I don’t have any great pictures of my office before (I know, bad blogger). But here are a couple that might give you an idea of what I was working with.

On this wall we have a ton of books. A TON. Three bookcases crammed full of books. We might have a book hoarding problem. I’m slowly but surely going through all of them and getting rid of quite a few, which is really hard for us to do, by the way. Does anyone else have a book problem? Am I the only one?

Over here, we have a way too big L-shaped desk, a ton of clutter and a big, but comfy, white chair and ottoman. Downsizing to a smaller but still functional desk and moving the chair so that everything fit in the space better is one of my priorities.

So, one of the things I want to accomplish in this room is maximizing the space I have and introducing more storage solutions for all my office and crafting, sewing, DIY-ing crap that has heretofore been stuffed in the guest room closet. I decided that since there was no closet in this room, I needed a small cabinet or buffet with plenty of storage space. As usual, I started scouring Craigslist and local thrift and antique stores for the perfect cabinet.

And wouldn’t you know it, I found a buffet. At the Salvation Army. For $85. And it was already painted white (although not perfectly done, so I’ll have to re-paint it at some point).

It was the perfect size for the space and offered three small drawers, one long drawer and two cabinet spaces. Perfect!

This is the buffet in its new home where the wall of books used to be. I also moved the white chair into the corner beside the buffet and took out the too-big ottoman. I found a great table lamp on sale at TJ Maxx, along with fun little horse head sculpture. I got the vintage type fan at Target (the room gets really hot in the summer). It’s a nice little piece, yes? I’m pleased with it. But the wall above it needed a little something.

Several months ago I scored a fabulous book of Audubon bird prints from an estate sale. Twenty-five prints for $10! I have been wanting to frame some of them for a while now so I figured this was a great opportunity to pick out my favorites.

I narrowed down the prints to my absolute faves and grabbed four 11X14 black frames I snagged at Ross and within 5 minutes, I had free art!

Then, since I was feeling all crafty, I whipped together some new pillow covers for the white “reading” chair and this is what this corner of the room looks like now:

Not too shabby, eh? I think it’s a good start. Now I’ve just got to tackle my mountain of books and downsize my desk and stencil the walls…

It never ends, does it?

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