Finishing The Office Makeover: a house log

Our office continues to creep towards the finish line (tortoise style) with the addition of an overhead light…

… and new desk chairs.

You might recognize the light because it is none other than the one we used to have hanging in our kitchen (loosely meeting both the “old” and “borrowed” criteria from this post’s title). We enjoyed the light itself, but mentioned a few times in the comments that after living with it for a little while, we were not sure we enjoyed it as much as we initially thought we would in the kitchen. So we figured we’d try it in the office.

The second it was up, we were sold. It feels polished and traditional to us, so it is a pleasant mix with the clean-lined furnishings and colorful art (the more modern counterparts of the room) and the paned bay window and thick crown molding (the other more traditional elements that are already present). Functionally speaking, it is pleasant and bright (it is a two-bulb fixture) and we are both soaking up the luxury of at last having a ceiling fixture to flick on when we enter the room. We have even talked about going to a glass place (or a lighting place) and having them cut a quatrefoil-shaped diffuser to fit it, so we will keep you posted if we get around to that.

Of course now that we stole that light from the kitchen we simply have a bare bulb dangling in there, but we are glad to have found our big quatrefoil shade a more permanent home.

Now for the chairs. Do not you remember them from our kitchen too?

Simply kidding, they are new. And blue.

It all began when a reader named Sabrina tipped me off to a big sale going on at PB Teen and mentioned they had some fairly pleasant stuff. Lately I have noticed a bunch of designers using stuff from PB Teen in adult spaces. In other words, do not let the name scare you. Oh and check out PB Kids too (they have some vivid lights right now). In fact, Real Plain had an excellent living room a few months back and the thing I enjoyed most and swore was likely especially pricey ended up being like $150 at PB Teen.

But I digress. These chairs caught my eye the second I headed over to the site – especially because of the excellent button tufting and curved arms (traditional) and those sleek legs with wheels (the more modern counterpart). Although the light gray and teal one were fully charming, the navy one screamed my name the loudest (less worry about stains, and a pleasant dark/rich color to ground our light and airy office) so I showed John and held my breath. John is somewhat of a chair diva. He hoped our new office chairs to be adjustable (check), have arms (check), be on wheels (check), and not have a ton of cumbersome levers and handles under them (we looked at a lot of prior chair options looked like an oversized eight-armed spider lived under them). These in fact checked all of his chair diva boxes. BIIIIIG SIGH. He was in.

In fact, I enjoyed them sufficient to pull the trigger, but it was not until I called a local Pottery Barn store to check if we could return them there (instead of having to pay to ship them back if we did not like them) that Practical John was fully with me on the whole “add to cart” step. They still were not low-cost, but we certainly appreciated that they were marked down by $50 each and their friends & family sale got us 20% off on top of that (we ended up saving $118 per chair).

We did that obligatory worrying thing until they arrived on our doorstep. Would they be comfy? Would they tilt at a weird angle? Would they feel scratchy? Would they come with a nicely labeled empty box in the packaging? Turns out they did.

The good news is that they are also comfy, they adjust so we both can have them at the height we like, the wheels glide like butter, and the sloped arms are truly pleasant. You are likely wondering “how does it feel to breastfeed in this desk chair?” Well, I can tell you in all sincerity that it is quite cozy indeed.

The fabric feels nearly identical to what is on the armchair in Teddy’s room, which has lived through both food-related abuse (remember it was in the corner of our last house’s kitchen by the fireplace for a few years?) and baby-related projectiles, so we have high hopes for their durability.

Our only slight surprise was that they looked a little less blue in real life to us (they are certainly navy, but the website photo looked nearly cobalt, so we expected a little more intensity I think). But the art, the plant, and the items on the bookshelf in the office are fairly colorful, so we figure some handsome tufted navy chairs are pleasant classic “foundation” pieces to ground the room and balance out all the light/modern/glad stuff. Since they are not these especially bright focal points we figure that frees us up to have lively with curtains or a rug in a bolder color or pattern if we want. So although they look a little whoa-those-are-dark-chairs-in-a-light-room now, I think they’ll make more sense when we bring in those other items.

Perhaps something like this? Depends on what we find. But this is a good example of how something that might look out of place in an unfinished room (the cream color of the light or the deep tone of the chairs) can sort of “gel” more as the room fills in (the tone of the light is also in the West Elm rug, and the dark curtain rod and bold curtains seem to balance out the deep color of the chairs).

So our few remaining items on the office list are those aforementioned window treatments and a rug along with getting a frame for Clara’s monster and possibly adding that diffuser to the light along with a desk lamp or two and then we should be wrapped up in here.

It is fairly exciting to be creeping towards a mostly-completed space since the only other rooms that are worthy of that description might be Teddy’s room and Clara’s room along with our sunroom-turned-veranda. The funny thing is that I’d bet the laundry room will be a fairly wrapped up-looking space in a few more weeks, which is hilarious since it came out of nowhere while some other rooms we have been slowly upgrading for over a year still feel SO FAR from being done. Houses like to keep you on your toes like that I think.