The office has been an ongoing project. Since we decided to dive into the “quick remodel” it has been the place we spend the most time in the house outside of the kitchen, the burial ground to four houseplants (soon to be five!), and the starting point of every new project we imagine we actually have time for.
We picked up the dresser probably six months ago from Construction Junction. It took a little coercing because it screams ladies and was dirt-butter-yellow, but I’m a sucker for tiny castors, it was $35, and we happened to have a van that day. So it sat in the basement until now. We planned on repainting it a less offensive butter yellow, but as I was Goo-Gone-ing off the price tags most of the paint came with them. We had a Premium Stripper in the basement and decided to see what she could do.
In the past 7 years I have lived in 9 different apartments. Despite my devotion to home renovation blogs, I never had a whole lot of determination to carry out any of these dream projects. Even painting. Out of these 9 former places I have called home, I have painted roughly 2 walls. The first, a single wall in a 7’x9′ bedroom because a boy I shared a studio with was throwing out his remnant paint. The second, a bubblegum pink kitchen that was the result of a roommate of questionable sanity insisting we should have a “Barbie dream house.” I have spent the last 7 years wishing for the time I could roll out an overly tedious geometric wall that I wouldn’t lose my security deposit over. Apparently it only took a week or so of installing our office storage to purge my memory of how much I hate painting.
With a few gallons of leftover paint and no plan whatsoever, we decided to have at it and cross the third floor off of our list by painting the hallway.
Most Sundays we spend the morning meandering around the warehouse full of treasures that is Construction Junction. It’s mostly a way to make us feel like we’re being productive and supporting our local economy while we shake off a lingering hangover. Those hazy mornings have left us with some real gems – our dining room table, Ipe for the desk legs, my beautiful Gap mannequin, and a smoking deal on engineered hardwood floors. Lately, CJ has been hitting home runs with their lighting selection.
After scouring the internet for old shop lights to fix our kitchen lighting problem, I’d nearly given up on finding an affordable solution. I rounded a corner a few weeks ago to find nearly a dozen green enamel pendants priced at $45 a piece. We grabbed three for the kitchen and one to replace the flush-mount fixture in our new office. Last week we picked up a really darling vintage pendant for our entryway, and more recently a $12 chandelier to finish off our newly repainted guest bedroom.
We were pretty high off of the Intense Teal mantle and wanted to carry on with the bright accents. We stocked up on some equally intense Montana spray paints before realizing that none of them matched the room at all. So we dug out a few cans of white Krylon left over from that time we decided it would be a really good idea to spray paint our molding.
We decided from the start that we wouldn’t make any big changes to the house that weren’t related to the Deli. The wall colors were…quirky…but they were easy enough to stomach. These decisions held strong for about 72 hours. Ed left for a six week job a few days after we moved in, at which point I decided to paint the aforementioned creepy-bedroom-with-a-sink-in-the-closet. I felt like that project was a success. For one, I had apparently rid the room of any ghosts, and two, I had a fairly presentable home office. Until we realized the room was about 15 degrees colder than any other in the house. Our dining room table became home to any and all projects we were working on, and eventually both of got a little tired of eating dinner surrounded in x-acto blades and vellum.
The third floor was basically a dead zone for the first few months we were here. I blame this, in part, in my only having lived in cramped apartments for most of my adult life. The idea of having three floors to roam around on was overwhelming enough that I pretended the top floor didn’t exist. The front room held a few half filled ikea bookshelves, various video game systems, and a two half broken televisions. We moved in a few folding table and moved our “work” set up from the dining room to neglected game room. Eventually, the post-it note green walls broke my spirit enough to make me forget how much I hate painting and we started on major room renovation #2.
