A Room of My Own....

When Aaron and I were thinking of buying our current house, the biggest drawback I had was that there was no downstairs office area. After looking more closely at the downstairs layout, I decided to build my own home office by separating the 32 foot long master bedroom. I also wanted to create a space that had a door, in case I needed a nursery.

Bedroom: Before Picture. Notice crazy pumpkin color.

We ripped up the carpet and threw up this wall to separate the spaces. I painted my bedroom an aged ivory color (upcoming post) and my office a dark chocolate brown color. My home in California has a library with dark cork walls, and part of me has always wanted a room with that type of feeling...

I ended up with a 16.5 x18 Bedroom and a 14x13 Office.

While in California this summer, I saw a shelving unit at IKEA that far surpassed anything I had seen before. I took a picture of it, and promptly came home to tell Aaron we had a project to begin!

Construction: This part of the story should really be a separate "Ode to Aaron" post. He drove 3.5 hrs. to Charlotte (in North Carolina) and spent 3 more hours with the IKEA employees picking out all the components we had designed together and laying out the lighting.

It began raining before he left the store, so he bought a $2 shower curtain to cover the boxes and drove 3.5 hours home!

We started building everything together, piece by piece the next week. There were 8 bookshelves in various sizes to build and 8 extension units. Aaron and I actually like doing these projects together.....I felt like a "Construction nurse" prepping the pieces and anticipating the steps while Aaron was the "Construction Dr." with power tools and muscles. It's fun to work as a team once in awhile ;)

Key: Here you can see a small view of RON our cabinet installer. One key to getting a unit like this to look as good as it does in the store is to get a professional to install it. Ron took off the baseboard so the unit would sit flush to the wall, and used clamps and drywall screws to connect the components.

Design element. In this picture you can see I took a smaller "CD holder" shelf between the two main shelves to break up the closed bookshelves and lined it with different glass vases. Now when the girls bring me shells from the ocean, they separate them out and add them to the collection! They love putting something in mommy's special shelves, and I love that shells aren't scattered around my house....

Windows: The windows were a project by themselves! First off, since I wanted both curtains and sheers, I had to figure out how to get a double rod that connected in a bay window. The best place to do this, is.....surprisingly... JCPENNY.

Curtains: The windows are big and beautiful, but let in SOOO much light in the morning that it got too hot in the summer, and too cold in the winter. The angels planted these chocolate thermal lined silk blend panels AT 10FT. LONG for $45.00 each at JC PENNY.....a real find considering retailers jack up the price exponentially once a curtain reaches 10 feet. These thermal ones keep out the cold and the heat and look amazing and cozy at night. I also put in cream sheers on a smaller rod behind to filter the light in the day...

Upholstery: Luckily I already had the couch and ottoman. I bought them both years ago while shopping with a designer at a Ralph Lauren outlet in High Point and have used them in many different rooms. I wanted to bring in a chinese blue/turquoise color and play down the green, so I found these pillows at Anthropologie (just kidding, home goods). After much research I bought the cream leather office chair at Office Max. It's just about the most comfortable office chair around! The problem is, whenever anyone else comes in my room, they race to sit in it!

The tiger striped wood desk I found at HomeGoods. I'm so glad that store is down the street from me. I'm there so much that I'm now on a first name basis with the employees.

Shelves: It was somewhat of a process to decorate the shelves. I'm not done, but wanted to post the pictures nonetheless. It's always harder to put together meaningful bits and pieces you've collected through the years into one space because they often end up looking dated. A lot of the things from the shelves had been in storage for 3 years, and in the meantime, my taste had changed.

Frames: I decided to take the majority of my disparate frames and paint them one color. I took a throw pillow to Shermin Williams and had them color match the blue. I painted the frames, then "shabbied them up" by sanding them back down. It was just what I needed to unify the shelves and update things without having to buy everything new.

Grouping: I grouped all my interests on different shelves (parenting books, church books, design books, self-help, historical books, novels, etc.

Favorite Element: Ikea has these silver metal bands which can turn any shelf into a slanted shelf (seebelow). I have 4 slanted shelves which hold my "current projects, current notebooks, journals and current books". I have for one for design, mothering, personal and current books. It's wonderful to put something "down" on the slanted shelves and have laid out before me, instead of hidden away on a shelf or sitting in piles on my desk.

It's crazy to see the "before" pictures--the space looks so much smaller when it was all one room. The genius of it is, because the office is technically beyond my bedroom, it's MY OFFICE, not the FAMILY COMPUTER ROOM. It's become my favorite place to ponder, plan, focus, create, and just BE.

I'm now convinced that every mother needs a room of their own....

What would yours look like??