Office Remodel Reveal

Yes!  We are making progress!  Gittin' 'er done!

If you've been following this blog for the last six months, you may recall that we started back in July of 2012 with what was originally planned to be a fairly inexpensive cosmetic redo of our office in the back of our home.

Due to issues with an uneven floor, one thing led to the next, and continued like that until when it was all finally said and done, we were doing a major renovation of not just one but three rooms - the office, the nearby bathroom, and the sunroom on the other side of the bathroom/office wall.

Originally I just wanted to straighten up the messy piles of papers in the office, upgrade the paint, and change the ancient self-sticking floor tiles to carpet.  Ha!  Little did I know (or remember from similar previous experiences), that these projects balloon into major adventures.  We live in a home built in the 1890's, and this seems to be the way of it.

Of the three rooms, to date, we have completely finished the bathroom.  You can see those pictures from the great bathroom reveal here.

Today then, I am finally revealing the second of the three rooms - the office.  But first, to fully appreciate this, and so you can appropriately ooh and aah with me, let me show you the BEFORE pictures.  No, we do not live like pigs; it's just that life (and its associated piles of papers) sometimes gets ahead of me.

As you can see in this next photo, we gutted the room down to the outside walls and roof, horsehair plaster and all, and vaulted the existing flat ceiling.  That door you see now goes into the remodeled bathroom, and the portion of the area with the vaulted ceiling is my new office.

Here now, is the corner that previously held the messy desk, from the earlier photo:

 
I did the colors of the room in brick red, brown, gray, and beige.  Carpeting is a neutral berber type.  As you can see, I now have a comfortable chair for reading all those travel books I love and a quiet corner for doing my trip planning.  I can easily look outside from that window and see my beloved waterfalls out back.

 
I had my carpenter friend build me some bookshelves, and we kept the desk my husband used in the old office.  I actually selected the new office colors because of the inlaid top of this old desk, which I love.  Of course, it had to be excavated first from under all the papers and piles on it too.

Here is a wider view of this new room, looking into it from the sunroom.  As you can see, the old rickety brown file cabinet has been replaced with a newer and larger version.  I can happily assure you that every item in there is in its proper and organized folder.  Finally!

One more detail of this new room that cannot be overlooked - The Grandchildren Gallery.  You can see it there on the wall next to the bookshelves, but here is a more closeup view:

There is so much cuteness and adorableness in that one little spot that I could sit at my desk and look at it for hours.  I sure do love those kiddos!

If there is anything still incomplete about this room, it is probably the one wall by the window that still needs a picture or some sort of other decoration.  That will have to be found somewhere, somehow, sometime on one of our future travels or adventures.

Until then, at least I now have a pretty spiffy place in which to pay my bills write my blog, don't you think?  Still one more room to finish, though.  More on that to come...