after the "before" but before the "after"

sooooo tired tonight.  out of the blue saturday morning Josh got serious about redecorating the office, and I was not about to let that moment pass me by!  so this was the state of our shared desk space...

yea, pretty terrible.  we were each using half of his old formica dining table as a desk, and it wasn't working for either of us.  Josh wanted more privacy to concentrate on his writing, and I needed a bigger, more flexible workspace that could be used for multiple kinds of projects.  don't even get me started on the printers sitting on uhaul boxes under the table...

then there's the red chair in the right corner....we'll leave that for another post.

anyway so I measured the room and spent most of saturday making plans...moving little paper furniture around and seeing what fits...kinda like junior high home ec!

then this morning it was off to Ikea, right when they opened!  then back home to dismantle the formica table, then off to Goodwill with a truck full of old crap, then back home to put new crap together, then cursing and crying when I realized my careful planning had not gone totally perfectly, then BACK to Ikea, this time at 3pm on a weekend, to stand in the RETURNS line, which is basically voluntarily sentencing yourself to 2 hours of total misery, then back home again to finish putting everything together.

soooo, after all that... the room still looks pretty insane!  but I see potential now, Josh is already happy in his little writing den, and we have forward momentum.  which is the most important thing of all.  here's a sneak peek...

see, still pretty messy!  you'd think after all that there would be some impressive "after" photos, but this is real life people.  after photos don't really happen in the blink of an eye, unless you have some team of underpaid PAs running around doing all the work, while you just look cute on camera.

the list of things to do before the "after" is lengthy...new paint (should have done that before the furniture was built, I know), new window treatment, new desk chairs, cute area rugs, new corkboard... and books and knick knacks and art on the walls.

ugghhhh now I remember why it's been 6 months since we moved in and the office is still a mess.

to be continued...