Working on my own office. Scatterbrain.

Ha, look at what my folks gave me yesterday!  A Menards mug, heh!  I think they are amused by my Menards habit.  

Very cute!

Only problem is I don't drink coffee.  But that's ok, I can put chocolate milk in there.  Hopefully Mike doesn't steal it from me.

Speaking of Mike, there was continued discussion about the action plans I came up with for the upstairs hall bathroom.  He really doesn't want me to paper a wall in there.  I think he'll be pleasantly surprised at how mind-blowingly cool it looks when I'm done.

I did find another copy of that 223 Vacation Homes and Plans book online today, finally.  I'm contemplating buying it and using one of the two for the bathroom.  I still think it'd be out of this world and I'm not so sure inkjet printed paper would work.  Though I haven't tested it yet.  Nor researched.  I did buy a box of corn starch $1.00, in preparation ya know.

So today was errand day, running back to Menards because I can't help myself even though I went yesterday to get a torch for the Creme Brûlée recipe.  I went mainly because I was hoping the other Menards nearby would have a Varathane stain chart since my usual store didn't have it.  Varathane makes these itty bitty super tiny packets of stain samples, 0.04 oz of stain for $0.30, which is all I need to touch up the floor where I ripped out the newel post and such.  The flipper missed a spot.  Go figure.

But I also wanted to pick up some primer and some white satin paint.  I finally got all the books out of my office and thought, huh, I wonder if I could repurpose the shelves from the bookcase, maybe cut them into various sizes and use them for things and books I do want to keep in here.

Here's the poor thing before I took it apart.  Yeah, the room is so tight I couldn't angle myself enough to get the whole thing in the photo.  Sorry.

There are lots of holes in the undersides of the shelves where they were bolted to the metal stands though.  Hopefully I can work it just right so that the brackets hide the holes.  Brackets....goodness, it's so hard to find tasteful, simple, non-invasive, not in your face huge, it's all-about-the-brackets brackets, jeez louise.  Either way, I'll start painting these shelves tomorrow.

Before I put them up though, I gotta pick a paint color.  This is how I start.

Like a paint junkie in need of a fix, I start grabbing paint chip cards at the store.  Anything that snags my attention, I grab.  Stashin' 'em all in my pockets and such....it's probably terribly amusing to watch from afar.  Come home and start taping them to the wall.  Not usually in this nicely-arranged-by-color fashion.  I ordinarily mix the colors up therefore you're looking at the color rather than how pretty all the shades look together.  I always put a black card in the mix, every time.  This would be a great room to paint black actually, come to think of it.  Now I'm kicking myself for passing up the $5 mismix semi-gloss black at the store.  I left it because it was that icky acrylic latex.  But $5, and semi-gloss.  Hm.

Hailey is always good at helping, as she is above.  She makes an excellent assistant.  Yes, that's carpet pad on the floor.  She's not comfortable walking on the wood floors so we've covered every surface for her and well, some areas aren't terribly chic.  Who cares -- it's more important that she can get around.

Slowly over the next few days I'll start pulling paint chips down until I get to a last few which I'll spread out further, then check them in various lighting.  It is important to always check colors in the various types of light a room receives through the course of a few days.  Something you love in the store, or in another room, may suddenly look way wrong in the intended room due to the light.

Then hopefully I can start assembling a good plan about how I want this office to work.   And then get on it, make it happen!

And by the way, the Chocolate Truffle Creme Brûlée and the Chunky Turtle Ice Cream were both ridiculously good.  I come to find out at dinner last night that Mike poo-poo'ed the ice cream idea initially because he knew I'd still make it but also make a second dessert in reaction, therefore he'd get two desserts.  Sneaky Sneakerton.  I don't know why I was so shocked at his scheming ways.  Pretty clever, that one.