Painting the office

The office was one of the last rooms in the house to have the original Navajo white walls. That changed today. It's now freshly painted in Pigeon Gray (DE6214), the same color we used in our master bedroom and bath, with Light Beige (DE6211) for the ceilings. Looks rich with the new dark oak floors and the pop of white trim.

New office chairs

In anticipation of redoing our office, our old office chairs needed to go. Tom's chair was still comfortable, but showing that you get what you pay for, with stuffing starting to leak out where the fake leather had broke open. So the boys went shopping. As usual, George was looking out for "form" while Tom was checking the "function". We found some super-comfortable chairs at the Container Store made of bungee cords, but they just looked a bit too much like patio furniture to suit our nice new desks. We found some decent-looking chairs at Crate & Barrel, but just not very comfortable, except for the one that was over $1,000. Finally, we found some chairs that were nice looking, comfortable, and a good price at a store called Blueprint that our neighbor the designer recommended. The store specializes in mid-century modern furniture, which isn't a major theme of our style, but they had some great pieces. We'll probably look there again when we eventually replace the sleeper sofa. But meantime, we got some great chairs.

New floor for the home office

Our home office remodel included ditching the carpeting, and getting a hard floor. We were initially looking at bamboo, but became persuaded that laminate was the way to go. It's the most durable for a high-traffic area like a home office, especially with office chairs rolling around on it. And some of the laminates these days look really good. Initially we were thinking something to match the maple floors we have elsewhere in the house, but then we decided to go darker, setting the office apart with a richer more "studious" look. We shopped at several places around town, but ultimately found the best selection at Linoleum City in Hollywood. We finally settled on the Old Town Oak Planks (UF 1935) from Quick Step's Reclaimé collection. The floors were installed today, and they look beautiful!

Pulling up the old carpet

One of the drivers for redoing the office is that the carpet in there had got rather well worn traffic patterns. Our new laminate floors are coming on Wednesday. So we spent Sunday getting the furniture moved out of the office, and pulling up the old carpet.