And So It Begins, The Building of a Home Office: Welcome to the 104th Metamorphosis Monday!

Last week in THIS post, I shared a lot of pics of my son's old room and my plans to turn it into a home office. This is a bittersweet metamorphosis, because though I do need a place to work, I am having trouble letting go of this room.










I also shared some rooms that are acting as my inspiration for the office I have planned. This is the Bedford Collection from Pottery Barn. I struggled on whether to buy it or not since it has a pretty hefty price for what's actually just pine and MDF or "engineered wood."




Since it would cost a fortune to have a custom office built to resemble this, I got past my aversion for MDF and decided to go with it since it looks just how I'd like my office to ultimately look.




After 3 trips on Saturday to the PB that's about 2 miles from my house, I had all the furniture home and in my garage. So far I've just purchased the corner desk set and a chair. I'd like to get those into the room first and decide on my final layout before I purchase any additional pieces.

I decided to go with the white chair shown in the photo above, instead of the wicker one shown in the other photo above. It tilts back a little and is just more comfortable to me. I'll need to have a cushion made for it because the one PB sells is way too thin. The tall box on the right is the chair. The other two boxes are the components that form the corner desk set in the Bedford Collection. Each of those boxes weighs 70 lbs. Can't remember how much the chair weighs, but it's pretty heavy, too.




And this bad boy contains the tops to the corner desk and the other components. This box weighed a ton and was super awkward to handle.




I managed to get all the furniture upstairs by myself, pulling it up my carpeted back stairway by those yellow straps. I pulled it down the upstairs hallway on a blanket.




The week before the monster snow storm hit, I visited Ballard Designs in Atlanta to check out their desk furniture. I ultimately decided I like the PB office set up better, but I did purchase this. Do you know what it is?




It's a bulletin board for the new office. It will be a while before I'll actually be able to hang it...but I love the shutter doors that can be closed when you want it to disappear. :) (This bulletin board is called "Southporte Corkboard Cabinet." I think it was in the Ballard Designs catalog last year.)




I couldn't resist picking up a set of bumblebee stick pins for the board. They may become the inspiration piece for the whole office...not sure about that just yet. Stay tuned. ;)




Yesterday, I called a gentleman who has delivered furniture to my home in the past, to see if he could assist me with dissembling my son's bedroom and moving it to the basement for storage. I hadn't heard back from him by this morning and patience is not my middle name.  So, I took the task on by myself. I began dragging stuff out of my son's room into the long hallway upstairs.




Huge job it is...taking apart a room that's been the same way for 20 years.




Removed the drawers from the chest and the mattress and bunky board for the lower bed.




Removed the top mattress, and began taking the bottom bed apart. Hauled the mattresses and drawers and other pieces downstairs.




One of the parts that took the longest and was killer on my hands was removing the screws that held the slats in place. Normally slats just lay across the bed rails, but these were screwed to the rails with 4 nails each. And I think they were screwed in with that device they use to tighten down the lug nuts on tires. They were so tight that my Ryobi drill would not unscrew them until I had them half way out! Each bed had 4 slats, that's 8 slats x 4 screws = 32 screws. Owww, my aching hands!




All the drawers from the TV hutch are downstairs now, the chest is pulled out, as is the small shelf unit that was hidden behind the chest. That's the chest on it's side. You can't imagine how heavy this furniture is!





This room is one of the three remaining rooms in my home that doesn't have hardwood flooring, yet. I may add it now because the bed was so heavy it really sunk down into the carpet. This carpet needs to be replaced anyway due to some permanent stains here and there. It served us well for 20 years.




More progress...




More stuff piled into the hallway...all needing to be hauled downstairs.





These are the screws/bolts that held the bed together. It took a long time to get them out of the bed because they are so long.




It really got tricky taking the top section apart...I needed a second person. I had to use the 5 million pound bookshelf to hold up the top section so I could remove the top back rail without it falling over.




It was scary at times trying to do this all alone. As you can see, it's dark out side. It took me around 6 hours, and I'm exhausted.





Here's how the room is now as I'm typing this. I pulled my new chair into the room to just see how the color of the Bedford furniture is going to look with the plantation shutters in this room. I think it will look okay.



I still have more pieces to haul downstairs tomorrow...that is, if I can get out of the bed in the morning.



Looking forward to seeing your Before and Afters for this Met Monday!




Metamorphosis Monday:
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