My Home Office: Finally Finished

 

As promised, I cleaned up my work space enough to take pictures of our newly completed home office:

 

 

 

You may remember, we converted what was suppose to be the dining room, into the office.

 

 

 

Our biggest addition to the space were the bookcases that we had built by a local carpenter (email me if you need a referral; he did a great job!).  The wall behind the desk was huge, and I wanted something that would make a big impact since it’s one of the first things you see coming through the front door.

 

I replaced the original chandelier with this oversized lantern that I picked up at my Habitat Restore.  I blogged about the makeover process here.

 

 

 

To make the shelving pop, we painted the back of the bookcases a dark gray by Sherwin Williams called “Urbane Bronze.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since I know we all love a good “before and after,” here’s a look back at how the room started:

 

 

 

This is how I worked for months, shopping for furniture and thinking about how to make my vision of floor to ceiling bookcases come to life.  I found the farmhouse table on Craigslist, the metal chairs at a Pottery Barn outlet, and my linen desk chair came from TJMaxx.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The real challenge came when it was time to fill the bookshelves. I didn’t have nearly as many books as I thought, but wanted it to be colorful and have a real “library” feel. Several friends and family members gave me extra books, and I lucked out at a recent Habitat Restore book sale where I bought them by the box-full for next to nothing.

 

 

 

For  more color, I moved the Ikat rug from our foyer that I blogged about here (from RugsUSA):

 

 

 

 

 

 

What I like most about the space is that it should easily transition back to a dining room with the addition of some chairs, if we ever need the space.  For now, though, I plan on doing a lot more blogging than hosting dinner parties. . .  Hope you enjoyed :)