Office Renovation Part 1...

Ok, I'm trying to condense what should be about two or three separate posts into one, so I hope I don't lose you!  Hang onto your hats, this is gonna get intense! =)

I have a bright office.  The colors pop, it makes me smile.  I purposefully put bright, happy colors in there so I would stay happy while I studied.  It sounded good in theory.

Do I study in there? No way!  This poor little room gets so neglected!  I decided it is because that desk in the above photo buts up against the wall.  I feel crammed in that spot.  I feel like a kid that is in trouble and has to put his nose against the wall.  So I never study in there.

My solution was to do a simple rearrangement.  First I tried turning the little desk sideways to see if that helped.

I liked it, but I wanted the mirror image.  I didn't like the idea of walking into the room and straight into my desk.  It didn't flow properly. 

So I had my hubby and brother-in-law help me rearrange one night.  Much to my dislike, I could not put my corner desk on the opposite wall because it would have been obstructing the air vent on the floor.  Believe me, I considered just blocking it.

After a stern NO from the hubby, I decided to just rotate the corner desk.  It went from this...

(My desk is usually NOT this messy.. I decided to rearrange the layout on a

whim, so I just started throwing stuff everywhere before

I remembered to take a picture!

To this...

I was liking it better already.  I just moved the student desk down a little.  Still with me?

Now I know you're thinking, "I thought you didn't like being smushed up against the wall?"

I don't, so I decided to just move the computer and printer from the big desk, to the student desk.  I claimed the big desk as my study desk!  Now I will have a lot more room to move around my books, and my legs!

I liked the new flow of the room already.  Later that night I made the hubby help me rotate the rug.  Moving the rug allowed the chairs to roll more easily on the carpet.

However, now I have a few dilemmas with the room.

This looks ugly.  The back of this desk was never really intended to be seen, and now you can see all the unsightly wires underneath.

In order to understand my solution to this dilemma, you need to see a problem I had with the prior layout.

This was my "library" in the old layout.  I have been planning on building a bookshelf for that wall, but have been hesitant because I thought that side of the room would look too heavy with all the big pieces of furniture.

So I decided to build a short, but long bookshelf to sit in front of my newly exposed corner desk.  Rather than build one long bookshelf, I built two small ones to push together.  This will make them easier to move around and more stable.

Here is my progress thus far.

Can't you just picture how lovely these are going to look in front of the corner desk?! AND they will hold all of my books!  I'm an organization fool, so that "library" on the floor just wan't working for me!
Let me just say one thing about building these.  I hated it.  I went to Lowes thinking "Ok, I'm building a box.  How hard can this be?" 

I had my measurements planned perfectly and had the guys at Lowes cut my wood for me.  Little did I know how completely inaccurate the advertised measurements were.

I thought I was buying wood that was 1 inch thick, and 12 inches deep.  It is more like 3/4 inch thick and only 11 inches deep.  That is a  pretty significant difference, so my bookshelves are not perfect like they should have been.  Secondly, my wood was kind of bowed, so that made it difficult to get an even frame. 

See what I mean? Totally not centered!

(ok.. so maybe there was SOME builder error involved)

I may or may not have kicked the bookshelf at one point! =)  Don't worry, I had put down the garage door by then so I don't think the neighbors saw me!

So now I need to make some readjustments for the backing on the bookshelves, fill some holes, and paint.

Random, I know.  But doesn't this look like a silly bird to you?

Remember this guy?

I'm going to paint that white and put some sort of fabric behind it to use as a memo/inspiration board.  That will have to wait for a week or two, so I'll make a post for that later!

And lastly (take a deep breath, we're almost done) I am very excited to show off what the hubby got me for Valentine's Day! We are not romantic AT ALL so we don't really care much about the holiday.  Rather than chocolates or flowers, I got this:

That makes me a happy girl! I used it today to sand my bookcase and I love it!!

Thanks for staying with me!  I hope to be done with my paiting and rearranging this weekend, so I should have more pictures of the full office in a few days!

Cheers!