Before: Office/guest room

I've recently been working on revamping my office/guest room area. It was the least decorated area of my apartment and definitely needed some sprucing up.

The challenge: I use the room for not just writing and blogging, but also working on sewing and knitting projects. We also keep our office supplies and keyboard up here. And of course, since it's a guest room, we have a futon up here too. It's a lot of stuff for one tiny space! 

Before: Graveyard of random furniture and craft supplies. I wasn't using the room much because it wasn't as comfy or organized as our living room.  

After: Fortress Loft of solitude. After putting some thought and work into redecorating and organizing, I now find it calming, and I actually enjoy spending a lot of time up there. It's been a great place to work on school applications and other projects.

It's a work in progress, so I'll share some mini-projects in my next few posts and then finally the "after" photos. Without further ado, here are some "before" shots:

Before: Every inch of wall was taken up with furniture: 

Before: The desk got a little crazy:

Before/in progress: Even before I got to work on the various small projects that went into organizing and redecorating, I had to reorganize the furniture. I moved the futon and decided to keep it primarily as a bed. The decorations are from my old apartment and weren't part of the new redecorating. Other items, such as the wooden desk, I eventually got rid of, and others, like the white cube shelves, I moved to another place in the apartment.

 

Before: This is while I was in the progress of taking everything out of storage boxes and off the desk so I could later organize it all:

Before: This is once I had sorted everything into different bags and boxes so I knew where it was for later:

Before I jump into the projects in my next few posts, I'll also share some restrictions on what I could/was willing to do. We rent our place, so we of course can only do so much.

1) No major construction (obviously) - so no replacing carpet for fancy hardwood, etc.
2) No shelving or anything screwed into the wall. Other than hanging pictures, our landlord prefers that we not mount anything in the wall.
3) Lastly, I decided not to paint any walls, because we may not be here that much longer. I don't want to spend money on anything that I can't take with me or can't enjoy for a long time.

With that being said, now I'll move on to some things I did want to do. As I'm into crafts projects and re-purposing things I already have, I definitely wanted to make the most of what I already owned. Instead of buying brand new accessories and art, I decided, when possible, to use fabric and paint to make my existing stuff fit into my new decorating scheme.

Since my futon and desk were black, I decided on a neutral black, gray, and white color scheme, with teal/blues as an accent color. Here are the fabrics I picked out: