Our Dining... I mean... Office!!

We have been doing a little remodel in our house. Nothing that costs much, in case anyone was wondering. Here is what it looked like before: Now, to be clear... I loved this room. I loved the curtains and the table and the decor. I felt like it was well put together. However, we used this room a grand total of 2 times in one year. Not practical and a waste of space!! So after some coercion on my part, Hank agreed to let me make a change.

The first hurdle to overcome was that we didn't want to loose any seating, for the rare times we do need both tables. So we accomplished this by taking our dining room table into the eat in kitchen... (notice the new curtains, courtesy of my fabulous sister!)
...and using the smaller round table in the corner of the dining room for a homework area...

I love the switch! The more formal table dresses up that eat in area! And I love that we have more seating without having to pull out a leaf!

The next thing was the lighting fixture was current and nice, but hung too low. And since this room in on the front of the house, gets warmer than most... so I asked for a fan (shout out to all you handy husbands out there! Couldn't live without mine!) And I'm sitting here blogging and enjoying the breeze from it right now. :)

We were also blessed with some heavy duty shelves. A guy from our small group had a bunch of these to unload from his work. We got a few and painted them. And we purchased a wall mount desk from IKEA, sanded it and painted it white to match and mounted it between the shelves.

Now, I'm showing you guys all of this pre-decorating because I am going to have to do some yard saling and bargain hunting to get the look that I want in here. So don't judge too harshly just yet. I have ideas for a reading chair, and I want a nice round rug in here. And I plan to make these shelves functional and stylish! You will just have to wait and see! The only thing I've done so far is to take some old picture frames and frame some scrapbook paper!

But, lack of decorating aside... this is already so much more functional for our family! We can put music on in here, the boys can get online, I can work on my coupons without spreading them all over the house! It's coming together nicely, if I do say so myself!

I would love some suggestions from my creative friends! Let me know what you would do!