Office Makeover

I recently mentioned that we finally installed some much-needed storage space on the office side of our office/guest room, so I thought I'd post some before and after pictures. And lo and behold, while searching through old photos this weekend, I found lots and lots of before pictures of the room from back when we first moved in and started working on it!

Let's start back in 2008 when we first moved into this apartment, which was about two times as large as our previous place (*ahem* Micha's previous place in which I became his permanent roommate--along with sister for three weeks--after we unwisely secured no new apartment for ourselves once our rental contract was up. He has the patience of a saint.) The room was, as I've mentioned, painted an ugly shade of yellow that clashed with the other shade of yellow in the living room.

 We started out with a very sad minimal amount of furniture. And again, by we, I mean Micha, as I had merely a couple suitcases full of clothes and other crap at this point.

We finally got ourselves a sleeper sofa and some curtains for the room and could officially call it an office/guest room (with a balcony! - my tagline when convincing friends to visit).

You cannot even imagine the relief that swept over me when we finally painted over the awful '90s butter yellow walls.

Then, last time Natalie was here, she put her interior design skills to work and insisted we rearrange the room to make it seem bigger and more inviting. And sweet cracker sandwich was she right! The guest bed is cozier and the desk has a lovely view of the balcony (which is great, as Micha temporarily works from home this month). Needless to say, we embarked on this rearranging on a day when he was at work, as I find boys somewhat resistant to change. It took him a while, but Nat's clever setup totally won him over in the end.

And finally, now with shelves! We've been in dire need of storage space for my crafting stuff, photos, etc. (basically everything other than books, which overflow our bookshelves). I didn't quite buy enough boxes during our last Ikea trip so, oh darn, I'll just have to go back!

It  feels really great to get some pretty organization into this small space. Now we just need to rehang lots of pictures and our map on the other side and the room will be complete! For now, that is...