Office Update: 4 Months Later

It's been a while since I gave you a little update on the progress in the office. And when I say a little while, I mean 4 months (sheesh!).When last we saw the office I looked like this:

 

Well, the honest truth is that not a whole lot has happened since then, but we have done a few new things. Here's the office today (pardon the different lighting - I'm working on using the white balance on my camera): 

Not a huge change, but a few things have gotten done.

1. New light fixture!

I was going to get the Eden pendant from Crate and Barrel (which has since been discontinued and replaced by the Finley) but I found this one at Tuesday Morning for $20 more. With this light I wouldn't have to wait for shipping and it had 3 bulb sockets in it, as opposed to the 1 in the Eden; meaning more light, which is important in a work area. We'll be adding a dimmer to the wall switch, though, for maximum lighting control.

So, we love the light, its much better than the old off-center flush mount fixture that was there, but there was a problem when we bought it. Can you see it?

How about a closer look?

Whoops! The cover I bought for the box in the ceiling is too small. We were not interested in cutting a new hole in the ceiling, running new electrical wiring. and patching the old one, so we swagged the chain. Home Depot and Lowe's didn't have bigger covers. What's a girl to do?

We didn't want to make the hole smaller with drywall patching, because that would require painting the patched parts. Normally not a problem, but we've yet to be able to find a white that matches the ceiling color, so anything we painted over would be the wrong white, necessitating repainting the WHOLE ceiling, which is a messy, unpleasant job in a room with a lot of weird corners, a portion over a stairwell and a hallway attached. So, what did we do? Like any normal, lazy homeowner, we cosmetically covered it up!

This little ceiling medallion cost us $25 from Architectural Depot.com and did the trick perfectly. It also added a little detail to the ceiling, which is nice. I need to buy a screw for the other of the silver cover. That's on my list of things to do today.

Next on the list of things we've done in the office:

2. Refinished a little side table.

I got this baby for $4 at a yard sale:

I was on board with the concept here (stained wood top, white bottom) but the actual finish was not so good.

 Distressed white-wash? Not my gig.

The top was down right beat-up. And the underside? I won't show it to you, but it was full of old spider egg-sacks (ewwwwwwww...).

So, down to the basement with it where I took it apart, cleaned of all remnants of spiders (hopefully there were no baby spiders inside...) refinished the top and repainted the bottom. All to become this:

The top is Minwax's Walnut Brown stain (I think I put on 5 coats of it, and I let them sit for 15 minutes each...I wanted it D-A-R-K) and the bottom is Sherwin Williams Roman Column (the same color as the trim in our whole house). I had the stain, the polycrylic and the paint all on hand, so this table really only cost $4 - it's holding up a $125 lamp...that evens out, right?

3. I've recovered both of our office chairs in a cool diamond print fabric:

I'd like to point out that I did not throw in a "cat lumbar pillow". That made its way onto the chair all by itself. What can I say? No matter what I'm doing- she wants to be in whatever room I'm in. She has no regard for important blog photography.

The wide shot from the start of the post is a little old, and only one chair is covered there. I did the second one a few days ago.

4. All the "stuff" that was stored in our old corner desks (remember them?) has been transplanted to Ikea Kasset boxes:

We also purchased that pretty vase (and the lamp on the little table) from some potters in Pennsylvania during a little pottery trip we took with my aunt this winter (she's our pottery guru). It's filled with sticks from Ikea and some over-sized faux pheasant feathers I found on clearance at Pottery Barn. There's going to be a couple more, but I have to transplant all of our CDs from jewel cases to paper sleeves to minimize the space they'll take up. CDs are obsolete and I don't think we even own a cd player, but we're not ready to let go of them yet. Maybe someday our kids will laugh at our ridiculous technology, just like I laugh when I find my Dad's old 8-tracks.

The boxes will be residing in some shelves we're going to build in the alcove there. We're planning the shelves this week, hoping to install them next week. Once that's done we can hook up our new printer.

5. I finally framed our diplomas! Adam graduated 5.5 years ago, I graduated 4 years ago. It's about time. Hanging them is going to require scaffolding (seriously...the wall is over the stair well) so it might be a little while before we actually get them on the wall. I tried to keep them simple, none of the fancy frames degrees are usually in. While we're both proud to have college diplomas, so we wanted to hang them up. On the other hand we don't want to boast; which is why they're in simple frames upstairs in the house, not on the 1st floor for all our guests to see.

Hanging diplomas is a hotly debated topic in the comments over on Apartment Therapy.

6. I put up a couple of little shelves for Adam's computer surround sound speakers on the wall behind his half of the desk.

His speakers used to always sit on his desk, so he didn't actually have surround sound, he had "front and sides" sound. This looks better, too. It was like he had a little wall of speakers around him before.

There's still a lot to do in the office, and it's slow going, but we'll get there. It certainly looks a heck of a lot better than it did!