March 17

I've lived in my apartment for almost 5 years now with the second bedroom set up as an office.  Any time spent in there was spent cleaning because when you have a room you don't use (at all) you tend to dump stuff in it to deal with later.  This was only a place for things to live, I never used it as an office.  Recently I was thinking that I should just downsize to a one bedroom.  Then I realized, it didn't have to be an office...what if it was a studio?  I started having grand plans for how wonderful it would be.  Then the instant gratification issues started.  This is going to take a lot of work and I want a studio NOW! So on a day I set aside to clean the house, I instead spent hours in the office working towards a studio.  The above pictures are the before.  Here are the afters:

It is in no way shape or from done.  However, it is usable.  I was looking around for a new desk for my art table because I do need to store office-type things in here, and realized my desk would be perfect if not for the hutch.  Taking the hutch off took and hour because you have to take the desktop off to get at the screws that hold it all together.  Halfway through, as I was wrestling with the heavy desktop/hutch assembly in an area I had not given myself enough space in I admittedly thought, "Doing this alone might have been a stupid move.  Can't reach my phone if I get stuck.  I'll have to be extra careful not to get stuck."  I'm not sure these are the thoughts of a sane person.  Anyways I did get it off and the desktop reattached.  Got tons of things cleaned out and have many many books to be donated to Open Books (a literacy charity).  I want to repaint, get shelves for over the desk, move both bookcases to one side of the room, and there is more cleaning out to do.  But it's a start!  Hooray for creating creative spaces! (And for restoring dining rooms to their original functions.)