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Styling Harvard: Trading Spaces

blog post - trading spacesWhen we moved in just before Christmas, we had a few priorities.
1. Get the living room set up
2. Paint the dining room
3. Refinish our bedroom floor (we also had the office floor done at the same time).

We wanted to make it feel like home as quickly as possible and be somewhat settled in before the holiday. The kitchen would be our next, and huge, project starting right after the new year and we knew that we wanted to get our main living spaces squared away. Unfortunately, that meant the other rooms would be taking a backseat. On the main floor, there’s the living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom and 2 “bedrooms”. One room is designated as the office and the other is our guest room. During our kitchen renovation, the guest room doubled as storage and our temporary kitchen. The office had our sectional in there with a coffee table and an armoire that housed all our officey type stuff along with all my Etsy supplies. It was super cute but wasn’t a functional office.

Upstairs, we have our bedroom and another spare room (and a space where we’re putting in another bathroom!). While our bedroom floor was being refinished, we slept in the other room up there for a few days. I hated it. Everything was a mess, boxes and drawers were everywhere. It was depressing. After we’d moved into our bedroom, that spare room kind of just got temporarily thrown together. With 4 bedrooms and just 2 of us, we have more room than we really knew what to do with. My plan for an extra bedroom was to always turn it into a walk in closet. Luckily, our house has tons of closet space and a huge closet in our bedroom so that didn’t need to be done. So I let that room just sit the way it was. I hated it so much so I usually avoided going in there. It wasn’t warm and inviting. It was cold and blah. Just before our housewarming, I bought this chevron rug and it made a big difference in the room. From that point on, I was determined to give this room the potential I knew it had. But the problem was, I still wasn’t sure what to do with the space. I knew it was dumb having an office with no desk, and there was a perfectly good desk sitting upstairs in that spare room. Okay, so problem number one was solved. I’d be trading spaces by moving the sectional upstairs and the desk downstairs.

I hate to not have a decor plan so I waited. And I waited. And then just the other week, I got my daily email from Centsational Girl and there was the answer I’d been waiting for. I saw this picture and fell in love.  I’ve been obsessed with pineapples for years and years. I love their symbolism and they’re just so cute! I already had a ton of tropical/palm decor from a previous bedroom theme. I could do this project for practically nothing! We have a very lightly done beach/nautical theme in our bedroom so this would be perfect to blend the whole upstairs together into one large suite. And even better, my chevron rug would go perfectly with what I was planning. I researched the Ourlieu setup a little more and was inspired to make some wall prints based off their pillows. Now I just need to get around to hanging them. I brought up these Ikea side tables from the basement and pushed them together to make a coffee table.Styling Harvard Suite Styling Harvard Suite  My mom gave me the pineapple basket years ago and I haven’t been able to use it in my decor for a long time. I was so happy to bring it back out again. Lots of the frames (some spray painted, naturally), the netting over the bureau and the pineapple bookends are all past finds from Dollar Tree. So far the total cost of this room — $0!!! I love freestyling! There is an old TV cart that we found in the eaves of that room. I’m going to paint it a cool color, jazz it up, and make it a bar cart for my new “Island Casa”. At some point, we will probably add a TV so it will double nicely as a guest room. Also, I do really want a macrame plant holder to put a faux pineapple in. All in all, I expect to spend less than $20 on this room.

Since this is getting a bit long, I’ll save part 2 for the next post! Stay tuned to see how the office turned out!

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