Tag Archives: home office

List-O-Mania

I don’t know about you, but I love making lists. In the Notes app on my iPhone. Especially when Tom & I are driving to work (we carpool; he drives), running errands, or in those moments when I can’t fall asleep because I have too many thoughts running through my head. During our 13 hour car ride back from Florida, I made a lot of lists. Tom gets carsick if he’s not driving, so he drove the ENTIRE 750 miles home. And I spent those miles reading the September issue of HGTV magazine, and coming up with countless ideas and projects for our house. The best way that I could think of to soothe my racing mind was to create room-by-room lists.

I am sharing these with you in an effort to help 1.) Turn some of these ideas into reality. Decorating is like dieting. If you tell people what your goals are, you’re more likely to follow through and stick to it. Right?? 2.) Have a back-up, just in case I lose my iPhone or accidentally hit delete!

Obviously, there are more rooms in our house than are listed here. But I’m starting with the ones that seem reasonable and realistic.

Family Room:

– Gallery wall above small bookshelf; maybe small wall of photos between TV and stairs (MUST make progress on this soon! I should probably give myself a deadline…)

– Add a basket/something to stash pillows and throws

– Buy a rug for the corner where the piano will go

– Have piano moved from my parent’s house

– Accent table needed between cream leather occasional chairs

– Paint! (this is on the books for early 2013!!)

– Crown molding

– Frame out windows or build cornice boxes

– Eventually… would love a pouf! And a new coffee table and end table

 

Kitchen:

– Add a tile backsplash

– Paint!! (also early 2013)

– Install under-cabinet lighting

– Crown molding

– Considering a fun, modern wall-paper on the wall underneath our island, that faces our family room

– Eventually… would love custom blown-glass pendant lights.

 

Master Bedroom:

– Dressing table and chair

– Armchair (and ottoman?)

– New bedding

– Art / photos for walls

– New lamps for our nightstands

– Crown molding?

– Custom closet system

 

Library/Office:

– Built-in shelving and window seat

– Window seat cushion and pillows

– Frame out window

– Crown molding

– New desk & desk chair

– Hang art

– Feature wall for quilts (my mom is a quilter; she’s made me some cute, sentimental and “inside joke” quilts over the years and I need a way to display them!)


Now, the fun part will be seeing how many of these we can actually accomplish! Is it silly to admit that I’m nervous?!!?

 

House Tour – Part 3

Hope everyone is having a wonderful Saturday. It’s very hot here in southwestern Ohio, so it seemed like a good day to stay inside and finish our home tour! We’ve covered the first floor, now it’s on to the second!

At the top of the stairs, we have a “bonus” room, or a game room, as it was called on the floorplan brochure. We have yet to play games in it, though. Right now, it’s largely empty, with the exception of an elliptical, some free weights, a balance ball, and a bookshelf. So I guess you could say it’s a workout room. We’re planning on moving all of our workout equipment to the basement eventually, but for now, it does a nice job of filling up one corner of this room!

Across from the bonus room is Tom’s office. I would bet that this room will never get decorated unless I decide it needs to be done, haha! Although, Tom did hang his diploma on the wall already!

Then we have two completely empty bedrooms. I didn’t bother taking pictures of those, since there’s nothing to see! There’s a hall bathroom for the bedrooms to share, and then our laundry room (yes! on the second floor! it’s amazing!)

And at the end of the hallway is the master bedroom.

We have a walk-in closet that I’m pretty sure we could fit a bed into if we needed to! There’s a lot that we could do with this space someday. Custom closet system, anyone?

We each have our own vanity in the bathroom. Initially, I thought it was strange that the soaking tub bisected the sink area. But now that we’re moved in, I really like this layout – we don’t clutter up each other’s space with hair, toothpaste, etc.

We also have a full basement. It looks like a typical basement right now, full of concrete, bad lighting, boxes and dead bugs. Maybe someday, in 10 years, we’ll finish it off!

Just to round it all out, or to give you a better sense of the layout, here’s a snapshot of our floorplan. It’s not 100% accurate – the game room dimensions are the same as the family room beneath it, but this should give you a sense of the flow of our home!

First Floor

Second Floor

And that does it for our Home Tour! We have so many cool ideas, we barely know where to start. I think I’m going to start a tradition of doing a virtual home tour every year to see how each room will change and evolve as we settle in and start a family – and as our decorating tastes change, too!

House Tour: Part 1

I guess it’s about time for a house tour, right? Since everything is better / makes more sense with pictures? Well, here are a few pics to get things rolling!

First things first – the exterior! (which you’re probably tired of seeing given all of my outdoorsy photos)

Once inside the front door, you have a straight-shot view to the back of our house / family room.

To the right is the “formal dining room.” Or at least, it will be someday when we finally treat ourselves blow our life savings on a dining set. There’s not much to see here. Just our “mini bar” and some knick-knackery.

To the left is my library / office / study, i.e. The Room I Dream About Daily. Again, not a ton to see here yet, but it’s in better shape than the dining room. At least it contains a desk and a reading chair that I can actually sit at and work / sit in to read a book. We’re planning to install built-ins to the left of the window, along with a picturesque window seat (in order to maximize book-reading nooks in this room). Not sure if my desk will stay against the opposite wall or not. I’m open to layout suggestions!

That’s all for now! Mainly because 1) the evening light is messing up pictures of the family room / kitchen and 2) my kitchen is a mess and by the time I get it cleaned, I won’t have the benefit of natural light (I know, that’s a poor excuse.)

**Note: Let’s call this a preliminary house tour, mainly because I think it’s becoming more evident that I need to take photos with a real camera and not my iPhone, haha! Stay tuned for more house, and (hopefully) better photos!

Bright Ideas

By far, the room that I’m most excited to decorate and finish out is my office/study/library. And while I wait for the beautiful built-ins that Tom & I are planning, I keep myself busy searching for the smaller items, like light fixtures, a reading chair, a writing desk, etc.

First up – the light fixture! We had the builder rough-in electric in the ceiling, but wanted to pick out a more unique fixture than the builder offered. At first, the selection process seemed like a no-brainer. We already had a funky Ikea Kryssbo fixture that we never put up in our condo, and I immediately thought it would look super cool in my office.

Ikea Kryssbo Pendant

The good part? It was easy to assemble and install, and it gave the room a fun modern feel. The bad part? It tripped our circuit breaker. Apparently we have the latest up-to-code breaker faults in our circuit breaker box. Which, we learned, are super-sensitive. And the built-in transformer will trip the breakers every. single. time. So, the Ikea fixture came down, and the search was on for a new one.

I have been really drawn to the pendant lights with drum shades lately. And since we already have a nice dining room and kitchen fixture, I thought it would be fun to try a pendant drum in an office. We scoped out Lowe’s, Home Depot, Amazon and Overstock.com without much luck. My criteria for a light/shade included:

– affordable (no more than $200)

– neutral

– provide enough light so I can comfortably read or work without squinting (post-Ikea failure, we decided that fixture wasn’t bright enough, anyway)

I was originally drawn to this patterned fabric shade from Amazon.com:

Floral Fabric Shade

but wanted something with more pizazz.

I considered a more glamorous option:

Crystal Pendant with Black Organza Shade

but this was too much pizazz.

Then, One day at Lowe’s, we decided to check out the lighting section for kicks – and there it was! Simple yet detailed, contemporary but not too modern. And the best part? Only $99!

Chrome Pendant Light