Wall of floating books

Quilting has gotten off track around here since I took a hiatus to sew curtains for my sister (ahem…sister who reads this blog and owes me before and after shots for said blog). And, I was busy knocking out odds and ends projects in preparation for the arrival of my real estate agent yesterday. He came to evaluate the improvements I’ve made since taking over this fixer upper (and to evaluate the improvements that haven’t quite been made yet), and I should hear soon what the sweat equity I’ve gained.

The realtor’s impending arrival gave me the push needed to clean up the attic office, which had become cluttered basically to the point of being unusable (or, at the very least, unspiring). I’ve been meaning to hang the decor on the accent wall forever, and this totally turned out to be one of those — why-didn’t-you-do-this-two-years-ago-when-you-got-the-stuff types of projects. But, alas, it is done now.

It’s amazing. The desk was so covered with random junk just three days ago that it was unusable. Now, I just finished grading papers at it and and am typing this blog from it.

If you were a pencil on my desk, here would be your view of my book wall. I know. You wish you were a pencil on my desk because your view would be so rad.

Lest you think the wall is an attempt to make me look all pretentious and smart and stuff, you should know that the books are my faux letter bound collection of Agatha Christie novels. Personally, I think that faux leather bound Christie is rather ridiculous. It seems more appropriate to buy her in beat up old paperbacks, but I ran across these at a library book sale, justified the purchase by saying that I was supporting the public library, and there they are on the wall.

While the office is clean, which doesn’t happen often, I’ll give you a tour. Here’s the view of the desk. The closet behind it is currently stuffed with all the junk that was on the desk. Yay, closet!

Here’s the view from the other side of the room. Ignore the shoddy covering job on the ottoman; I just jabbed a few straight pins into the fabric before the realtor came; I need to take the fabric off at some point and make a legitimate slip cover. The window seat that I started awhile ago is under the air conditioner. I just realized that I never took pictures of that project, but I’ve decided that I have one more thing to add to it, so you’ll have to wait for the true reveal.

I have to show you a close-up of the couch. This is the first couch that I bought when I moved into the house, mainly because it was one of the only couches I could find for less than $300. My mom thinks that an armless, bean-shaped couch is ridiculous, and I will grant her the fact that it’s in the office now because it’s not super comfy to watch TV on a couch with no arms, but I still like this couch and can’t bring myself to get rid of it.

And, finally, here is my quilt stash and Betzee sitting in her case beckoning me to come back to quilting. I opened up a bunch of floor space in my cleaning frenzy, so now I’m going to set up a table and sew up here in my more inspirational space — at least until mom and dad come to visit this week. Could it be possible that my dining room table won’t be sewing central anymore? We’ll see.

And, yes, that is the third closet in the room. There are four total. If I sell this place, I need a crafter to see this storage.

Deogi is less enthused with the space.

At least at one point, he decided that laying with his head off the dog bed wasn’t ideal, so he moved to the couch with a throw pillow.

As I kept snapping pictures of him in his various sleeping poses, he’d wake up and look at me as if to say, “Hey! Could you show people that I’m awake some of the time.” Sorry, buddy, your leg splayed out behind you gives away the fact that you were sprawled out in a sound asleep only moments before I snapped the photo.