Overwhelmed

Silence on my blog has not at all meant no projects have been going on. Quite the opposite, actually. I'm a little overwhelmed trying to write about massive projects I have done in the past several months, so I am going to start very small. 

I was recently in the market for a new chair for the desk in my bedroom. I would have loved a Jonathan Adler Chippendale chair--or any Chippendale chair really, but something new was just not in the budget.

I headed to the local Habitat for Humanity ReStore--they were having a Grand Re-Opening Celebration!! which included 15% off everything. I thought I may have some luck finding a unique chair there, and I was right.

I got this bamboo arm chair for a song- it was marked $10 but as I said before everything was 15% off. So I paid about $8.50 for it plus tax. It has a little damage in the form of discoloration on the back of the chair, but I think it just gives it some character.

The next step was to find some fabric for recovering the seat, and decide what to do with the frame.

For the frame, I thought I had a couple options- 1) paint the frame a bright, fun color, or 2)clean it up and maybe apply some polyurethane but keep it natural.

In the end, I decided to leave the frame natural, although I did give it a thorough cleaning and a coat of clear poly. It still has some color variation but at least now its all shiny!

I originally had bought a purple/grey patterned fabric from Joann's for this chair. I laid it out on the chair and let it hang out that way for a couple days, and then decided this just wasn't the fabric for the project.

I made a trip back to Joanns, and found this awesome fabric called "Hazel" in navy, from KAS/Richloom. 

Getting the seat off the frame took some work. The two screws in the front were easily removed, but the screw holding it on in the back was striped, and it seemed at one point the hole had been filed with woody putty or something, so that now the hole was smaller than the head of the screw. It took a couple hours and a lot of patience to get the screw out finally!

I won't go into details about recovering the seat, but it involved a staple gun and some patience to get things just right without wrinkles. I think all my hard work turned out well-- see below!

Eventually I will get to the point of showing you the desk set up in my bedroom. Until then, this is the chair in my living room. At this point I haven't recovered the back cushion. For one, its a more involved project including my sewing machine and some cover buttons. But also, I don't think its necessary for making the chair comfortable and usable. 

What do you think? Should I recover the back cushion? 

Completed Desk Area

Has it really been 2 weeks since I posted? Oops.

I've done some serious work on the "office area" in my bedroom over the last month or so.
First I showed you what it looked like currently here,
then I redid a chair I found and wrote about it here,
and I also left some clues about what else I was up to, in my post about my trip to Ikea. So how does my desk corner look now?

Well, I put up the white shelves that I used to have in my kitchen. Remember those?

(yuck, bad picture. I'd like to think I could do better...)

And after I put the shelves up, I decided I needed some matching boxes to store my supplies and papers. This is when my Ikea shopping trip came into play:

I think it looks pretty nice all together. The desk will mainly serve as the area for my sewing machine, but also my bills and other paper work go there.

I'm happy to have such a stylish place to do work!

Office area in Bedroom

Since moving from a two bedroom apartment to a one bedroom, things have shifted. For example, I can no longer use my second bedroom as my office (on the flip side-- I am not longer a student and don't need to spend hours at a dedicated desk with all my textbooks around me). Thus my desk has ended up in my bedroom, which is OK with me. However, along with the loss of my office was all the storage space that my office offered-- a closet, several bookcases and most importantly the option to just close the door if it wasn't looking as pretty as I wanted.

Here is a reminder of what my current desk area looks like (when artificially clean)... 

It normally has mail and other stuff on it, and also you can see I still need a chair, since I have a dedicated dining space in this apartment instead of an eat-in kitchen, so I no longer need to store my extra dinning chairs in other places!

 Now that my office is sort of out in the open, I need to put more effort into organizing it, and organizing it with pretty tools. Here are some inspirational photos I've come across.

From http://www.younghouselove.com/2010/10/house-crashing-inspired-inexpensive/

From http://unclutterer.com/2010/01/22/workspace-of-the-week-splendid-shelving/ 

From http://makingitlovely.com/2008/10/27/studio-tour/ 

From http://makingitlovely.com/2008/10/27/studio-tour/ 

From http://unclutterer.com/2010/02/12/workspace-of-the-week-crafts-contained-2/ 

Get what I'm going for? Any suggestions on how to make my office space awesome?

Apartment Tour: Office

I recently had a beginning photographer come to my apartment and take some pictures for me. It was an exchange-- she wanted practice taking pictures of architecture/homes, and I wanted some better quality pictures of my work. We took pictures of all of the rooms in my apartment, it took about an hour. It was really nerve wrecking to have someone taking pictures!
I decided I will share the pictures officially room by room. So today I will start with my office.

I spent some time last summer working on my office, to make it less of a dumping ground for everything random in my apartment to more of an actual office I could use for school work. I purged, cleaned, organized and purged again. I originally had two desks in the room situated in an L shape, and a hideous rug and wheely desk chair. I ended up getting rid of one of the two desks, repainting the remaining desk, replacing the wheely chair with one of my extra kitchen chairs and adding a few items.

I got the lamp at the Christmas Tree Store on a trip home to Vermont (although now one has opened up near me!), and made the paper flowers myself with a kit from Martha Stewart that I found at Michaels.

As you can see, the walls are vast and empty. I made an attempt at covering some of that empty wall space by framing some pretty paper that I got at Target.

You may remember that I also put up some shelves on the opposite wall for the cats to climb on. I didn't have the photographer (Willow) take any pictures of those, but you can see them  here.

Part of my purging was some serious reorganization of the closet in that room. I bought a bookcase to hold my binders and some office supplies, and added in a metal shelving unit I had and some plastic boxes to organize my sewing supplies and other craft supplies in a pretty way. I have a longer post about that project here.

I also added a chair that I found at a garage sale (here) At this point, I haven't actually done anything with the chair. It's waiting for a rainy day, I guess. Or waiting for me to find the perfect fabric and get brave enough to rip the thing apart. When my family made a visit lately, they brought along a bookcase I had as a kid. It's 3 shelves, and has a mirrored back. Currently it is unfinished, and I have sanded it in preparation for painting, but I haven't decided what color I want to use. I think I want to do something bold-- perhaps turquoise. But again, I'm not rushing into this project.

Office Closet

Remember this?Well, I did some serious work editing what was in my office, resulting in a couple trips to the salvation army, and reorganized my closet. This is what my bookcase looks like now:



Much better, right?
But even more exciting is what the inside of the closet looks like now. I had a much smaller bookcase in the closet, which was not big enough for my collection of binders. I got this one at target for a mere $19.99, and it fits very nicely. The additional shelves allow me to organize my extra office supplies out of my vision if I'm working at my desk, and the door can be closed!



On the other side of the closet, I got baskets and boxes to organize a lot of my craft and sewing stuff. The boxes on the top shelf have scrapbooking stuff, that box on the left holds 12x12 paper. That box was not easy to find! The middle shelf has some holiday decorations and other random stuff, and the bottom shelf has sewing things! One container has projects that I am currently working on, and the other has my collection of material, ribbon, facing, etc. (The patterns and thread and scissors are on the other bookcase, in the boxes on the bottom shelf) That big ugly looking box in the front is my sewing machine. Some day a project will be to clean that up. Perhaps with pretty contact paper? I'm hesitant because the sewing machine is technically an antique and I don't want to ruin its original box (ugh..more than it already is).

Long time.

I haven't posted in a while because I went home for my dads wedding for a week. That doesn't mean I wasnt doing some decorating work though. While home, I went to one of my favorite stores, The Christmas Tree Store. It's kind of like a Marshalls/tjmaxx, except with no clothing and most things are made just for the store. I was on the look out for lamps for the office, and I found some!
Below is the desk lamp I got, for $9.99, including the shade!

Below is the floor lamp I got to put next to the chair. I got this one for $29.99!



I really want to get rid of that second shelf thing there next to the bookcase, and move that whole corner down a little.

More office Progress

Today was a rather productive day. After resting in the morning to make my big headahce go away I was able to do some work in the afternoon and evening. I started with taking the second desk out of the room, and taking it apart. I then went on to the closet and saw that I have far too many plastic tubs. I designated one of them for winter clothes and moved that to my bedroom closet, I made a tub to collect thing to donate to the Salvation Army, and a decent amount of stuff to just throw away. After several trips to the dumpster with desk pieces and garbage, and several trips to my car with things for the salvation army, the room has made some seriously progress.
After dinner I ran to Home Depot, because they always seem to have a selection of large house plants for a reasonable price. I found a great tropical palm plant that is probably close to 5 ft tall if it stood up straight.
I changed the arraingement of the room, putting the desk on the wall that the second desk was on, and put the bookcase to the left flat against the wall instead of kitty-cornered. I also have decided to part with the chair I had been using in there, and instead use a chair that is meant for my dinning room table. I only have room for 2 chairs at the kitchen table, so two remain in a closet. This seems like a good solution for now. I don't have the heart to paint that chair the same color as the desk, but perhaps in the future I will find something that is reasonable to paint.
Lastly, I brought the side chair in from my living room. I'm imagining a little table next to that chair for setting my drink on when I'm reading in that chair. I also think that a floor lamp might go behind that chair in the future.
The plant-- its in a pretty awkward space right now, right in the middle. I'm not exactly sure where that will end up.
I am also really digging the idea of having my desk completely cleaned off (ie no pencil cup or bill holder on desk). It gives it a much more sleek and relaxing design. I have some more ideas for the room, but thats all for now.

Office progress

I have made some progress on my office revamp. I spent an evening doing "research"--walking around target and tjmaxx looking for some ideas. I came away with a couple pretty non-specific ideas. First, I need to paint my desk a lighter color, find a tall potted plant, and a couple new lamps--maybe a floor lamp and a desk lamp.
I decided to get rid of the second desk I had in that room, and have also spent time going through the closet to get rid of other things I no longer need-- like many pairs of long, long curtains that I used in my apartment in Chicago, and other random stuff. I picked a color for the desk yesterday and primed and painted that.
I'm hoping that the result will be a much calmer, clutter free working environment so I can do some serious studying in the coming year. Its my last year as a student for a couple years (yeehaw!) so it needs to count.
I'm also thinking of a new rug, and moving the side chair I have in to make a comfy place to read/nap. To finish it out, I want to add some candles/vases. I just thought of the idea of keeping track of what I spend, so I'm going to do that. Last night I spent $35 on paint, brushes, a tray, a drop cloth, etc. Thats all I have spent so far besides time.
Here is a picture of my primed (but not painted) desk:

Depressing. Please advise.

So I am starting a class tomorrow, an intensive biology class. In preparation for this class, I went school supply shopping with a classmate. After the binder and notebook shopping, I started looking at my office a little more. It sucks. While I have spent quite a bit of time perfecting the other rooms in my apartment, I have spent very very little time on the office, and it shows. My other rooms look put together and planned, while this room looks like I just threw whatever I had in it. Which is what I did. So, here are the undoctored pictures of my horrible office space. How do I fix this? I've been considering painting my desk a color--a bright green or blue of some sort. Should I get a new desk? Get rid of the second desk? what do I put on the wall where that hideous wire shelf is? How else can I rearrange this ugly room? I really do like looking out the window, but its not necessary. That is the only window, and it faces east, so it doesn't get much sun in the hours that I am using it.
In the mean time, I'm going to spend some time looking at other peoples offices online and will post what I find.