Design Philosophy & Our Newest Project

When I began to decorate our first apartment and now our first home my design philosophy is to use what I have the best I can and then slowly replace items when it fits into the budget.  I don't think Jonathan really understands this but oh well.  :)  When I went to college my mom and sister in law gave me A LOT of furniture and my sister in law has given me other items since I got married.  I have loved redoing and re purposing a lot of this furniture BUT when I find a piece of furniture that is just THE PERFECT fit I just can't help but replace the old with something else.

I'm still in this process with our home now.  Hence, the recent posts about the new furniture in our entry way.  Also, I don't buy something that I may like while I'm waiting to find something that I love.  Meaning, if you really REALLY want something, buy what you want and don't settle.  I've settled before and it's never a good option and usually costs you more in the long run.

Also, I'm still trying to accessorize our house successfully.  (Remember the new white chair and picture frames?)  This is a challenge for me.  I don't like clutter but I'm not a minimalist either so I'm trying to find a good balance.  And to make a bigger challenge my husband likes function over form.  So, I try to make our spaces very functional and the spaces that we use often (dining table, bar, coffee table, bathrooms) clutter free and mostly functional. 

So, moving on from my design challenges to our newest project.

We have a spot in our house that I like to call awkward nook number 1.  I've been wanting to turn this area into a built in desk but we've just been trying to figure out the best way to do that.  After doing some online research I found a really easy way to get this done. 

This is what the space looks like now:

In a few weeks we hope to make something like this:

Although, we are going to paint the desk and the shelf white.  I don't really care for the natural wood look.