I love the look of painted furniture, but most things in our house are the kind of wood you just don’t paint.  So I was excited to discover that my office at the Rambler was in dire need of closed storage, and that this slender little armoire – found on Craigslist – would fit perfectly into the space. 

This photo might illustrate two things: one, that it doesn’t take much to get me excited; and two, that my office was in a disreputable, unusable state.   What is perhaps not readily evident in this photograph is the fair amount of progress that had already taken place in this room.  A month and a half ago it was still sporting its brown trim, popcorn ceiling, and bright blue paint:
I have a bad habit of just kind of perching in a space until my plans for it can be realized in one fell swoop.  For instance in this room, I had resigned myself to a pile of book-filled boxes until we’re able to build a shelf to hold them.  No matter that building shelves is a ways down the to-do list (we’re still replacing doors and will be for the foreseeable future – how can such a small house have so many doors?), somehow it didn’t seem like a good use of energy to unpack this room until everything had a place to go.  Except when I found that dingy, mildly busted cabinet my whole outlook changed, and I was suddenly excited to steer this room toward a functional, pretty midway point.

This was a test run of sorts, the color I chose for the armoire is Vintage Vogue by Benjamin Moore, which is one I’m also considering for the cabinets in our kitchen.  It’s really pretty!  Reminiscent of an army green, but with a nice depth that reads a little more ‘forest’ in dim or shadowed light.

The cupboard itself is the perfect place to store my printer and scanner, as well as extra paper and other craft supplies.  Unfortunately it doesn’t address my need for a bookshelf, but Beatrice and her bird are doing a good job presiding over the tomes-without-homes.

This room still needs some work, obviously. The new door and trim need to be installed and I’m figuring out a way to organize my fabric and sewing things in the closet, but I couldn’t be happier with the way this weekend project turned out.  My practical self balks a little at the impracticality of stacked books, but a precarious game of Jenga when I want a book is still far preferable to digging through a cardboard box.

Anyone else suffer from that “live in squalor until every change can be made at once” attitude? Have a great week!