Building an Office of Awesomeness!

Our house is noisy.  That, my friends, is an indisputable fact.  Our girls have little to no volume control, and have the intense need to have loud and meaningful conversations with you the MOMENT you get on an important phone call.  It is for that reason that Señor Hotness has always had to rent an office away from home.

So after our permanent move to Louisiana (fun fact my four year old calls it YOU-isiana), we started office hunting.  Of course when I say 'we' I mean Señor Hotness had to do the scouting on his own because I am to busy existing in chaos to help.  What he found was a crazy awesome historic building with some incredibly unique and distinctive features to it.

This is the beautiful atrium in the middle of the building.

Here is a close up of those awesome beams.

This is the view straight from his office.

His office is just a small affair, but that is all he needs being a one man show out here.  That being said you can't just put any old desk in a building like this.  So we started looking for something unique that I could refinish since I hadn't painted anything in a month and I was starting to suffer serious withdrawals. 

This is what we came across.

Isn't it a beauty.  It had a very sophisticated feel to the legs, and a really pretty star burst pattern to the top.  I clearly forgot to snap a true before picture, but in my defense we were moving in.

Once we got the top all sanded down smooth we stained it.  I picked Antique Maple because it matched the awesome wood work that is throughout the building  I also branched out by trying gel stain.  If you are wondering how I liked the gel stain I will say I hated it.  I ended up used 3 times more of the gel than I would have of the liquid stain.  My new found hate of gel stain aside it turned out truly beautiful.

Ta Da!

With the top taken care of it was time to turn our attention to the legs.

Señor Hotness had to paint this all by himself because I was busy doing another project.  I did, however, take a break from my busy schedule to snap a few pictures of him for posterities sake.

Here is a clearer view of how stately these legs were.  Spoiler alert they look awesome painted black.

Isn't he cute holding a paint brush in his hand?  We were working night and day on this.  Just kidding...it was almost exclusively a night time project. Daytime is strictly for schooling, working, or unpacking depending on which family member you are.

After all the paint was dry I clear coated it which was more difficult that you would think.  Given that we were doing this in the carport we had several delays due to humidity and temperature.  It still needs another coat of black paint, but not nearly as much as Señor Hotness needed more than a folding table for his desk.

Pretty Miss P, aka Mini Cleo, never passes up an opportunity to have her picture taken.  This was it sitting in our car port waiting to be transported to the office.

I'm so glad that Señor Hotness is a handy guy.  You should have seen us lug this sucker through his building.

I'm a firm believer that a person is more productive if they are fully dressed, and ready to face to world or random strangers that might knock on your door and then need to wonder if the house has been seized by homeless squatters.  Not that thats every happened to me, but I think it wise to always call ahead of time.  People could be painting, or might have decided that today was a good day to embrace elastic waist hobo painting clothes because they're comfy. As just a random example.

As you can see trying to paint black at night might not be the best idea.  We will plan a time in the evening when we can do touch-ups on the bottom.  Honestly it shows up with the flash, but just looking at it regularly you don't really see any of that wood grain peeking through.

Ta-da!  Senor Hotness's super swank boss hog desk.

I am way excited about the prospect of decorating an office.  Señor Hotness is a good sport about it. So stay tuned for future updates on the office of awesomeness.

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