Palace Project Part 8: Summer Update - a New Project!

Thank you for coming with me on my Palace Project adventure! I've made lots of progress and my rooms look beautiful. I finished the painting and furniture buying at the end of last summer - I hope you enjoyed the pictures! I actually started writing those posts in 2014 and took a while to put them up, so I've now been enjoying my beautiful green and orange rooms for a year. I am still ecstatically happy in them!

I didn't make it too far past where I ended with the paint and furniture last summer because time got away from me and school started again! Unfortunately, my office got back to being a bit disorderly (oops) and it set me on track toward a new project - organization! So that's what I'll be working on this summer. I needed some new furniture - the cube organizer, the white bookshelf, and the new desk. However, I have a lot of stuff and paper that needs organizing and doesn't have a home.

Here's my dream for this summer:
1. An office chair, preferably a pink one.
2. A filing cabinet so I can put all of my stuff in it and not constantly have papers everywhere.
3. Closet shelving and organized, labeled boxes.
4. A reclining chair.
5. A side table.
6. A floor lamp.
7. Something beautiful on the walls.

I have this painting I really love that I'd like to hang, once I have it framed.

Isn't it beautiful? It just moves me every time I look at it. I've been debating whether to put it in the office or in my bedroom, but I think the office wall might be a good place. It is a bit bare right now.

That is my wish list for a lovely, organized office this summer. We'll see how far I get by the end of July!

Happy Saturday!

Part 7: Pink and Orange Office

After buying new furniture for the living room, I went back to attacking the office. Just to refresh your memory, it went from this:

To this: 

To this.

I am still in love with the orange. It just brings so much light and life into an otherwise dark and boring room. It makes me so happy! However, the room was still nonfunctional without good furniture to make it work. So I went shopping.

I bought this cube organizer online. Still waiting for the drawers to come, but I love it already! 

Since my furniture isn't terribly tall, I used the tops to display my degrees and trophies. My favorite thing, though, is that adorable pink piggy bank! It says "Shoe Fund" on the side. So cute! 

The second picture above shows my old desk. It was tall and thin with very little space to actually stretch out and put things on. It wasn't working for me because I usually work with a computer, textbook or reference book, binder or notebook and papers spread out on the desk, and with that tiny surface area it wasn't really possible. I bought this 48-inch desk from IKEA and now I have a ton of space! So far, I really like it.

As you can see, I still need to replace the kitchen chair with an office chair, and the box with a little side table. But the space is so much cleaner and more organized now - I love it! I can finally breathe in here.

So far, so good!

Part 6: Living Room Makeover

As you know, I have this wonderful green living room space now. I am really happy with how it turned out! The walls are bright and lovely but not overbearing. I love it so far.

Naturally, with new walls, I need some new furniture and accents to add to the new zen space. When I first bought my house, it was a bit of a bachelorette pad - mismatched, hand-me-down furniture, gray walls, a bit of a mess. I wanted to make my home more home-y, with my living and working spaces more intentional and put-together. So I continued with the zen theme as I went shopping for furniture for the living room.

Here is the before picture:

Note the gray walls, the brown couch, the kitchen chairs, and the box being repurposed as a table. Now, for the after picture:

I didn't have time to put the photos back up on my walls before I took this one, but what a transformation! After painting, I also bought the new gray couch (with a chaise on the end), a green rug with a leaf pattern, two cream-colored chairs and a table to put between them, and a PLANT! This is the first time I've ever had a plant. I love it! (I will admit, I do not have a green thumb. Therefore, my lovely plant is made of silk. Isn't it pretty?)

The pictures are a bit dark, but you get the idea. I love my pretty green living room!

Next up: my new office.

Palace Project Part 5: Painting

I am a colorful person. I love to be surrounded by color. As you know, my house is purple, which is the thing that I love most about it. However, the inside of my house is gray. Drab boring ugly gray. Some would call it taupe and say it's "a nice neutral" or something. But when I look at the walls, I think bo-ring. Or at least I did...until we started painting.

A few entries ago I posted a picture of my inspiration room. I really wanted a lovely zen space with lots of green tones where everything would be serene and beautiful and peaceful. So I decided to start with green walls.

First, I had to decide exactly which green I wanted.  I read lots of blogs and sites on how to choose a paint color, because once you've painted a room, you can't really un-paint it. So I didn't want to be stuck with a color that I didn't like. When you paint, the color will look different in different light, so you have to be sure that you like it all day, and not just in the morning when the sun hits it just right. So I tested out the paint colors. This consisted of one week of painting splotches on the wall and staring at them for a while each day.

I ended up choosing the one on the bottom right that is painted there twice. The other colors seemed a bit too light.

Fortunately, my brother has a good friend who is a painter. But I wanted to get in on the fun, so the whole family came and helped out. It was an exciting day! This is how the living room turned out:

Also, if you remember my inspiration photos for my office, you know I like orange and pink. I was originally thinking that since my office is a fairly small, fairly dark room, I should choose a light color to brighten it up. As it turns out (thank you, internet), the best colors for dark rooms are rich, saturated colors. So I choose this beautiful orange that brings me joy and happiness every time I enter the room! Here's how it turned out:

The Palace is so much more beautiful already! Next up: furniture shopping!

Palace Project Part 4: Making Progress in the Office

I started working on the office. There's a great blog I've been reading called abowlfuloflemons that is really helpful and inspiring in getting my house clean and organized. I used Toni's tips to start getting rid of the mess in my office by going through my papers. As a reminder, it started like this:

 But once I finished, it looked like this:

As my mother remarked with joy, "You can see the floor!" I know, I know. This is very exciting.

Then I got the bright idea that I would move my furniture. The desk I have is not terribly functional at the moment because the desktop space is too small. The hutch takes up a lot of room and when I'm working, I need to spread out - I frequently use my computer + a book, notebook or binder at the same time, and I struggle with space if I can't put them all on the desk at once. So I decided to buy a new desk with more space. That means moving out the old desk and bookshelf (wrong color) and bringing in new stuff. So now I've gone from this:

To this:

Sigh. I was so excited about being able to see the floor again...but you know how it works. The room often (if not always) gets messier before it gets cleaner, and sometimes just vacillates back and forth between the two. In other news, I'm excited to buy this to replace the bookshelf.

I 

I'm also getting some pink drawers to put in it. 

This room is going to be so pretty when it's done!

Palace Project Part 3: The Office

I'm also redoing my office this summer. Currently, my office is a huge mess. My brother actually forgot that I had an office, until he realized, "Oh, it's the room where the door is always closed." Yeah, kid...there's a reason for that.

My office currently looks like 7 tornadoes hit it simultaneously. There are two bookshelves and a desk, but I have so many binders and books and papers that there are boxes and boxes of more stuff just sitting on the floor. It's pretty embarrassing - hence the door being perpetually closed. However, I have a coworker who wisely said that when she redecorated, she took pictures every so often to chart her progress. So in the spirit of improvement, I'll post some here.

Rather than starting with my before picture, I'll start with my inspiration rooms. Here are some ideas for what I want the space to look like:

I'm going for fun, vibrant colors. My office is currently nonfunctional because the space is both too disorganized and too boring for me to really spend any productive time in there. But with these happy colors, I'll be ecstatic to sit in there and read and work.

I was debating back and forth about pink vs. orange walls (pink is my favorite color for sure but orange may be a more tolerable color to paint an entire room with). I think I've settled on orange with white furniture and pink accents.

And now, without further ado (yikes), my first progress pictures.

Here's my awful start:

And believe it or not, this is not the worst of it. Before I took this picture, there was actually a huge pile of empty boxes in the corner between the two bookshelves. (Before you congratulate me for cleaning it up, I'll admit that that pile has moved itself to the kitchen. But hey, progress, right?)

I'll keep posting pictures as the room changes.

:)

Palace Project Part 2: Floor Plans

In an attempt to figure out how I wanted to redecorate my apartment, I decided to try making a floor plan. That way I could see what would happen without having to actually move the furniture yet. This proved to be helpful, yet challenging.

First, I discovered www.homestyler.com. It's an awesome site that lets you use sample furniture to make a floor plan of the rooms in your house.

Next, I made a floor plan that didn't work. It looks like this:

Then I actually measured the couch and discovered that it is way too long to fit on that wall. So I made a second plan. It looks like this:

This one is better, but it still doesn't work.

After that, I got smart and realized I needed to measure the dimensions of the room and not just one piece of furniture, and created a floor  plan that's significantly more accurate. It looks like this:

This time I got furniture that actually fits in the space. Smart, huh? Yeah...third time's the charm.

I decided to buy a new couch, an area rug, curtains, accent chairs, an accent table and a shoe bench. Here's to shopping!