Silver Lining Decor: July 2012

Last week I casually mentioned to my husband that we should turn one of our unused spare bedrooms into a studio/office space for me. We currently had our office in a tiny upstairs bedroom that served as my shipping station, but nothing else really went on in there. Much to my delight, before I could get the words out of my mouth my husband said "Yes!". So that night we were purging unwanted stuff and swapping furniture up and down the stairs.

We were able to reuse most everything we had. I kept the window treatments and paint color from the previous bedroom setup because we've only been in this house for 4 years so I still loved those aspects of the room. We then had to come up with a budget friendly desk idea. I wanted something with lots of storage and lots of counter space to spread out. Off to our local hardware store we went for ideas! We came across some discounted unfinished kitchen cabinets. Score! Now for the counter top. We looked into having white Formica counters made but that really didn't fit into the shoestring budget we had in mind. Instead, we decided on inexpensive hollow core doors. They were the perfect depth for our kitchen cabinets and at $19 each we felt like geniuses for coming up with this idea!

This room gets great lighting in the morning but I can't seem to get it to photograph really well. Anyway, our budget friendly desk in all it's glory! If you are a fan on Facebook, you have already seen little snippets of the room. Now you can see what I had planned for those open frames. I wanted to display some of my jewelry in a fun way. I had thought of pegboard inside the frames, but am really not a huge fan of pegboard. So instead I went with a cool radiator grill. It has a little clover cutout rather than the plain old circle pegboard. This is one of my favorite features of the room. The two oval frames were vintage Syroco mirrors I had packed away in a closet for a long time now. I opted to keep one as a mirror for a little bit of interest on the wall. A fresh coat of white paint on them and they are perfection in my eyes!

The shelves are mounted high so as not to get in the way of my counter space. They are purely decorative right now, but I'm sure as I grow into the space and see how I will ultimately use it, they will be much needed storage. I like the clean look of the floating shelves.

There is an empty space in the corner next to the shelves that I plan on making a jewelry rack using decorative knobs mounted on a piece a wood. A small detail that I'll get to eventually.

I'm looking forward to creating in this space. Now all that's left to do is to move all of my beads and supplies in and get to work! I couldn't have done any of this without my amazing husband :) He is so incredibly supportive and I am so thankful to have a man like him in my life.