Writing this from my new office space!

Phase One of the office facelift was completed this afternoon. John and I settled in at about 10:00 to start in on our three builds. We had completed two of them by 2:00: the wide bookcase and my desk. The narrower bookcase will have to wait until next weekend for two reasons, but hold that thought.

You'll remember we bought furniture last week (Hemnes bookcases--small and large--and the coordinating Hemnes desk; plus this Ingolf chair, which came with a seat cushion--I totally scored the chair from the as-is clearance room!), which then lived in our hallway for the week. On Friday night we cleared and painted (Sea Pine by Benjamin Moore). We had a lot of talk about the birdie wall. Initially, I loved it and John couldn't wait to paint over it. Then John slowly grew to love it and I got less attached. Then, as the office design started to come together in a charming way, I liked the idea more and more that the trees and birds would peek out over my desk. So they stayed.

Also, we hit a minor design speedbump at IKEA when they had the desk and chair in white, but the bookcases we needed were sold out in the white finish. Faced with having wasted $100 on a UHaul (the bookcases were too large for even friends' SUVs/trucks) and making a return trip for the exact ones we wanted, I said, "Stop, collaborate, and listen," and decided to get the bookcases in the brown-black finish. I was nervous about the darker tones, but then again, our bedroom is a bit moodier than the airy downstairs and we love how cozy it feels, plus we keep it light with crisp white accents. That's what we're employing in the office as well.

This was the initial vision:

But this is the final product (of course, the actual wall behind the desk is the mural, but I wanted to see how the paint looked with the darker finish on the bookcases:

Assembly, for the most part, went as well as you'd expect when the instructions are a bunch of terrible illustrations with no words. After lots of head-scratching, some cursing, and finally victory, we had two gorgeous finished pieces.

Then the wah-wah. My pre-install measurements said we'd have an inch of wiggle room on the wall based on the claimed dimensions of the finished pieces (I even rounded up to the nearest full inch, giving us a little extra to spare. But alas, the large bookcase and desk take up pretty much the entire wall, with no room for the skinny bookcase. So again...some head scratching. What we will do over the course of this week is to put John's side of the office back together and then assemble the narrower bookcase and house it on his half. We can then shuffle the rest of John's furniture to get it all in.

So we're still very much in flux, and the guest room, while emptier, is still babysitting a lot of crap to be loaded into the office here.

But--but!--it is a much happier space! I will just wander in here and stare. Here is the pictorial journey:

Sea Pine: you know how we roll!

Sea Pine on the left with the inherited mural on the right.

Hammy, as usual, offering his own brand of help and supervision.

The desk build was a study in hinges! It was actually much simpler than we worried about. John very intuitively figured it out, so I was gratefeul to sit back while he snapped it all together.

These are the hinges for the doors to the lower cabinet part.

Then there were these horseshoe-type hinges to allow the lid of the secretary desk to open and close.

These are the knobs the desk came with, which are cute and provide a nice contrast.

But I remembered I had extra knobs from the bathroom cabinet re-do, so I did a quick swap-out!

And though they don't contrast, I love the personality they bring.

 Finally, we have the sort-of finished and styled products:

More to come as we continue working in here, but I'm calling these a 90% improvement already!

Still on my radar:

Of course, re-configure and load in John's side (it's still a mess, so it's not pictured here yet!)
Get a goose-neck lamp for the top of my desk for in-between light when I don't want the overheard
Get some light white curtains to hang on the window
Hang up art and stuff to punch up the personality

And here's where we started and where we are at a quick glance:

Ahhhhhh! The chaos!!!