Ready to Renovate

Nobody is more shocked to say this than me, but David and I are finally making progress on our office renovation. I realize that you may not understand why this is such a big deal, but there's just no way for me to appropriately convey in words the disaster that this office had become. It was already disorganized to begin with, but when we shoved a whole extra room's worth of furniture into it (when Molly's room took over the spare bedroom), it went beyond repair. It became a dumping ground for things that we just didn't have another home. This intensified over Christmas when it became the room where we shoved all of Molly's toys and party decorations so that she couldn't see them. By the end, it looked like this:

Now, in fairness, these were taken in the midst of cleaning things out in preparation for total renovation. But, sadly, the reality of this room isn't that far off from these pictures. It was unbareable.

So for the last month, Dave and I have been working our tails off to completely start over in this room. Anything that can be gotten rid of is going. The TV that you see in the first picture was donated via Freecycle this morning. The large bookshelf in the same picture is going to (eventually) be painted and moved into the dining room (which has been reconfigured to make better use of it) and will be used multipurposely as a bookshelf and toy storage for Molly. My desk (which you actually can't see in the pictures) will be put into storage to await Molly. (My dad had it made for me, and I just can't stand to part with it.) All of the craft stuff (much of which you can't see) on the hutch in the second picture was moved onto a dedicated shelf in our newly-organized/purged hall closet. Every other piece of furniture is being given away.

In its place will be a new, beautiful, organized, Ikea-heavy office. In addition to that which I've already showed you, here's my inspiration:

The Save Ferris Print and You & Me print, though I doubt I will get the actual prints (though I'd like them) are the general color scheme I'd like. In general, we'll be working with red, orange, and white. We have a couple of things already hanging in the office that I want to stay that will play up the red, but I want to add some playfulness with the orange. The Save Ferris print has some of those colors but also opens things up to a bit of whimsy.

Young House Loves' DIY'd desk is similar to what we'll be going for, though ours will be longer. Specifically we'll be using two Ikea Vika Amons, one long and one short, with a Vika Alex on each end. In between the two Amons will be an Expedit to distinguish "David's side" from "my side." My side will be the longer Amon so that my sewing machine will have a permanent home on the end (and will hopefully get used more that way). The whole desk will take up the entire left wall (the one the bookshelf is up against in the first picture) of the office.

On the wall opposite the desk will be a full-sized Expedit, which will give us space for both book storage and storage in general (we'll use crates and baskets to keep camera gear, cords, and the like organized but out-of-sight). There will also be another, smaller Expedit on the wall beside the window (to the far right of the hutch in the second picture) that will hold all of the DVDs that currently live in our hutch. I love the organization of the Expedit in Making It Lovely's office.

Then I want to put some bold, graphic curtains up (the window is to the direct right of the hutch). We probably won't get the Stockholm curtains because, for one, I don't want to spend that much money on curtains, and two, I want something with more red and orange, but that boldness is what I'm looking for.

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I know that's probably more information than you were looking for about our office redo, but this feels like a big deal to me. This is probably the most thought we've put into decorating (aside from Molly's room) and it's definitely the most we've collaborated. We're really thought about this and planned for it, so I'm thrilled to see it beginning to take shape.

The plan is to head to the Ikea in Tampa this weekend (to avoid Ikea's insane shipping charges) and then it'll be all systems go. And don't worry, you can guarantee I'll show you the finished product.