One of the things I hated about this house was the berber carpet. It was in my office, the living room, the stairs to the second floor and the upstairs hallway. For how old it was it really wasn’t in bad shape. I just really hate carpet, especially berber.
Just before all of the stores non-essential areas of the big box stores shut down, back in the beginning of quarantine I picked up several flooring samples. We knew we wanted something durable even though my office won’t get a lot of traffic since I will be the only one using it most days. Unless the pups decide to wrestle under my chair…which happens daily 🙂 I really wanted pine but they don’t hold up well with dogs. And there aren’t many options in this area except special order and I was in a bit of a hurry to get going on this. I found two options at Home Depot, one at Lowes and two at Menards. It still surprises me to say that Menards had the best quality for the least priced. I’m not sure how that worked out! The adjoining room has tile so we needed the thickness of whatever we chose to match up. We ended up buying a water resistant laminate that looks like pine, with a layer of 1/2” plywood underneath. I wanted an unstained, consistent color natural pine, but ended up with going with an option that has 3 variating boards. In the end I’m happy with it because it keeps them from feeling too monochromatic (aka boring). Plus the rug covers most of it anyway. I definitely love the durability! My office is located close to the back door so if the pup runs past us before wiping her feet off, I know my floor won’t get ruined. I learned the hard way at my last house. Between the dogs water bowl and the cat knocking water glasses off the counter at night, we had a few bubbles in the seams. But to be fair, water resistant laminate wasn’t an option when they were installed.
After the floors were installed I painted the walls. I decided to use the same color that I had in my brick and mortar office because I loved it. It’s Tempe Star by Sherwin Williams. It’s a combination of peacock blue and navy. So it’s brighter than navy and not as teal as peacock. I just love it!
Actually I need to step back a little. We encountered a problem with the location of the cabinets. This also affected where the door opening is. It was going to be closer to the south wall (shown here with the windows). But see this is why you make a plan before you get started!! You can figure out all of the problems on paper if you just stop and make a plan first. Especially when you are incorporating things you already own. It makes for more up front frustration but saves you money in the end.
Back to the wall color….I’m really not an accent wall kind of girl, but I knew I did want wallpaper incorporated. And behind the cabinets made the most sense. I originally wanted the cabinets on the wall where the picture shelves were. I believe that’s the north wall. Anyway, there is a cold air return. The wall is 11’ long and the cabinets are around 8’ and there is a cold air return about 3’ from the east wall. I already had a custom butcher block countertop so we had to work with the cabinets we have. In a perfect world I was going to have them pushed all the way to the east wall. There is a window on the west wall that extends all the way to about a foot off the floor, so I wanted to keep away from it. But that couldn’t be done because of the register. So my options were to either 1) center the cabinets but pull them off the wall a couple of inches to allow for air flow. Um no. 2) remove the drawer base, leaving a 15” gap between the cabinets. No, for a couple of reasons. The cabinets are unfinished on the sides so I would need to order some skins to finish them, and this would also affect the placement of the group of cabinets. It would end up off center and I also couldn’t push them all the way to the west wall 3) Put the cabinets on a different wall. This was the lesser of the other evils.
So they ended up on the west wall. My whole space plan was based on the placement of the cabinets. I wanted my desk to face the back yard (south wall) with the cabinets behind me. In the end it worked out (as it usually does!) because my desk is close to the windows, giving me more natural light.
We still need to add more lighting, reinstall the base molding and figure out something to go above the cabinets. Oh and find a barn door. I don’t want a “barn door” but two 24″ interior french doors on a barn door type track. Also, the wallpaper is a little too bold for me but I don’t want to just put anything on there since it can’t be patched if (more then likely when) I change my mind. I’d like some sort of shelving but I don’t want anything that we’ve all seen a million times. Till then I’ll just keep trying not to fill it with clutter!
