office reveal…

I’ve been promising this one for quite a while. For so long, in fact, that I don’t even have any kind of supply list or price total for you. But Here it is at long last… the reveal of my new grey office. Which totally is not done.

And um, might have looked a bit better before, colorwise (as long as you didn’t pay too close of attention to the paint job).

But I really, badly, wanted a grey room in my house. I even tried to paint our extra bedroom grey, but it turned out quite blue. This was because of my fear of a pink/purple or yellow/orange/beige tone creeping in to the grey. I was so afraid of those tones that I swung widely blue when picking out the color for the extra bedroom. I decided–with my office–that I would achieve a true grey this time. I think I did, too. I just didn’t take in to account how funny it would look with golden floors, blonde furniture, and red-toned, mismatched trim and woodwork. Yeah, whoops.

But it’s done, it’s a good paint job (unlike the tan, which was a nice color but terribly done), and we actually painted it twice to achieve a likable color. (I painted it once, then Mr. N painted it for me the second time, isn’t he nice??) I also brought in a grey rug to help solidify the greyness of the walls.

I’ll tell you more after the pictures, but as you’re looking, can you tell me what you think I should do with the sheers? The curtain rods and sheers were already there. I added the shades because I felt that they tied the various woods in the room together and still let in light, while also providing privacy (this side of the house looks right at the neighbors’ large living room window and kitchen window). Anyway, contemplate the sheers while checking this out.

Without further delay, here are the pictures. Before:

After:

The paint color we eventually went with was Warm Chinchilla, by Valspar.

See my little ‘key’ fan pull? Clearance rack on an endcap at Lowes.

I also changed both of these doorknobs from gold to oil-rubbed bronze styles. (I wrote about the knobs at The Fix-Its Blog, too.)

Here’s that curtain issue: keep the sheers or ditch them (and just change the curtain rods)?

So I’m not in love with this color for *this* room (due to the woodwork), but it’s fine. …And I now know I don’t want to paint our kitchen that color; I mistakenly thought a cooler neutral tone would tone down the mismatched wood in the room. WRONG. Kitchen–when I paint it–will probably be our home’s good old standby: Churchill Hotel Wheat. (But this grey is a great one in that it does not seem to contain many off-color tones!)

• I am missing some art (I have ideas but nothing is printed/framed), and I need additional (or different) storage for some items including the printer. The skinny console table currently doing that job is neither big enough or the right color for the room. (Nothing is really the right color for the room though.)
• I am also missing a decent desk (the former printer table is fulfilling that function for me right now). My old desk was lovely, but I couldn’t fit my chair or my long legs under it. It was uncomfortable to work at, to say the least. I need to be able to do my school work at my desk, and I can’t do that when my desk is uncomfortable. So when my new computer arrived, Mr. N and I did some rearranging. The printer table is a temporary solution until I find something better, but it is more comfortable and taller than the old desk. I also (surprisingly) really like the open-air style of the bottom of it. It makes the room feel much bigger; the old desk was a very substantial piece of furniture that now resides in a different room in our home (I’ll blog about that later).
• More art will be hung and a desk will be found. For now though, this is my office.
• What do you think of the sheers? Keep? Take them down? Help me. Does it look classy? Or does it look like I was too lazy to take my sheers down after hanging the shades? (I’m not used to having a shade/blind. Generally, I hang panels.)

For this room, I bought…

• 3 gallons of paint (because we repainted to get the color right), Lowes
• Two doorknobs (one locking), Lowes
• Bamboo roman shades, Overstock.com
• Grey chenille rug (a.k.a. the cat-hair nightmare) and rug pad, Overstock.com
• 4 stacking, folding bookshelves, OfficeDepot.com
• Novelty ‘key’ fan pull from the clearance shelf, Lowes

I no longer have my receipts for this stuff, but I think it’s safe to say I spent around $350 on the room. The bookshelves were the most expensive thing; I bought them to match one I had in our basement (which I moved to this room; DVDs are haphazardly stacked on my sewing table until I find them a new storage solution). They were around $60 each, I believe. (I chose folding bookshelves because I wanted something that wouldn’t be a huge pain in the butt when we move again! Folding furniture RULES.)

I was going to also use this post to tell you about my new computer, seen on the desk in the after photos. I think I’ve written enough though, so I will tell you about that later!

So that is THAT. What do you think about my crazy multi-wooded room? What color would *you* have painted it? Also, how about those sheers??