From Small Master Bedroom to an Office and Guest Room

The Office is still a work in progress, but it's come a long way since being our master bedroom.

First it looked like this back in 2008 on move-in day!

Then it looked like this when we painted it bright blue so that we could be cheerful in grey rainy Seattle:

Now finally, after the remodel, it became our office and guest room and I actually went with a more neutral color. I finally realized most people just accent with bright colors. I have become slightly obsessed with the Expedit shelving units from Ikea and have the large one here to store books and all of my photo albums and scrapbooks (ok, not even half of them are here since my parents still have my old closet full of them at their house!).

When I was out on maternity leave, one of my crazy projects was to try to organize our paper work into binders. It's not a perfect system yet, but it's been working for us. We each have a personal binder, I store manuals in the black and white stripped magazine holder, and then we have binders for our cars, finances, and the remodel.

Here is a detail shot. This was my wedding bouquet made by Anemone handmade paper flowers and it still looks amazing five years later!

One of the things that I take pride in is creating photo albums so that I will always remember as many events and activities of my life. In the last five years or so, I've created yearly Shutterfly albums for September to June, albums for each summer, and an album for each school year that I've been a teacher. I used to whip them out in about a week, but now that I have Micah it's taken me all summer and I'm about half way through (and it also doesn't even fit into one Shutterfly album for this year. This year thanks to having Micah, we will have to have part one and part two!).

Here is a view of the desk. I am so pleased with all of the trim work on the doors and windows. As you can see we still have work left in here like a door knob on the closet. I want to hang that awesome burlap map of the U.S. on that wall too. I have also labeled each drawer and organized them, which you can't see from this photo.

Now I just need a photo of the guest couch (which is a very fancy and comfortable pull out bed) and that would complete your tour of our office!

And for one last reminder of all three major stages this room has encountered...