Its been a crazy week of deliveries and installations at Brian's condo and with today, February 1st, being our deadline we are about 90% complete, and I'm happy to say we also seem to be reasonably on-budget. A few pieces of artwork to be hung, small accessories and finding the right nightables are left on the 'to do' list.
One of the areas of the condo that we deligated the least amount of the budget to was the second bedroom. Brian's intent was for this to be used as a home office space for occasional business related work but mainly for personal use and home finances etc. A small file cabinet and printer would be stored in the closet directly beside the desk. In addition to a desk area he would need to accommodate an overnight guest every once in a while but he didn't want to dedicate the space for a bed so we opted for a sofa bed which would allow him to enjoy the room on a day to day basis with a comfy sofa for reading. The room is quite irregularly shaped so there wasn't too many options on where the desk or sofa bed could go.
The first image above is the design concept for the room which illustrates all the key pieces I sourced. I opted for a simple work horse style desk with metal frame legs and glass top - this keeps the space open looking and definitely is keeping in style with our "vintage-modern with a touch of industrial" look. I chose the black nickel saw horse desk from West Elm, the price was right and it was in stock!
The next big 'splurge' for the room was for a desk chair. I actually had found a sled base chrome and leather chair at a consignment shop for just $100 but Brian really wanted a chair that swivelled. I was a bit torn on this one with the budget,,,,my own opion of desk chairs is that you might as well either go - super cheap $29.99,,,,or go for the best which are super expensive. Everything else seems to fall in the 400-700 dollar range, they look better than the 29.99 cheapies but aren't that much better in quality, in my opinion. During my 10+ years of experience in commercial design I've spec'd thousands of contract quality desk chairs and know them all. At the retail level, what you mainly see in the home furnishing shops are knock offs and I'd just rather get the real thing - it will last you forever. Having said all that, I did happen to stumble across a rather sweet deal on a floor model of one of those knock-off versions that made the decision for us - cash'n carry,,,I took it with me.
Since Brian is starting from scratch he doesn't have a collection of artwork nor do we have room in the budget for Picasso's,,,,,,so the next best thing to original art is your own photography. Brian had some old photos from past travels and I took the negatives to Elevator Digital where Kevin truly worked some digital magic on them. He scanned the neg's at super high resolution, cleaned up the digital images and made large b&w prints for me which I put into ready made frames. Certainly this isn't a cheap process as these are really the best quality images we could get from old negatives but its an affordable and personalized solution to starting a collection. Below are low res scans of what we started with, a photo of the Grand Canyon taken from a helicopter and a photo taken at Pebble Beach golf course.
Above is a mock-up I sent Kevin of what I wanted to do with the photos. I like that both the images had similarities, a horizon with winding roads amongst peaks and valleys and I think they translated well to black & white - I picked them up on Saturday and I absolutely love the way they turned out!!
The last key item was the sofa bed - it was kind of a no-brainer to go with the Ikea Ektorp model, we splurged on the sofa in the living room so we had to 'save' on this one. The style and size would work and the slipcovers make it versatile and practical for him. Best of all,,,,its in stock and ready for delivery. Over the past couple of weeks the rest of the room has been filled in with some great vintage finds and some handsome window coverings - this spare room is really turning into one of my favorite spaces. Here's a sneak peak at what it looked like yesterday when the window coverings were being installed.....
For before photos, floor plan and previous posts on Brian's Condo project: