Office - Before & After

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Happy Monday and Martin Luther King Day!  I know I promised this post last week, but honestly time got away from me :).  Did you all have a nice holiday?  I hope so.  For the first time, my family and I spent the morning in our own house!  It was wonderful.  When we lived in Philadelphia we always had our own Christmas there and then were here in Pittsburgh, at my sister's house, for Christmas morning.   

My Christmas present to my husband was his office.  Since we moved he hasn't really had a space of his own.  His wood shop is not organized or moved into.  Most of his tools are still in Philadelphia and the space is freezing!  We're still figuring out the best way to heat it.  So since getting the shop finished is still a big task to be completed, I tackled the office.  There were several challenges and one I'm still working on.  One window has developed a fog and therefore needs to be replaced.  The other is that the room is not heated.  There are two doors to the office, one from our kitchen and one from our family room.  So it does get heat from these places, but can still get pretty chilly (especially when the temperature only reaches 10!).  Eventually the plan is to lay heated floors and tile.  

The room is a beautiful space with views of the trees in our backyard.  It was previously a 3 season room so the brick adds a great design element.  I wanted the office to be industrial chic, fit for a guy, but still blend well with the rest of our house.  To pull the look together, I used a gorgeous and super soft oriental rug pulling in cream and gray.  It also warms up the room!

During our move, we gave away my husband's desk which was a very large bankers desk.  The new desk is an old door from our basement.  The basement door to the garage was not to code, we removed it and put in a metal door.  Once we removed the old door we realized it was a very nice solid door.  It sat in our garage for months as I planned out his office surprise.  Since the door had a hole in it for the knob, it's a perfect desk top to pull computer, lamp and other cords through to the outlet!  I just needed a glass top to make the door level.  I worked with a local store called Don's Glass - they are amazing!  They were wonderful and got it done quickly, just before Christmas.  For the legs I used galvanized pipes and spray painted them black.  I've worked with these pipes before in making a garment rack for my office.  I will tell you I had a heck of a time getting the right height and width.  I even double checked everything!  

The shelf is an old ladder bought at an amazing salvage store called Salvaged Pittsburgh.  I had originally thought I would put it in our dining room, but I think the perfect home is here is my hubby's office.  The shelves are wood bought from Lowes and they cut it to fit right in the store :)  They are painted with Annie Sloan, Pure White, paint with dark wax.

It took me weeks to secretly get everything ready.  I had all the pipes hidden in the garage.  The rug was in the dining room along with the ladder.  We didn't go into that room often because it was a mess.  The day of the surprise I was like a crazy person trying to get everything ready.  But I had SO much fun.  A dear friend came over to help me carry the desk upstairs and the glass which was so scary!  Because of the hole that was made for the cords, the glass was extremely fragile.  But we got everything in successfully and the husband was surprised :)  Success!

I'll be sharing more before and afters of our house in the coming weeks.  You can always see more on Instagram and Snapchat (@simplylulustyle)!

Thanks for stopping by!

xo Lulu