Before & After: Office

It's a new year and I'm finally ready to start doing some big reveals of the new house. This is big for me because we're not really at a true "after" stage … but I'm not quite sure when that after stage will be, so I'm embracing the moment and going with it.

Last week, I grabbed my camera and went to town photographing the house in it's current state. I have no idea if the photos would have been better at night, but at this point I'm dealing with it being imperfect because I'm finally posting something and sharing it with you lovely people.

I'm also realizing how few "before" pictures I have, but I think you get the picture: it was a new house, there were empty rooms, they looked pretty updated given it was a brand new house -- use your imagination.

The Office Before

So, as you can see these aren't really 100% before pictures as there's already some furniture in there. But it does show you the original paint, and the blank walls -- and my lovely use of boxes as decor. As I said, use those imaginations.

Before we hit the afters, there are a couple things still not done in the office. We still don't have curtains, I still want to replace the ceiling light with this beauty (I think … again with the indecisiveness), a new desk chair and we're still debating about window coverings on the smaller windows. I'd also really like to get a grass cloth wallpaper on the back wall in a dark greige -- but who knew that was so dang pricey? For now, I'll settle with paint. Aside from those small things we're mainly done.

The Office After

This is a great shot of looking into the office after walking in the front door. It also shows the freshly painted walls (we used Benjamin Moore Cape Hatteras Sands AC 34). It also shows how awesome curtains and a new light fixture will look. With our builder we elected to not add french doors to the office -- we were worried it would look too closed off as the entry hallway is fairly narrow. Looking back I think we'd still make the same decision, but I don't think it would look closed off, just a little more formal.

Moving around the room, here's a shot of the desk because why not. I definitely need a new chair to better match the colors in the room.

This is one of my favorite things in the room because I needed something big and cheap to cover a pretty big portion of wall. I ended up buying a  calendar of vintage posters from US states, a couple frames from Michaels and voila: vintage wall art.

A cozy chair and side table. Adding curtains will definitely help soften up the windows. However. we lucked out with an amazing blinds hook-up, and while you can't see it very well in this picture, were able to purchase Hunter Douglas Silhouette blinds for a majority of the house at 98% off retail. So even without curtains, the windows still look pretty good.

I love this old Subway print from Pottery Barn, I hate what's next to it. Any suggestions? Also, now that I'm looking at it, I think my OCD may be kicking in with it not being the same height as the wall cutout. My poor husband.

This is the wall I'd eventually like to wallpaper. It's the first thing you see walking into the house and I think it would make a great impact statement. I'd also like to get something for the left corner, but am torn on a couple items (and pretty broke at the moment).

So there you have it. Our big office reveal. I really love the way the room has come together and can't wait until we're able to make a couple small changes to really call the room done.