A new office!

Paul has the wonderful opportunity through his work to work from home 2 days a week. The only problem with that is we don't have an official "office" space for him. We set up a desk behind our bed, but the kids come in and want to watch tv lying in our bed, or just ask questions - they don't see it as a 'work space'. Another problem with our open concept house is there is no good homework location for the kids. 4 kids means a lot of comings and goings and TV's and video games and friends and LOTS of distractions.

We have a 'front room' in our house beside our entrance that was pretty much just for show. This is the only good picture I have of the half wall from that room.

What a cute model eh?

So basically wasted space. So step one of "new office project" close up that room and make it a closed in office!

Oh that's so exciting!!!

But now look inside - this is what we were working with!

The space was disorganized and dreary drab! I wasn't going to spend all this time and money to have a dreary drab office. So enter Pinterest! Here was my inspiration:

So off to Ikea we went. I liked these:

...but they were a bit rickety and for the price I didn't feel like it was worth it.

So enter Kijiji! I lined up some units for $300 but then the guy decided he wanted to keep them! :( So back to the drawing board. Then I found these:

I was thinking I could paint them. And these were only $100!! Enter in Annie Sloan chalk paint. WOW. My advice is next time you do your FIRST painting project - START SMALL!!

But after the first unit was painted I was sold!!

So are you anxious to see the big reveal??

Here it is!!

I'm SOOOO happy with it!!! And so is Paul!!!!

I even got creative and lined the drawers and made desk blotters with some left over wallpaper.

I'll post more about the chalk paint process another time - but what do you think about our before and after?!

BEFORE:

AFTER: