home office remodel-in-progress

Xristos Anesti!  Christ is Risen!i cannot tell you how excited i have been to finally convert the dining room we've never used into a home office for me! i feel like a little kid finally getting their own bedroom.i've had a desk in the dining room but with the wrong floor plan and no privacy it has rarely been used. plus the desk was really small and not very practical for spreading out books, notebooks and computers. the room has spent the past nine years being a multi-purpose room and i have done all my work in more a traveling office. traveling as in, kitchen table to living room table to dining room floor to card table in the middle of the house, lol.so, my sweet dh put up a wall to semi-close the room in and it has made all the difference!

inspector sprout giving the frame his o.k.

once the wall was up, i started painting. i chose a subtle pink (lady pink by olympic from lowe's)

and a nice shade of gray (metropolitan by valspar, from lowe's).  i'm going to add something more to this wall, either a french inspired stenciling in lady pink or white chevron stripes, to add a little more design to that wall.  the curtains i chose are solid, too, so i need a little pattern to break it up.

the next thing that i really needed was a desk. i looked at so many online and in furniture stores, including IKEA which i love, but couldn't find what i wanted (a decent desk at a reasonable price). i found a couple on pinterest and etsy that i absolutely loved but the price tags were way above what i was willing to spend. like this one below. i looooved this desk.but yeah, $895.00? not going to happen. i was obsessed with the antique scrolls on this desk though and the colors fit perfectly with the palette I had chosen for the room. i really wanted a sort of shabby or french chic look because i love that fresh, airy, vintage-y feeling. i know well enough not to get any specific thing stuck in my head though because one rarely finds it.so, i moved my search to used desks and clicked through sites like freecycle and craigslist for a few weeks. finally, i found one that i really liked. it even had the scrolling like the etsy one!it is solid wood and at least 60+ years old, according to the owner. i brought it home, sanded it down, primed, painted, distressed, and sealed it. i'll be posting a diy on exactly what materials i used and how i did it soon.this was the final result! i couldn't believe how great it felt to do it myself! i picked up some really pretty drawer liner from tj maxx and finished the inside with it.now that i was officially addicted to redoing already owned furniture, i pulled out the office chair i'd been "saving" that belonged to my grandfather.i've always loved this chair and was thrilled to finally have a use for it. like the desk, i sanded it down, primed and then began the painting and distressing.i painted it the same tiffany kind of blue as the top of the desk first (sea wave by valspar, from lowe's), then painted over it with the white (du jour by valspar, from lowe's). this way, when i distressed it, the blue would show through just a bit and they would look like a set. the end result was perfect. i'm still hunting for the right size wheels to add to the bottom of the chair since two of the originals are missing, but other than that it is all finished.i just love, love, love the way they both turned out. i'm doing a bookshelf that dh made in woodshop class as a boy. i can't wait to show you the whole room when it's all finished!**UPDATE:  There's still SO much more to do but I am loving every minute of it!  Click the photo to see what else I've been up to...