Dining Nook Turned Office Nook

I'd mentioned that our dining nook attached to our kitchen has recently transitioned into our office. We're a long way from "finished" (am I ever "finished"?) but it's HUGE progress from where we started...

Here's what this space is looking like right now...

Here's where it was a few days before that picture was taken...

Junk.  Everywhere.

Like EVERYWHERE.

This post should really be titled, "Junk Nook Turned Office Nook" but let's pretend it had been used as a dining nook, ha!

The first and most major step of this transformation was with paint.  A good gallon of paint changes everything people.

I went with Benjamin Moore's Intense White - the same color we used in our living room.  Officially my new favorite.  It's just such a pretty, calming neutral, true grey.  Super pale and light - it reflects light beautifully, and despite it's name it is definitely GREY - not white.  After putting one coat on the walls, this space felt so much bigger and brighter.

The sage green was a decision my best friend and I had made together a few years ago when we lived here, and it was not one of our best decisions.  It was not bad per say, but with just two walls painted, it felt like an after-thought - especially when the rest of the room was a blah off-white.  

It was just too much contrast against everything else, and it ended up absorbing all the lovely natural light this room gets from all the windows.

A few weeks prior to re-painting, I'd hung some striped curtains right up at the ceiling.  That too made a world of difference in opening the space up.  Against the grey, the thin grey and white stripe fabric is so pretty and simple, and light.

We positioned this re-purposed desk in front of the windows, and while it may eventually move against the wall, this is the perfect example of up-cycling, and working with what you've got.

This desk was dead.  Beyond dead.

My best friend had inherited it from her parents and used it as a makeup table for years.  It had caked on makeup, spotty and chipped paint, and it was bad.

It was destined for the dumpster after my best friend moved out, but our of sheer laziness, it stayed in the apartment.  One night... I'm not entirely sure why... I broke out the sandpaper and the same can of paint that I'd used on our wine hutch.

20 minutes later, it was looking a million times better, and it narrowly missed it's grisly end at the dumps.  I WISH I could find a "before" picture of this desk, it was really REALLY bad.  If I can dig one up, I'll definitely be updating this post!!

I still want to add a pull to the drawer, and paint the back of the desk (you can see exposed in this picture) so that it blends in with everything else.  I mainly want to be sure it blends in, and right now the wood back sticks out like a sore thumb to me.

What else was added to this room??  

Um... a light!

Yep, this room was not wired for any overhead lighting.  Absurd.  Ikea just started selling this drum shade, and so I got that along with a cord kit, that can be wired into the wall.  It was super simple to put everything together, and after I anchored a mount to the ceiling, I got this bad boy hung.

Let there be light!!!

As I mentioned this space is a work in progress - I'm working on some art to hang up in here, and I still need to finish painting one of the walls (on the left) that runs the length of the kitchen into the breakfast nook (now office).

More (better) pictures will be included with those updates hopefully soon, but in the meantime, here is another picture from move in day...  a real "before" if you will:

And an updated picture from this afternoon:

So excited that this has turned into a pretty, calming, usable space.  We finally have a usable room!!!

I must also add that this space has been a pretty major revamp on a serious budget.  I've spent about $100 transforming it - the paint for the desk I already had, along with that wicker chair (another leftover from Kira), the rug (was in the dining room of our old apartment), the frames, the art, the curtain rods, and the accessories.

Here's what I bought: the wall paint (one gallon of BM eggshell paint) the curtains (another Ikea find) and the drum shade and light kit.  

I'm actually guessing I've spent closer to $80 so far... not bad, eh??