Look at that glorious site: a young professional, hard at work and looking oh so dashing in his new office chair. My husband may or may not have deleted this photo so I wouldn’t post it, but that’s beside the point. We finally purchased a new chair for our home office and I think this picture speaks volumes for how much this chair was needed. Just look at that comfort and pleasant working environment!
As you all are well aware, our previous office chair was a piece o’ crap – to put it mildly. Since my husband is now a full-time work-from-home type, we took the plunge and purchased a much nicer chair to support his back and derriere for the long work week. After much consideration, we decided that this office chair was the perfect mix of classic design and affordability. We decided to put a bit more money into this purchase since it is something that will hopefully last a very long time, due to its quality and design.
Just look at those sweet chrome details! We opted not to add the sleek chrome arms on at this point since Scott is a “lounge worker” – meaning, he likes to prop his legs up and sit in all sorts of awkward positions all day. The beauty of this chair is that it looks just dandy with or without the arms – bonus!
My favorite detail of this chair is the horizontal bar along the back, that closely mimics the classic Eames design. Plus its easy to move the chair around without getting greasy fingers on the snazzy leatha.
So our winter project is still going well into Spring and we’re not quite to the finish line yet. But this chair puts us just a few yards out of the finish line and we’re super excited with the end result. Scott said “it’s so comfortable” after his first day, so I consider that a win win. Thoughts on the new chair?
These striped curtains from 
Care to share your thoughts on the curtain options? I’m not 100% on the striped look (when am I ever 100% on anything house related?) but I’d love to hear what the blog world thinks and hopefully help in my decision-making. Poll time – go!
Oh, the horror. Yes internet, you have now gotten a glimpse into our sad little office that we close the door to when guests come over. The old school table I 
The other side of the office is even more sad, if you can believe it. We have some wall space that isn’t being utilized to its full potential, and some hand-me-down storage that just isn’t making the cut. So what to do? Enter, our winter project idea collage.
Scott and I love the rich browns we have rocking in this space, but this room needs some colors to brighten things up a bit. Also, Scott works from home about 3 days a week and spends all day in this room, so the organization needs to be pumped up. I’m not completely sold on this collage, but it’s at least a good starting point while we work our way to a more functional and pleasing home office.
Meet my sad little chair. Old girl has been with me since college, when I found her at a flea market and slapped some royal blue paint and cheap-o yellow fabric on her seat. Since neither of these colors plays a big part in my current abode, I felt the need to give her some new clothes and dress her up a bit so she didn’t feel out of place next to our new 
The demolition of the chair fabric was probably the hardest part, but once I got started it went along pretty quickly. I made sure to keep the fabric in one piece so I could use it as a template for the new seat fabric, once I gave this girl a fresh coat of white paint.
For this paint job, I decided to forgo my paintbrush, and pick up some semi-gloss white spray paint from my local hardware store. With the little details on the legs and the canning on the barrel back, spray paint was the way to go. Just be sure to do this outdoors in a well ventilated area and away from anything that you might not want bits of white paint to get on (including yourself, or your dog).
After my paint dried, I laid out my new fabric (I decided to go with a 
Once I finagled the fabric around the legs and shape of the seat, I started nailing it into place, starting at the parts that were the loosest and hardest to get taught. Believe it or not, I got this tip from my husband, who helped a friend upholster a seat cushion on this boat – who knew? I pulled the fabric down pretty tight at each nail spot, and worked my way around the chair – a few nails at each chair leg, and then at the leg diagonal to that, and so forth. I learned it was best to not start nailing at one space and work your way all around clockwise, since you’re constantly pulling and tweaking to make sure the seat is tight. After my nailing was completed and I had used a screw driver to help me really jam those suckers in there, I cut off the excess fabric and hot glued my trim piece over the nail heads.
And voila! After a couple of afternoons worth of work, my sad chair had its much needed facelift. I love how the new fabric is basically different shades of neutral gray, but with a few great pops of yellowy greens. Along with the white paint, it was the fresh start that my old chair certainly needed.
Plus, with one yard of fabric only putting me back $17.00 (on sale!), a trim piece for $3.00 and $3.00 for spray paint, this project was not even 25 buckaroos. A new chair would have put me back at least $100, so I’m pretty happy with my little weekend makeover. What do you think?
Here’s our sad little chair, filling the void of our newly acquired office corner. It has a curved, canned back with an upholstered seat (the picture isn’t the best, but I don’t feel like getting off of the couch to take another one – yay for lazy Saturday!). I’ve had this chair since sophomore year of college, when I moved into a white on white apartment and had the urge to pop some color into the space in my early decorating days. I make a bedskirt and pillow, all in bright golds, greens and turquoise, and paired them with this cheapo chair my Mom and I found at an antique store. We painted it royal blue and threw on some gold fabric to go with my uber colorful new bedding. That would have made quite a nice little blog post, eh? Anywho, this chair no longer fits into our decor and I’d like to make it a bit more 2009. I recently stumbled upon this picture on a blog called
So during our lazy Saturday (which turned into a day of Panera and getting new cell phones), I popped into Calico Corners to see if I could find some inspiration. And by golly, I just may have.
This picture is a bit off from reality, but let me paint you a pretty little picture. The print is fairly large scale, so I would just get a little taste of the yellow. The gray is a nice cool color and the white in the leaves is actually super white so the fabric has a lot of yummy contrast. The little bit of yellow will also go nicely with the yellow 
Here is a very obviously photoshopped before shot of the office corner where Charlie’s sweet pad resided. I was too excited with this clunker’s demise that I wasn’t in true blogger form – and forgot the before shot. The shame! But this doctored version should give you a sense of the square footage that this dog crate used.
And here is the very exciting, but very sad after. Look at the amount of space we now have in our office! I stuck an old side chair from college in the corner for now, but I’m thinking that something big needs to happen in this space. Should we totally rearrange our office to feel more spread out? What about a nice lounge chair and ottoman for some quality hang time while Scott browses the internet? Or, what about a craft corner? This is my personal favorite – a small scale desk top and some storage for all of my letter writing/gift wrapping/DIY craft needs. Thoughts? Weigh in on the newly acquired space!
I found a great glass lamp base at Target (for a great price, naturally) and knew that I wanted a nice modern shade to go along with it. I was itching for a sleek drum shade, but had to settle for the next best thing – a semi drum shade. Somehow, I found a semi-drum, semi-bell shade at Target, and the price was just right. I made sure to buy a shade that was paper so I could work my magic and dye the shade just the right shade of yellow.
Say hello that the old standby, RIT dye. Remember these guys from the good ol’ days of 3rd grade tie-dyed tshirts? I figured if I can’t find a yellow lamp shade, I may as well attempt to make one on my own. I thought about covering a shade in fabric, but I didn’t want to take away from the opacity of the shade. I didn’t have the means to completely submerge the lamp shade in a vat of dye, so I poured some dye into a big pasta pot (bowling hot water I might add) and sponged the dye over the lampshade until I reached the correct hue of awesome yellow. Be sure to wear rubber gloves when you deal with this dye – they don’t call it dye for nothing.
And voile! A perfect shade of yellow, all for the cost of a cheap-o paper shade and some $.99 RIT dye. Our new yellow shade is the perfect accent in our man cave/home office, and definitely brightens up our deep wall color. Any home projects you’re dye-ing to share (ooo lame… but I couldn’t resist!)?
