Before and After: Study

Continuing my "before and after" tour of the apartment (in the last few weeks I covered the bedroom, front hall, and living room), this week I give you: the study.

The "study" is the room that sits in the center of the apartment, connected to our bedroom, living room, and kitchen. Along one wall is our bookshelf and Sam's desk, which hasn't changed too much since we moved in. However, we did have a horrible laminate set of drawers next to the bookshelf (which I never even took a photo of), and the trim used to be a cream color. Here's what things look like now:

Projects included:
Replacing the laminate drawers with a dresser I found on craisglist and painted turquoise and added pulls to
Organizing our books by color (I know this is a controversial practice, but I've intentionally designed it to be a very colorful room so I think this helps contribute)
Painting the trim a crisp white (I did this recently, but didn't post about it because let's face it, it's not very exciting. But it definitely makes a big difference)
DIYing a hanging planter for above the bookshelf
Buying some boxes at Michael's and adding yellow labels to the front to store special mementos (those are the boxes underneath the desk)
Buying a filing cabinet and painting it robin's egg blue
Making some faux craspedia out of orange felt (those are the orange things in the vase on the dresser)
Using leftover pasta sauce jars to display some photos along the back of the dresser

The vintage sewing box we found in the trash area of our old apartment (it's in great shape), and I use it for all my sewing supplies. The paintings we found at Goodwill and couldn't resist (we call them "the ladies").

Along the outer wall of the study is two windows. This isn't a complete "before" shot since I'd made the paint chip art already and only one corner of the room is visible, but it's from awhile ago:

And now (the photo is very grainy, it was hard to get a good shot because shooting toward the windows is tough):

Projects included:

Replacing the desk with a small pedestal table and adding new curtains (made from vintage sheets)

Upholstering the dining room chairs handed down to me from my mom and generations prior (when I asked Sam recently what his favorite apartment project was, he said those chairs)

Making colorful art out of four canvases I found on the sidewalk and a whole lotta free paint chips

The bookshelf my dad made for us -- it's a very nice design with interlocking pieces that come apart to move easily, which is awesome (but it's also very sturdy).

Then in the opposite corner is a set of built-in shelves. They started as a place to store books and display photos etc from races:

And now it's a built-in bar:

Projects included:

Painting and stenciling the built-in shelves

Making a frame out of wine corks to display a print from Etsy
Painting some DIY art with my mother- and sister-in-law

The race photos got relocated to a new gallery wall along the walls leading to the kitchen, barely visible along the left edge of this photo (now known in our house as "Triumph Alley).

I may paint the walls at some point and there's always more to do (I plan to do something with the pie safe, which is the piece of furniture sitting between the two windows in the photo of the pedestal table etc), but it's definitely more functional and prettier than it used to be!