Office #1

Sometimes I become convinced that I'm part-woodworker, part-Ty-Pennington, part-billionaire, and every project I've ever seen invades my brain, never to be let go.  This means there are a lot of home projects in the beginning stages around here.  It's a disease.

Today's project is Office #1, located on the bottom level of our house.  If you wish to read every thought I ever had about this process, read on and congratulate yourself when you're done.

Here we go.

One dilemma I run into every time I want to decorate or remodel is I'm not starting from scratch, but I desperately want to, because styles and income and I have changed since the last time the prior house owners and/or I made an attempt at furnishing things.  I know, I know, this matters to no one and shouldn't even matter to me, but it's a thing and an annoying one at that.  But!  I discovered if I pick areas of my house that have almost no furnishings anyway, it becomes much easier to start from scratch!  (I'm looking at you, downstairs family room.)

Anyway, my office is also one such place. I have put almost no effort into decorating this space since we moved in, as evidenced below.  Nice try, map.

Please note the empty curtain rod and the burnt out light bulb...  Keeping it classy.

I was definitely working on a budget here because for some reason we're still sticking with our ridiculously low allowances this year (aka almost nothing), so I really didn't do a whole lot, but I think it's much-improved.

To begin, the blue paint had to go.  This doesn't sound like much of a chore, but I had to prime the beast and paint the ceiling, and I have 4 doors in that room, so it was involved. ("Luckily" Scott went out of town, so I could paint for 6 hours at a time and feel like that was "fun".)  I put in a new light bulb as well, which is now one of my secrets of adulthood.

I told Scott I was going for a "world" office theme and he said, "Oh, so a worldly theme?"  And I thought, "Well, yeah that's probably more accurate actually."

I just had to throw this in here.  (A) This pineapple-looking jar is awesome, and (B) It looks like all I do at work is give myself manicures and back scratches.

I looked around online and found this modern looking map that I could do a Pinterest-famous engineering print for and then just whip out a giant custom-made frame because how hard could it be?  Well, I will tell you, it's really hard.  I picked the largest size possible, which had so many obstacles it was ridiculous:  (A) No one (cheaply) sells frames this size, so even if I wanted to back out of the DIY, there was practically no backup plan! (B) Remember how my car doesn't even fit  things this size?  (C) Remember how I planned to spend no money on this project?  Haha ha haaaa....  Anyway, I solved all these issues eventually with the help of KSL and after many more challenges in simply putting it in said frame, we got this sucker put up and it's ready to go in my worldly office.

I also made a sunburst mirror out of mostly garbage, and for being made of garbage it turned out pretty ok.

I'm still planning to get a new (white!) desk and replacing the bookshelves with bigger white ones and getting other stuff in there to make it a little more glamorous (because a girl needs to do taxes in glamour), but it's off to a good start.