home tour: office

We are slooooowly, finally, getting settled into the house. The painting is done (thank the good Lord and all His saints above), and we are actually hanging things on walls now. While some spaces (such as the fourth bedroom) are still disaster areas, others are actually, surprisingly ready to share with you...like the office. Although we still need to hang our diplomas, it's basically done. Whew. One room down.
 
As soon as I realized our new house had a room that could be used for an office, I got really excited, and not just because I wanted another room to decorate.
 
Functionally, the Stevenson family needs an office.

The picture from our house's listing - no, no, and NO.

 
First, we needed some way to corral the paper that finds its way onto every. single. surface. I try to keep a decent handle on filing and organizing everything, but someone in this household (cough, the other human, cough) does not share my OCD tendencies. Papers that he needs to handle are often left lying around until I get so frustrated I dump them on his side of the bed...where they eventually are moved to his nightstand and not handled, and the paper piles up until I want to scream (side note: marriage is delightful sometimes).
 
I also - well, I can't really say truly needed - but I wanted a workspace: a big, flat table where I could wrap presents, write and address cards, and do crafts. I wanted a place where, if I needed to leave stuff out overnight, it wouldn't be taking up the kitchen or coffee table and making a mess. And when I wasn't in craft mode, I wanted a place to leave our computers so that they also weren't sitting on the kitchen or coffee table, making a mess.

On a completely unrelated side note, I probably need to get treatment for my OCD, but anyway.

When I set out to design our office, I was looking solely for function. I didn't realize the office would be the room I fell in love with above all others. What started out as a terrible, terrible dook blue room with a stain on the carpet turned into a light, airy, functional, and, yes, beautiful office.
 
Here's how I did it:

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the color

Step one: PAINT. Under exactly zero circumstances was I going to let that room continue to be dook blue for one more second. I fell in love with this green, and thankfully it looked amazing on the walls (we had some issues with the bedroom paint colors...). Then we got the carpet cleaned. After that, the fun part began.

Getting started

My hot handyman

the finished product

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The Furniture

I know you'd probably love me to list links to where you can buy this furniture, but I can't help you. We already had all of it. The bookcase, work desk, storage desk, and club chair all came from my family's basement, High Point Furniture Market, or both.

Two desks might seem like overkill, but but I actually really enjoy having one desk for storage and one clean, non-cluttered, wide flat one for working. I very nearly bought this desk at World Market, but when we went up to my parents' house to get some stuff we found the work desk in the basement. My parents were more than happy to see it shipped off to Greer. It made me happy, too - free is a hell of a lot cheaper than $350.

Being a furniture market brat has its perks.

storage desk

work desk

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the storage

We needed a filing cabinet. It was as simple as that. B managed to get a slightly dented free one from work. Again, free = excellent.

But I wanted this room to be as pretty as it was functional, so I doctored it up a bit to make it fit the dreamy, serene space I wanted to create. I didn't get a before picture, but trust me, it was dirty, gray, and horrible. A little ivory spray paint, some new hardware, and voila. It was surprisingly easy, and I'm super-pleased with the results. 

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the details

The devil's in the details, and I'm a detail-oriented person. Not sure what that says about me, but anyway. One thing I knew we needed was a mail rack to put incoming mail and papers to be filed or shredded. I found this one at TJ Maxx, but you can buy it on Amazon.

The trash can: a necessary evil. I'd been lugging around the white mesh wonder since my college days, and it was a little worse for the wear. Instead of tossing it, I gave it a fresh look with a hot glue gun and a package of sisal rope from Home Depot. Boom 

I also wanted some plants in the room. The condo was the place where all living plants went to die, but I'm optimistic for this light-filled new house. My mama surprised me with this adorable cactus in a pot she made herself. She simply picked up shells at the beach, glued them to a regular clay pot, and spray-painted the whole thing. And she tries to claim she's not crafty. Hah.
 
However, since I tend to be a plant Hospice worker, easing their transition to go see Jesus, I'm not exactly holding my breath that this will live. Wish me luck. And at least the cute pot isn't going anywhere

I bought the map for B (well, for us) for our first anniversary. Since the first anniversary is the paper anniversary and since we were living in France and doing a lot of traveling at the time, I thought a scratch-off map of the countries we've visited would be the perfect gift. And it was.

We're only scratching off countries and states we've visited together (we've been to many more states separately than the map shows). The thing is, we thought we had gone so many places. But once we got back to Greenville and started scratching countries off...we realized we'd been basically nowhere. So now the map is not only a beautiful reminder of the places we've been together but also encouragement and inspiration to go see the rest of the world, too. I adore it.

look at the teeny-tiny scratched off places!

I would dearly love to be able to take credit for these curtains, but they were left by the previous homeowner in what's now the main guest bedroom. They are Pottery Barn Kids brand, and they're super nice. And let's recap: I never, ever, ever complain about free.

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get the look

Paint // Behr Meditation Time (S360-4) in eggshell finish
Filing cabinet // Get the how-to here
Mail holder //  Sheffield Home Decor
Scratch-off world map // Nature & Decouvertes (it's in French - good luck)