Pepper Design Blog

Office Makeover: Bookcases Under $300

While the future guestroom/office still looks like this (as soon as Olivia arrived we halted construction for a bit):

We’ve made tentative plans to resume renovation for the last week of March! Oh how I’ve been counting down the days. I’m working full time again and my dining room table loathes me and my bazillion piles of work. It’s an organizational nightmare – especially when we need the dining room to feed family and friends.

Since Kevin is a full time architecture student, much of the physical construction work revolves around his school schedule. When he has a break between quarters projects are finished in the blink of an eye, and then I get a good several months to mull over decorating ideas until the next big undertaking begins.

But now that we’re in countdown mode to finishing the office/guest bedroom AND beginning our brand new guest bathroom, there’s much happy dancing going on over here! And shopping. Because suddenly we are very much in need of a desk, bookshelf storage and a bed.

First up, bookshelves.

I love the look of French Baker’s Rack-style bookshelves. The variation in materials (especially the natural wood and metal contrast) compliments so many design styles and although it can be dangerous, open shelving is my favorite (forces you to be organized!).

These sets from Restoration Hardware are out of my league, but here are several options that fit the price and look:

I found most of my favorites at Home Decorators and World Market, two stores that consistently deliver quality products (usually taking cue from the trendier designer stores) at an affordable price. In fact, each of them had their own variation of this design:

Copy cats. World Market coming in just $30 under.

I love the bare Parsons look (such as the white bookcase above or the grey below) or the X detail of the French-inspired bookshelves (flanking the sides of the shelves or back).

If you’re on the hunt as well, Ballard Designs had several fantastic bookcases, but they all broke my $300 a piece budget.

Most of the above bookshelves came in between $99-$250! Great, right? Add to that a Googled coupon code for free shipping or 10% off and two bookshelves for either side of the new desk might be affordable after all. And there’s always Craigslist – I’ve searched for the last two weeks without finding the perfect fit but it usually is a great tool.

After finishing my desk hunt, I’ll start pairing options up and hopefully have something ordered this week.

Office Makeover: Inspirational Rooms

Progress on the new home office/guestroom has stalled a bit with all of the excitement over here. In fact, now that Olivia has arrived I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we’ll find the time to finish up this new space that we conveniently opened up just three weeks before her arrival.

Until then, I’m having plenty of fun dreaming up the design of the future multi-functional room.

The above room from BHG’s January issue fits in some of my favorite organizational ideas and I love how the wood and various metals work together. The below DecorPad rooms show off clean, well-designed office spaces that balance style and functionality.

I’d love to find a white desk similar to this version shown on the front page of the January issue of BHG, and how great are those beautiful linen, rattan and leather organizing binders and boxes?

More great examples of that perfect style-meets-function from Houzz and Ish & Chi.

And a few more from DecorPad.

I love the look of floor to ceiling bookcases as in the first room below – painting or wallpapering the back of them to mix it up would be a fun idea too. These examples of beautiful diy spaces are from Centsational Girl, Turquoise Design and House Beautiful.

Finally, I’ve been putting some thought into the bedroom end of the room as well. These examples of rooms in soft greys and blues would be soothing for the guestroom and complimentary to the adjoining office, which might use the same tones but in more saturated varieties and with more patterns. Rooms from Rue Magazine and BHG.

Hopefully we’ll get back to the building, plastering and hammering soon, but in the mean time I’ve begun the hunt for the perfect desk, bookshelves, bed… *sigh* and so on, and tracking down, salvaging or refurbishing each of these pieces on a serious budget will leave me plenty to do in the mean time.

Back to Craigslist I go! (what else is there to do at 2, 4 & 6am, anyhow?)

Office Makeover: Laying Out A Few Ideas

The new office/guestroom space is humming along and it’s about time to consider how we’ll organize this somewhat looong and narrow space. Since I hope to have it fulfill two very different functions (that of an organized and well-designed office as well as a comfy space for our guests to hang their hats) the narrow-ness (is that a word?) of the room might be a bonus in disguise.

But just to lay a little context to the gray & white diagrams below… here’s the spa-like color palette I’m mulling over at the moment:

We love dark, warm furniture (as you can tell from the rest of the house) but we’re playing with the idea of keeping everything white in this room… maybe.

Here’s the layout that has been floating around the back of my mind since day 1:

The day bed end of the room would be the bedroom and the desk end the office space. The off center french doors actually line up with the doors to our kitchen and the island, but it looks a bit odd in the diagram.

Of course a day bed isn’t exactly the comfiest option for couples spending the night – and we regularly have more than one guest (such as our parents, grandparents, friends with children) so here are two potential designs that would include a full bed.

Or:

The office space portion might change as we hunt down thrift store and Craigslist finds to fit the area, but this at least gives us a list to start exploring. Ideally we could track down a set of bookshelves and even create a ‘built-in’ look with molding for around the new desk.

The thought of creating a more natural partition between the two spaces has crossed my mind as well – perhaps an open bookshelf or fabric screen divider will find its way into the space, as long as it doesn’t compromise the little room we’re working with!

Oh the decisions… back to the drawing board we go.