A Breakthrough at the Office

Well, as usual my weekend was spent working on things around the apartment. One exciting thing is that I think I made a breakthrough on decorating the home office. Unlike my usual decorating process, which is a bit more trial and error, I am trying to really think things out before I start buying, sewing, and hanging. This is made somewhat more difficult by the fact that we are currently renting (but hope to buy in the next few years, or sooner), so we have tried to keep our furnishings rather neutral.

Filing cabinets are generally ugly. That's no big secret, but when decorating a home office this can be a real problem. Thankfully, we found this cool cabinet, which looks like a stack of leather suitcases.We got it in black to go with the black leather office chair. Our desk was made by my father, and is a craftsman style made of yellow pine.It's very small and spare, which is great, but the computer doesn't just "hide away" like they always seem to do on those decorating shows. So, the black Gateway is part of the decor, like it or not. I plan to hang this grouping of black and white photos with white mattes and black frames.As you can see,I still need to get two more mattes. The biggest problem has been choosing a futon cover. I want something that won't be overwhelming on a full size futon. Also, I want to coordinate with the black/white/tan color scheme we already have. I think this simple pillow ticking might fit the bill. To add a punch of color, I have a large wooden shelf I want to paint a dusty reddish/orange, making it look somewhat distressed, and I plan to make pillows for the futon with the same red and the already established black and tan. If there's enough room, we also want to hang a map of the world, preferably one with an antique look like this.