A girl can dream.

I want to transform our Spare Oom into a comfortable, happy, cool space. I am also craving some COLOR, after moving pretty much every year (sometimes a little more, somtimes a little less) for the past...

um... how old am I again? 25 years? Pretty much.

I moved from house to house and room to room, all with a nice coat off-white paint. Eggshell, antique white, industrial dorm-paint white, you name it.

Now I'm afraid I have to rebel and get some strong colors going in our place. Yeah, we're renting. Yeah, we'll have to undo it at some point when we move. But with the housing market like it is, and with Sallie Mae steaking claim to a substantial portion of any money we might have in the future, and with both of us thoroughly tired of moving, we're alright with staying in one place for a while. We're alright with making our place home.

Here's what we've been thinking about for the Spare Oom. We'll see if it actually ends up like this.

1. Green paint. Not namby-pamby green. I'm talking about a good solid Irish Green. Somewhere in the neighborhood of these greens (from someone's apartment I found on Flickr, and Domino magazine, respectively). If it's just too much, the green might end up on just 1, 2, or 3 walls instead of all 4:


2. Furniture from Ikea. Specifically, some BILLY bookshelves and a GALANT desk system. We're not entirely sure how we want the desk setup to go yet, but here's some inspiration from real people in real homes:

Oh, how I long for organized computer-related cords...


This one's not quite big enough to accommodate both of us working there together...

This could be modified with a few more little end-pieces (half-moon or half-U shaped) to give a little more surface area. I kinda like the setup but we'll see if it makes sense for our space.

We'd go with a dark color for the bookshelves and desk - probably Ikea's black-brown. I think that would look good with the green, and then we have some white stuff here and there for decor.

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