The husband's office: before and after

I decided that, for my husband's birthday, I was going to give him something he never had before - a home office. We have an extra spare bedroom in our house that had been used as a place to just put random junk - holiday decorations, storage, all the childhood treasures my Mom sent to me after she cleaned out my old room, etc. During the process, I have discovered the secret to getting an impossible, daunting task done: have a deadline and plan ahead. I picked out the furniture and decor based on Mike's taste and bought it a little at a time, and put in a couple of weekends of room clean-out and organization. I managed to utilize the spare room closets rather than storing everything in the middle of the floor (who would have thought that would be a good idea??). Mike knew he was getting an office, but he didn't know anything about what it would look like.

Without further ado, here are the before pics. Don't judge me too harshly, I'm a busy person. Also, the rest of my house looks just fine.

Sad, right? You can barely even see the old futon cover of which I was not a fan - the dark brown always made this room feel like a cave.

And here are the after pics of Mike's spunky, colorful office.

Sorry about the semi-crappy photos. The lighting in the room was not so great. It's super cool in person. The awesome polka dot futon cover and the sweet throw pillows are from tonic living which has an awesome array of fabrics and they even do custom curtains and pillows. We have some bolsters in the old futon fabric that I am eventually going to get re-covered in the same sweet polka dot style. The desk and chair are from cb2, Crate & Barrel's mod off-shoot. The trash can, bookcase, document/magazine files, magnetic clock, orange magnetic boards, and organizational boxes are from the glorious ikea. We spent several hours there.

The Keep Calm and Rock On poster and the camera poster are from the poster list. I thought it was more fun to hang them with colorful binder clips, rather than some boring, traditional way. The magnets on the boards, that you actually can't see all that well, are video game themed magnets that I bought on etsy. The vintage fan is from junkculture on etsy, and last but definitely not least, Ferrets Don't Get No Respect is a print of an awesome painting by my blog buddy, Shannon McLaughlin. Some day, I'm going to own more of the series, Say Hello to my Little Friends, maybe even save my pennies and pick up an original.  

Soon after moving in, the hus bought cool white speakers to fit the vibe and put a bunch of Wired magazines in the document holders.