Goodbye Old Living Room, Hello New Office

Thank you friends for all your condolences about Roscoe.  We are off to New York to visit my husband's family and the timing is a blessing.  The hardest time for our family is when we are at home.  Roscoe was always in the middle of all of our activities and now she isn't around. 
The change of scenery will do the family good.

So while we are gone I wanted to show you how I changed up our living room to make it into a more usuable space.   

Do you have a room designated as an office in your home? 
This has been the dilemma in our house since I let my daughter's have their own room.  Our home has three bedrooms.  When we split the girls up we lost the office/ TV room.  Since then the computer has been in my older daughter Casey's bedroom.  We turned the closet into a computer desk.  This hasn't been a great situation.  I wake her up if I'm on the computer really early in the morning or late at night.  If she needs to do homework and I need to work on the computer she has to move to her bed.

Here is the solution.  We made the living room into the office.  Not the best situation, but you got to work with what you have and  we rarely use this room.  Last Thanksgiving I coverted the living room into a dining room for the day.  We don't have a formal dining room either.  We were hosting dinner for our family and the weather wasn't cooperate for an outdoor event.   To see more Thanksgiving pictures go here.

On a day to day basis this room mostly functions as a passage way.  Going in and out of the front door and to get to the kid's bedrooms, but not much else.
 This is what it looked like before.  Brown, brown, and more brown.  I'm slowly getting rid of it.  There's Roscoe in the bottom right hand corner directing the photo session.  She always liked to help with whatever project I was into at the moment.

Here is how it's set up now.

  The concrete floors will stay this color, but everything else is slowely getting a face lift.

Most recently it looked like this while I was redoing Cami's room. 
Scary!

I just painted this table white.  It was brown and it matched the wood detail on the couch.  Next to get a makeover are the mirrors on the wall behind the couch.  I want to slip cover the couch too when I get the sewing bug again. 

I painted and made the pillow a few years ago.  It's just acrylic paint on duck cloth.

I added two wicker chairs across from the couch.  I found them on Craig's List for $20 for the pair.

 I pull them out the front door when we entertain in our outdoor room.

This is the view when you walk in the front door.

More shells, faux coral, and an orchid.

I moved the desk from my family room to this room and placed in front of the window.

It's difficult to photograph this room during the day because of the South facing windows.  I love looking out into the garden and seeing the humming birds visiting my flowers, but it doesn't make for good photos.

The only other new bought piece in the room is the new swagged light over the desk.  I purchased it for $20.  Sorry I didn't take a before picture.  I thought I did, but I can't find them?  It's another Restore find.  It had dated seventies etched glass panes covering each side of the fixture. 

 

I removed the glass and spray painted the light gold.

It needed some dimension so I gold leafed the whole thing. 

I'm a messy leafer.

I added some beads and faux pearls to each hole left from removing the glass.

Me trying to be artsy.



It's on a dimmer but again I'm not a great photographer.  Here's the desk before my husband helped me move the computer.  I lived with it like this for a while to make sure I would like it before taking the time and effort to move the computer out to this room.

Here you can see where I attached the beading wire into the holes left from removing the dated etched glass.

While having the computer in my living room isn't ideal, it's working out great so far.  Because the computer desk is dark and the computer is black they kind of blend into one another.  Your eyes are drawn to the white round table in the middle of the room first.  At least that's what I tell myself.

Where is your computer?  Do you have a gorgeous office to work in?  Or are you like me, gratefully making due with the space you have.

I would love to hear about it.

Thanks for checking it out.