piece and try to pass off the poorly covered parts as “distressed”.

Time was just not on my side because I needed to get the 

computer and printer set back up for homework time.

Or I would’ve just spray painted the whole thing.

An old soda crate houses scissors and markers, pencils and pens.

The metal container to the right with the 4 painted on it holds extra computer paper.

My friend loved it so much, my dad made her a bookshelf for her office!

Here is my yard sale office chair.

I love this chair. 

I’ve painted it several times too. It’s been cream and turquoise.

I spray painted it white this time and recovered the seat with burlap.

It’s very comfy.

I knew I wanted to reuse the stick letters I made from sticks in my backyard that used to hang in our old kitchen.

I just didn’t know where.

I like it here.

Might as well have a good sense of humor 

about homework, right?

We got a new, bigger, more neutral rug for this space. McDaniel was running an errand for us at Bed, Bath and Beyond when she saw this deeply discounted rug. I couldn’t pass up such a good deal and told her to get it.

We all kind of forgot McDaniel was alone, in a dress and driving a sedan rather than one of our SUVs.

Did I mention it was like 104 degrees?

Like a ROCK STAR, she heaved the rug roll onto her shoulder and walked out of the store and down the sidewalk to where she parked a GOOD DISTANCE AWAY.

A few men actually said to her,

“Oh, let me get out of your way.”

Rather than,

“Hey, can I help you?”

Or,

“Let me carry that for you.”

The only thing I don’t like about the new office is the lighting. The new ceiling light is too dim and it causes a strain on the girls' eyes at night.

All the light seems to shoot up instead of down into the room.

Now that it’s getting darker earlier and earlier [sad sigh] we need to decide if we are having can lights installed in the ceiling or just getting a bigger, brighter light fixture.

What do you think?