The first room that you see when you walk into our house is Brian's office. The real estate listing picture {below} makes it looks like it's a decent size; it's not. It's small, and it was dark...really dark. The Lowdown: Walls: Grasscloth wallpaper Bookshelves: Dark-stained with brass hardware Floors: White wall-to-wall carpet Trim: Dark blue painted window frames, molding, and french doors Below is a picture of the french doors that lead into the office. Excuse the blinding glare from the mini candle chandelier! {?} Like everything else in the house, the doors were painted navy blue: I WISH I'd taken pictures of the wallpaper removal, but I didn't! I did happen to capture the room with ripped-out carpet, though. You can see that initially, we thought we could paint the molding, but painting over dark oil-based paint is useless, so we ended up replacing it. You can see how hazy the photo below is...that's because these bookshelves had to be sanded before we could paint them, which kicked up more dust than you can possibly imagine! My husband looked like this for a few days... {excuse the Uggs and pile o' sneakers!} Below you can see the new plantation shutters we installed {and the stroller outside the window...this was a couple of years ago!} We installed downlights over the bookshelves, and also in the inset wall: The gallery wall {below} is my favorite part of the room. The only part that took some time was collecting the frames. I started with Pottery Barn's single opening gallery frames, but I needed 33 {!!!} and that was getting pricey. So I searched out other frames which met my criteria: Black, flat, half-inch frame with white mat, and guess where I found some for dirt cheap? You guessed it! Wal-Mart. {They don't have the exact ones I used, but the white gives you an idea}. From a distance, I can't tell which ones are from Pottery Barn and which ones are from Wal-Mart. Can you? If you can...don't tell me. ;-) Here you can see a close-up of the crown molding, downlights, and plantation shutters. The paint color is our perennial go-to, Ralph Lauren Nigerian Peony. Of course, we had to replace all the hardware, including the knobs & register covers {below}. See the taupe Berber carpet? Eventually we'll replace it with Brazillian Cherry hardwood, but for now it's an improvement over white wall-to-wall. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? 1) This is not an ideal place for an office, since it's the first room you see when you walk into the house {and let's be honest, it looks this neat about 2% of the time}, and 2) if it has to be an office, the desk should face the wall on the right, instead of chopping the room in half? If so, I agree with you. However, we don't have anywhere else to locate the office right now, and the desk has to hide an unsightly mess of paperwork from company. Another reason for an addition... Project Summary
No contractors except for the folks who laid the carpet, and I won't list them here because they didn't blow me away. All of the work was done by my husband, who {as everyone knows} is the one with the skillz. I just take the photos. :-) Happy Tuesday!
15 Comments
5/30/2012 09:48:53 pm
What an amazing transformation! You KNOW I love that gallery wall. While I do love me some Pottery Barn, there are some good things to be found at Walmart (and Michaels too.) Your husband did a wonderful job. Just looking at that dust makes it hard for me to breathe!
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6/14/2012 12:44:22 pm
Now THAT'S a makeover! Wow--what a beautiful transformation. Those bookshelves are now lovely, and how cool to use them for all the photographs. No, I can't tell which ones are from PB and which ones are from WalMart--great job mixing them together! This room is really lovely.
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7/5/2012 12:35:58 pm
WHAT! This is the COOLEST thing ever. I love your bookshelves full of gallery art. And the before-and-after is kind of crazy-awesome! Totally pinning this. Thanks for sharing!
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