DIY Desk and Study/Dining Room Swap

You may have noticed that I haven't been posting as often as I was. It's been a combination of things, Desana has started waking up at 4am and not wanting to go back to sleep so unfortunately I've been a bit too run down to pull together anything coherent. In addition to that, I was finally able to talk Matt in to making big changes to our living space, but our house has been in a bit of a state of upheaval.

About three weeks ago I shared our dining room space with you as my design dilemna. It was crowded and orange and I was really unhappy with it.

I'd been reading and hearing a common message from a lot of different sources. Why do we only turn our houses in to something we love when we are trying to sell them? Why do we put up with our houses not functioning?

I've shared with you that I think we will probably be in this house for a few more years, so we might as well make it work for us now. We've been here for six years, with things the way they were. In order to make it work for us, here are the changes we've made.

We painted the orange wall PURPLE and built a large wall-to-wall desk for two (roughly $80 with LOADS of leftover material).

It's still a bit of a work in progress, but such is life. If I waited until it was perfect to show you, that day would never come. I am so much happier with the desk over there. Now when you walk in the front door you don't see all the computer paraphenalia right away as it's tucked out of sight. The cords are out of reach of Freya so we don't have to have babygates blocking off the area. While I've been too busy to get to actually tidying the desktop, I will get there!

We're discussing whether to add a cubby style hutch above the desk, or shelving. I'm leaning towards shelving and a new mirror to open up the area but we shall see. Matt also wants to add a keyboard tray for his side of the desk, and I think we will have to buy a little area rug for the winter as the floor gets pretty cold there. I'd also like to add some more shelving under the desk for storage of smaller items, although that would make it easier for Freya to get in to things!

You may be wondering what happened to the dining room and fishtank... well, they went where the study used to be.

The top right picture is how it used to be set-up. Now the room feels SO big! Of course now I really want to buy a tablecloth and some kind of chair covers (or alternatively a cheap new table and chairs), and we still need to get the tv wall mounted. But all the big stuff is done. It's crazy how much space there is in here for the kids to play now. I even had a party here on Saturday afternoon and it wasn't extremely crowded.

The down side to all of this is that my basement is in a really bad state again. Such is life. :) I just really wanted to share the transformation with you now, even if it's not 'perfect', because nobody, especially a mother with young children, has a perfect home.

So how about you? Is there anything you've been putting off doing in your house because you're waiting until you're ready to sell? Don't you deserve a well functioning and beautiful home today?

P.S. I really do owe a huge thank you to Matt for making this big room rearrangement happen. It was a much more difficult task than I had imagined. Moving the fishtanks alone took an entire day. Ultimately building the desk was the easy part!

Not to mention, he even cooked our Thanksgiving Turkey while the house was in this state! Thank you hun. :)

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