The hardest working room in our house is our playroom/office. We use this space for pretty much everything, including (but not limited to) building Lego, catching up on emails, filming music videos, managing Amazon Subscribe & Save orders, “cooking” pretend food, doing puzzles, drying laundry, practicing yoga, and reading. After painting over the terrible yellow walls (see before pic below), our main design objective was to create separate areas for work and play.
One of the first goals in our new house was to create a beautiful, inviting living space for relaxing after work. We largely succeeded in designing a room that comfortably seats no more than two people. This was perfect for newlyweds, but add two kids (plus visiting grandparents and uncles) and we’re all lined up stiffly on the couch trying not to touch elbows or dragging in hard metal dining chairs from the next room. So, although we love how our living room looks, it’s no longer meeting our needs. In the post that follows, I’ll be describing the elements of this room as they currently are, but we’ll definitely be updating again soon!
After moving to a larger space, my husband and I found ourselves in the market for a new shelf to house the books that had been boxed up for the past two years. Unfortunately, (as usual) our tastes exceeded our budget. We were drawn to industrial-style shelves made of metal and reclaimed wood. Anthropologie’s version (pictured below, left) retails for $998 amd West Elm’s version (pictured below, right) goes for a whopping $2960. We’ve made a commitment to only buy furniture that we absolutely love and since we couldn’t find anything that compared in our price range, we decided to DIY it!
City Mouse 