stick a fork in my office

... because it's done-zo. (That doesn't preclude me from changing things up down the road, of course. Maybe even tomorrow. But this qualifies as our first official "after" in the new house, as opposed to "progress." As Dr. Dre would say -- or is it Eminem? -- "Can I get a hell yeah?")

Let's get down to business.

The long, narrow loft space has come a long way, baby. And now I'm gonna tell you how it got this way.

When we first saw the house, my future office was crammed with messiness, and looked like this:

That giant wine fridge (which we totally coveted, by the way) made it hard to tell how much space the loft actually has. But once we measured and realized it could serve several purposes, I came up with a plan for the office that looked a little something like this:

While my original wish list for a home office had envisioned working with a more traditional space, kinda like...

... I was able to squeeze everything except a sofa (that was really just meant to be a guest bed, which it turns out we don't need in this house) into the space.

As inspiration, I really loved the idea of this sewing table, from Living Etc.

And this L-shaped desk, from Ideal Home.

And this color combo, from Apartment Therapy, totally floated my boat.

Source

So, naturally, I put all those things together to come up with a pretty and functional space that does everything I need it to do.

Step 1: Improvise the L-shaped desk from pre-fab Ikea parts.

Step 2: Paint the big wall bright peacock blue (after first growing the cajones to pick such a bold color).

Step 3 (and steps 4 and 5): Add the sewing table, lots of under-table and wall-mounted storage, and some contrasting curtains.

Ready for the full tour? (From now on, I want to make a point of better explaining the floor plan in my photos, since I know it can be weird to just see all of these disparate rooms.) Here goes...

You enter the loft/office from the end of the hallway on the second floor. Our bedroom door is to the left, but if you turn right...

One day I'll pretty up the bookcases near the entry, but they are absolutely good enough for right now. The only thing I'd really like to change: getting more light into the space than the one recessed can and my strongly down-pointing lamps. But since I don't want to pay more for said additional light, it's probably not gonna happen anytime soon.

No matter. I love the room, it does everything I need it to do, and -- most importantly -- it's totally separate from the rest of the house visually. Meaning: I can make a huge mess in here and no one else will ever see it. For this long-time city dweller (i.e. small, multi-purpose space dweller), that is the ultimate luxury.

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xoxo,