House Project: Office

I love looking back at pictures and realizing how much I move stuff around until I really decide what I like...

As hard as it is to be patient, I'm now a big believer in living in a space and figuring out what works and what doesn't work before starting any work. When we first moved into this house, the plan was just to leave this as the office/ guest room. (or storage crap room in our case) 😁

It didn't take too long to figure out that this wasn't working so well. 

Stuff was moved around, but the general idea is that one side was where Cary worked, and the rest of the room looked like a bomb exploded. With kids needing to practice piano, 3 kids doing homework, me having a secretary job, etc... this space was not working for us, at all.

Different crap, different day. 😋

Anyway, so we've known for awhile that this side of the house needed to rejigged, it was just a matter of fitting it in the timeline.

Back at the end of July, here was Cary marking out where our new office doorway was going to be.

The new doorway was right in what was the existing closet.

Doorway, and new wall.

The new wall almost cut this room right in half.

Cary cutting out the new doorway from the living room.

I like to put up paint chips for weeks to get an idea of what color/shade I want...and I decided I would be brave and go with a navy.

I had narrowed it down to 3 different shades of navy

I was freaking out about the dark walls at this point. 😁 Not in a good way, in a I just want to paint them white, way.

But then we started on the window seat, 

(Staining office door and soon to be desktops)

and added some cabinets, trim, etc...then I started to love the color again.

All the 💖😍 for my light fixture.

The original plan did not include the cabinets above the cork board, but that's why I have Kenneth around...to come over tell me what I've missed. 😉

We took the closet doors that were in this room originally and cut them down and stained them for our desktops,

On one side of the window bench seat is a desk for me/homework/Clara, etc...

Cary has his same desk, but we did shave 5 inches off the back, and we added a keyboard tray awhile back.

the other desk holds the piano.

We installed a file holder (a very sturdy one 😏) on the wall to hold the laptops for when the desk needs to be cleared off for homework.

We installed another one by the piano for all the kids music.

We added a pull out shelf to put the printer on, so that it can just slide out for when you need to scan or make copies.

I would say that the bench seat is my favorite part, but everything in this room is my favorite. I love everything in here. 😊

It's been really nice having this space done!

We started the end of July, and it took us until November, so it took awhile because there were a lot of complicated things in this room, but it's been so worth it.

House Project: Girls Bedroom

 This is how this room looked when we first moved in.

Shortly after we moved in I wrote about the closet woes in here. 

The closet is like 13 feet wide, but only 18" deep. I had Cary rebuild shelves and that worked better for some time, but did not resolve all of the issues with how far back the closets went on the side, but you couldn't reach back there, and Ella started throwing stuff into the dark abyss...so one day I couldn't stand it anymore and started tearing the closet apart. It made sense to do it now (to me) since we were already needing to install baseboards on one side of the room.

As some house projects can go, this one definitely snowballed. 

Cary reframed the wall and we moved the closet door frame closer to the bedroom door, extended the wall out about 4-5" and then left a space for a future built in cabinet.

Cary then installed the drywall and did the mudding. (He did a great job too and it was somewhat complicated in the closet where we extended the wall out, lots of corners!)

I "made" a new light fixture for the girls. ☺

The inside of the closet hadn't been painted since it was built, so there was a lot of painting to do.

This is what the room looked like for awhile and Ella would declare regularly that she wanted her room back the way it was. ☺

Somewhere during the process we had to move carpet back and I said we should just take it all the way out and paint the subfloor. Cary was not a fan of this idea. ;) We are REALLY hard on carpets though and it is starting to look bad to which Cary agrees, so we ripped it out. We decided to try a hard flooring in here and so far I really like it! 

 Notice how yellow the part of the closet is that hadn't been painted yet.

 What the boys room looked like for a month with all of the kids sleeping in here at once.

So much storage now!

Where the door into the bathroom used to be/

One of my favorite adds: hooks behind  the door.

I love, love, love the cabinet, but I need to put some handles on the doors still. ;)

New curtains have been on the to-do list for about 3 months now. ;)

This was the first project where we had a deadline! Thanksgiving, since we needed the room for guests, and we got it done a week or two early. We basically ended up almost re-doing everything in this room. We filled the door to the bathroom, painted the walls a light pink, new light fixture, new flooring, new trim around the windows, new closet, new cabinet, repainted EVERYTHING, I stained the door, etc.., We were able to make it so that Cary didn't have to take down all of the shelves in the closet.

 It was worth all the hard work and we now have one finished room in our house, and now I tell Cary this room needs crown molding... ☺ I still need to hang up pictures and what not, but we'll get there.