office updates

One of the rooms that I’ve been scrambling to finish up recently is our home office.  When my sewing goods got kicked out of the second bedroom to make room for Rico, I decided that a great place for my frequently-used supplies would be the office.  I do most of my sewing in the adjoining living room anyways, so it’s much more convenient to store supplies there than upstairs.  (Here’s where I note that my husband is great for putting up with the large table, sewing machine, & ironing board that have been sitting in the living room for the past 4 months… and he’s even better for not getting annoyed that he has to watch TV over the noise of the sewing machine).

The last pictures of the office that I shared were almost two years ago (whoa), and since then I’ve slowly changed up some things – adding a bigger desk that I found FREE! and refinished, finally finishing up an old desk chair to go with it, recovering Jason’s grandma’s chair & adding a lamp near it to create a reading nook.  More recently, we’ve rearranged furniture, hung some new pictures, and replaced the giant dog kennel with a smaller one (because the big dog preferred the small kennel anyways).

Here’s the before-we-touched-it:

And the two-years-ago-just-moved-in-and-trying-to-figure-out-where-everything-fits:

And today (or actually, yesterday afternoon):

(yes, that’s still a quote from Christmas on the chalkboard… suppose I could change that soon… and the basket under the card catalog holds fabric for my latest sewing projects – notice the abundance of green & yellow fabrics for the nursery…)

Positioning the desk in front of the window makes me really happy because I can stare at Jezzie catching critters and sunbathing outside while I’m working, blogging, or paying bills.  I think some curtains are in order, though, and I’ve already purchased cheap white sheers from Ikea.  I’d like to make & hang cornices over them, probably in navy to tie in some of the navy on the chair (my current debate: plain or patterned fabric on the cornices? any thoughts?).

I’d also love a desk lamp or other source of light in this room since the overhead fan does absolutely nothing to illuminate this space at night.  In fact, it was nearly impossible to do any work in here at night before we added the little lamp on the bookshelves.

I’m trying to come up with an estimated cost of what we’ve paid for things in this room (not counting things we bought when we lived elsewhere), mostly because I’m curious about where our money goes.  Here’s what I’ve got:

• Paint (for walls): $75
• Bookshelves: $100
• Desk: $30
• Desk chair: $19
• Reading chair: $20
• Lamp: $30
• Smaller dog kennel: $30
• Card catalog: $22
• White sheers (yet to be hung using hardware from the previous owners): $30
• Total: $356… not bad for a 2-year project that has resulted in a much more functional (and pretty!) home office…

(FYI: I cleaned this room big time, wiping down every surface, neatly organizing all of the paperwork that runs our lives, throwing away crap that we didn’t need… I think this officially counts as nesting, right?  My mom was concerned that sewing didn’t count as nesting, and she’s been waiting for me to get the urge to wipe down every surface in the house… the urge is there, it’s just that sewing is much more fun!)