When you buy a house with a “bonus space” sometimes it’s hard to decide what to use that space for.  For several years ours, a loft, was a dumping ground for old furniture or items we couldn’t find a place for.  We finally turned half of the loft into a play room for our daughter, which you can see here; and several years later we turned the other half into a home office.

Several years, because that’s how long it took for us to decide what exactly to do with the space.  I had started working from home and hated going to the loft because it felt very removed from the rest of the house.  And in the Arizona summer, the second floor of any home is like sitting in an oven, even with the AC blasting.

I would instead work on my laptop at either the kitchen or the dining room table, but it wasn’t very comfortable and I could never stay organized.  I decided to turn the extra wasteland of space into a home office, hoping that a prettier space would make me want to go up there and work.  Because once it was pretty, I would be totally productive, right?!  I’m an extremely deadline driven individual, pretty office or not.  In other words, I still procrastinated.  It did help and it kept my crap off the kitchen table.

The color palette was white, pink and black.  But then we had an old sleeper sofa, I couldn’t seem to part with because it had been in my family since the 80’s, which had gross brown stripes.  It stayed.

I also tried to incorporate things I’d accumulated from my career.  When you work in film publicity, there’s a lot of swag.  And movie posters.  I managed to whittle my collection down to a few favorites.

I loved the way the home office turned out, but guess what?  I worked up there until it got too hot, and then I went back to the kitchen table.  Permanently.  At least it was pretty to look at…

Desk – Joss & Main

Desk Chair – IKEA

Bookshelf – IKEA; similar here

Credenza – Vintage, Wilder Creative; similar here