Redoing the Office We JUST Redid...

Well, people, I think it MAY be entirely possible that we have inhaled too many paint fumes. We cracked our own selves up far too often on this week's podcast, but we had a blast and we hope you enjoy the stories...and the voice I can't quit doing...and Ryan's southern accent, which sounds just like Gomer Pyle.

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And now...for the office.

You may remember our big office reveal back in May. I think that room tied with the kitchen for the room I was most excited to see done! Truly. I was so ready for it. I wanted to sit and think and create, and I will say that over the past couple of months, even in all our crazy busyness, and amid all our projects, I have been entirely creative. So it must be working!

But you know what wasn't working? The cat pee smell.

Womp, womp, womp.

As you may have heard/will hear in today's podcast, when we moved in, we elected to put Braeya's litter box in the closet of the office. Litter boxes are so unsightly, and we thought having it in a closet, out of the way, in a room that only we use, would be the best choice. And then we smelled it. And then we caught her doing it. Marking her territory in a way she has NEVER DONE BEFORE.

We weren't sure what caused it. We didn't know if she was just mad about the move, or if she smelled the dog that used to live here, or what happened. But regardless of the cause, we had a mess on our hands that we could not clean up, no matter what we tried.

At long last, and with much resignation, we determined the only solution was to replace the flooring. It's disheartening, when you've just moved into a room and made it your own, to think about dismantling the whole thing and starting over, but we knew it was the best course of action. And even though we are not hardwood people {this we learned after the broken coffee cup at our last house}, we thought a wood laminate in this room might be a good choice, since it is an office. It would look more office-y, and our chairs would roll around better. We thought it was a good decision.

So we chose a wood laminate that was kind of a gray-brown, and last week, I unloaded half the office so Ryan could rip up the carpet and lay down the new flooring.

Braeya was immediately unhappy about the removal of her "project."

 We became "those people" - cutting wood scraps long into the evening. Our apologies, neighbors!!

Once he got the first half of the room done, we had to unload the OTHER half of the room, which made an even bigger mess in our room.

But Ryan worked hard and finished the floor that evening...and we were able to load EVERYTHING back in its rightful place:

And now...the before and after AGAIN:


The first side:

And the second side:

We love it! And we are calling it done, done, DONE!!!

Meet Our New Office

Today is the last day of the new home tour...for now. We still have one room to complete, so when it is finished, I'll come back and show that one to you as well!

Today's room is one of my very favorites, and yet as I took pictures, it feels like one of the least complete. I guess I shouldn't say "least complete" as much as I should say it's the one with the most room for continued growth.

It's my/our office.

I realized {sadly} that I did not have a blog post covering the office at our old house. Boo!!! Oh well. Our old office was probably the most cramped room in our entire house. It was a bedroom that at one time had been fairly large, but over the years grew a bit smaller when a closet and a bathroom were added, cutting into the square footage of the room. Though the office is primarily mine, since I'm the writer of the family, Ryan and I do like to share it, and whenever possible, we like to work in there at the same time. So it was a pretty cramped space.

Because of that, I am so excited about our new office!

Let me show you what it looked like when we moved in:

Do you recognize that bookcase up there? That's the one we moved into our master bedroom! We also took down the TV that was hanging on the wall. And then there's the wallpaper border. Again. It could NOT come down without a fight. This was the final wallpaper removal of the adventure for me, and by the end, Ryan had to step in and rescue me. I could not handle one more shred of wallpaper.

YES!!!!!!!!!! It is DONE!!!!!!

At our old house, we had one room {that was, for a time my bedroom, then my office and then our workout space} that was bright yellow. I really liked it. It was cheery and inspiring, and I wanted to have that back. So I picked out a color called Iced Tea {because iced tea is bright yellow???} and put it on the walls. Ryan kind of kidded me about it when I put it up because it was HELLO bright.

And it was. It really was. Once we started filling the room, it toned it down, but if I wanted bright and cheery, I sure did get it with this color!

I painted this room by myself and had to go over it twice, because even though the paint color before was neutral, the area under the border was white, and it showed through the yellow paint. I adore painting but I have to confess, by the time I was done with this room, I was kind of tired of painting. {Shhhh. Don't tell!!!}

Several years ago, before Ryan, I realized my book collection had begun to overflow my shelves. {Notice I did not say it had grown too large.} My dad was kind enough to custom build two massive shelves for me, and Ryan wanted me to still have them in the new house. So the week we moved all our stuff out of the Marion house, he carefully labeled every piece and took it apart so we could move the shelves to the new house.

 You may notice I had never painted them! So when they were all taken apart, we made all these makeshift sawhorses in the garage, using the biggest empty boxes we had from the move, and for a couple of days I painted and flipped them, painted and flipped them.

And then we put them back up!!

And then I dove into filling the shelves and organizing the office. I was delirious with joy. Organizing this was, for me, the same joy that organizing the garage was for Ryan. He said he had never seen me "in the zone" like I was the day I organized this.

Ready for the after shots?

And your side-by-side comparisons. Click to enlarge.

So here's what we did: Left the carpet alone, ripped down the border,, painted the walls Iced Tea {Valspar, Lowe's}, painted our previous bookshelves white and reassembled them in this room, and moved in! I think this room has the shortest work list and had the most boxes to put inside it!!

In the last picture above, you can see the little rectangle table, which is where we now do our podcasts each week. In our old office, that was also our shared desk. It was a TIGHT space. We wanted to make it the dedicated podcasting space and get something bigger for our desk. But tables are expensive, and we didn't want to spend a lot of {or any...let's be truthful!} money. After we decided we couldn't use our dining room table in our great room area, I asked Ryan if he thought it MIGHT fit in this room as our desk. We tried it and it worked!

We were so grateful to get to use it, since it's a piece of furniture that comes from Ryan's side of the family, AND because we already owned it, so it was FREE!!! I love having so much space to use when I write, and it's so nice when we work there together!

I love my metal perpetual calendar! I bought it on clearance at Kohl's back when I worked at the station, and it was on my desk there. Obviously I haven't started using it to keep track of our calendar yet, but I love having it up! And we got the white board to store things that might normally go on a refrigerator so we can keep that space clutter free. So this is our little organizing area. We love it!

Red Letter Words art that my best friend, Lynnette, gave me for my birthday a couple of years ago. I adore Red Letter Words, and I was so excited to get that. I feel like it's a perfect encouragement in my writing space! Above it, my "Nevertheless" art piece based on a lesson I learned from reading Angie Smith's book, What Women Fear. {Explanation of the Nevertheless piece found here.}

One of my favorite collections. The black and white Footprints piece was my going away gift from my co-workers in the Financial Aid Office when I left in 2011. They chose it because they had just watched me walk through my desert season of life and felt it best represented my faith. {I love that!!} Every single one of them wrote me a message on the back, and I treasure this! The Proverbs 31 art was my gift from Ryan on my last day of work at WBCL, and he said he felt it represented my faith as I stepped into the unknown. {I love that!!} The station gave me a card that everyone had signed, so I attached it to the back, giving me two pieces of art signed by all my co-workers. The picture underneath the Footprints piece is a picture of Ryan and me from our first photo shoot when we were dating. He added words to it and framed it for me - a gift for my desk at work. So this whole collection is very meaningful for me.

Be. Still. My. Beating. Heart. How I love all my books. Every one of them. I know them all and always know exactly which ones are missing/loaned out. This makes my heart so happy.

So the room is done/complete for now, but I love it that there's room to grow and mature and settle as a writer in here. Room for more books. Room for more art. Room for more memories.

UPDATE!!!!! Our cat's ONE form of anger when we uprooted her from her home and moved her into our new house was to christen the closet in the office...every square inch of it. Because of that, we were forced to EMPTY this entire room and replace the flooring. We went with wood laminate, and the final FINAL after pictures are here!

Hope you've enjoyed the house tour this week! When we finish the guest room, I'll let you see that one! :)

PS - renovation takes so much longer than the one hour it takes the HGTV folks I watch all the time. ;)

Slow Goodbyes: The Office

We hope you enjoy today's podcast! We have some big news tucked inside!!!

 Click here to listen.

I've almost made my way through our entire house, slowly saying goodbye to each room and what it has meant to me. Today I bid a fond farewell to another room that means so much to me, and that's my beloved home office.

Back when Grandma and Grandpa lived here, this was a spare bedroom, and not just a spare bedroom, but my spare bedroom. This was where I slept when I spent the night! {Once I got old enough that I didn't need to sleep on the "davenport" surrounded by dining room chairs.} I would tuck into the tall bed that seemed to swallow me up compared to my little twin at home, and I'd sleep until the morning sun crept into the room around the edges of the rolled blinds.

This was the room where I was sleeping the night my Grandpa died, actually. I'd spent the night with Grandma, and I remember waking up to her turning on the light and telling me to get up and get dressed...we had to go to the hospital. I was in one of those groggy-post-sleep-what's-my-name states and put on my clothes {shirt inside out, actually} and stumbled to the driveway where my aunt picked us up to drive us to the hospital.

When I shared this house with roommates, it felt appropriate to me that this room should be mine. The room where I'd slept as a visitor would now be mine as an adult. So I moved my measly twin bed inside and relished life in my own grown up bedroom. I would sleep until noon in that room, waking up to turn on the old thirteen inch TV perched on an old baker's rack at the end of my bed. I'd stretch out with a couple of cats and a pile of Bibles and journals and do my devotions or study for Sunday School in that room.

Like all other bedrooms in this house, that one served a hodge-podge of purposes throughout the years, and for the last six or seven, it's been my home office.

My dad graciously built shelves for me - floor to ceiling, wall to wall simple shelves that held my menagerie of books, and now they just sit, waiting for Ryan to disassemble them and move them to our new house. I wrote my most recent book manuscript in this room, poring over every single page and laboring, doing spiritual warfare as I wrote each word.

While Ryan is not a writer {actually he's a very good writer, but he hates doing it}, we've spent many hours in that room together, faced off at our shared desk, each of us doing our own version of work, sipping coffee and enjoying each other's company.

I am so excited for our office at our new house. I can envision it and yet I can't. I can see where the shelves will fit, and yet I can't quite imagine it until we're there. But I'm excited. I'm excited for a brand new view out the window, excited for all the words that will pour out of me in that room, excited for a new office chapter.

And I am so grateful for all the beautiful memories in this room - from the years it was my bedroom to the years it was my office, it was always a good room. One filled with much prayer. May the new office carry the same legacy!

The Saturday Six

One.

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In honor of, you know, BUYING A HOUSE!!!! this week, I thought I'd share this post I loved, because it got me itching like crazy to be able to set up my new office in our new house! I have so many ideas, but I know that this room, more than any other, will probably look far different {and here's to hoping far better} than I can even imagine in my head! But Anne's office is so cute and has me eager to dig in!

Two.

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Anyone else struggle with wanting to be liked by everyone? All the time? While this post is geared toward writers, it has wise, wise words for all of us on WHO really holds our worth.

Three.

We wanted to get a little gift for the people who owned the home we just bought, but that's always an awkward quest, because we don't know them very well. While perusing through Etsy looking for something else, I stumbled upon this shop, and I decided a Christmas ornament might be a winner. It represents a little piece of who we are, since we love ornaments that tell a story and also passes along our gratitude to this couple who tended the home for the past several years. {Covered the homeowners' names to protect their privacy. It really doesn't come with tissue like that!}

Four.

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Obviously we don't have kids, but if you do, and you're looking for some ideas for their Easter basket {HELLO!!! EASTER IS ONE WEEK AWAY!!!}, this post has some great suggestions for things that open up conversation to the actual reason for Easter. I think the resurrection party is a pretty great idea, myself. {But then I love a party....}

Five.

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In the four years I worked at WBCL, there are a handful of guests that I loved so much, I wanted to be real-life friends with them. They were just contagious with joy and Jesus, and I am so glad I got to "know" them through their interviews and our interactions, however brief. One such guest was Dr. Michelle Watson, who writes and speaks about relationships between fathers and daughters. She's fun, she's spunky, she's wise, she's passionate, and I won't lie - I'd give a whole lot for a batch of the cookies she posts pictures of semi-regularly! This week she wrote a post about what she's observed about fatherhood by watching Chip Gaines on Fixer Upper. Obviously you know of my love for Fixer Upper, and I agree with her in this post. Chip does seem to be the real deal as a dad and husband, and I love that more than the show itself. 

Six.

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Any Anne of Green Gables fans out there? I do love Anne, and Prince Edward Island is on my traveling bucket list, so when I saw a new series released called "Prince Edward Island Dreams" - I think I was pretty much already hooked. Book one in this series by Liz Johnson is called The Red Door Inn. Now what do I love nearly as much as the thought of traveling to PEI? The thought of anything relating to a bed and breakfast. The book, I imagined, could be the perfect happy place to spend reading time, so I did just that this week!

Marie Carrington is in her late twenties and by most standards, she's deemed a lovely young woman with a strong foundation and a bright future. But we meet her as she sits on a ferry dock, counting her literal pennies and unsuccessfully trying to ward off a panic attack. Her unspoken plight captures the attention of Jack Sloane, an older gentleman with a dream in his soul. His late wife, Rose, had longed to open a bed and breakfast on Prince Edward Island, but when cancer claimed her life before the dream had a chance to come true, Jack determined he would honor her memory by creating such a haven.

Both broke and broken in spirit, Marie needs a safe place to turn, and clueless about the finer points of hospitality, Jack needs a good eye and soft touch over his newly acquired property. Jack offers Marie a ferry ticket to the island in exchange for her expertise in preparing the Inn to open. She agrees, but questions that decision when she arrives and finds a young man working to restore the Inn who seems consumed by bitterness and skepticism toward life and the human race . The young man, Seth, is Jack's nephew and it becomes clear that while both Seth and Marie are wounded and wary, they need to call a truce toward each other to complete the task at hand and make Rose's dream come true. Of course letting down a guard, even temporarily, means taking a risk that unbidden feelings could rise - and take over. And then when secrets bubble forth, rising higher than the feelings, everything seems in danger of being lost, including the Inn.

One thing I love about Liz's writing style is the way she blended storyline suspense with the gentleness of the Island. Prince Edward Island is a place people go to breathe. Many are drawn there hoping for the same haven that Anne found at Green Gables, and there is a quietness and calmness to the place that is evident on each page of the book. But that calm doesn't squelch the urgency of the story or the desire to find out what is happening in the hearts of all the characters. Liz's writing is a beautiful weaving. The characters are lovable, and the description is well-crafted. I've never been to the Island in person but I had no trouble imagining each place, each aroma, and possibly even the taste of each treat in the bakery. {Perils of reading while hungry.}

I appreciated the faith message throughout the book and the tactful manner of addressing hard topics and family dynamics. I am giddy that this will be a series and can't wait to read the next book, releasing this fall.

* Thanks, Revell, for sending a copy of this book my way in exchange for an honest review! *