Reorganized, Redecorated, Rearranged, Retro ...

This was my surprise for Father's Day. A new lamp. A new-to-him vintage 'Airguide' thermometer / barometer [identical to this] that I had gotten at an estate sale for $8. New artwork framed. Reorganized book shelves & closet. New furniture arrangement. And last but not least, I finished reupholstering the 2nd chair. He left on a trip early on Wednesday & got back at noon on Father's Day. I spent a good part of that time working on the room & all the projects it involved.

Ever since moving into this house, this room has been an office. About a year ago, however, it was stuffed floor to ceiling with items from the basement while we had it remodeled. Kyle has always dreamed of having a nice home office & as the basement remodel was wrapping up, he was on the hunt for a nice, BIG desk. He found a really nice one on Craigslist - an actual "bankers" desk. The person we bought it from, inherited it from his grandfather who owned a bank. It is beautiful & came with a glass top. Kyle got his office all "set up" just days before he deployed to Afghanistan. He didn't have time to get the entire room in order ... and after getting back, those finishing touches were just never made on the room. I kept making mental notes to attempt to tackle this as his Father's Day gift. It worked out perfectly. :) I was still racing around putting finishing touches on the room when he called to tell me he had landed & was on his way home. We made a sign that said "Surprise!", put his cards on his desk & shut the door.

There are still things that need to go up on the wall, but I don't "do" wall anchors. So the organizing system will have to wait ... but I did put new photos in [the pic of the white frame with white matting]. All the photos are from our 3 military homecomings we have had - August '02, February '04 & January '11. Those are the happiest photos that you will ever see & I love that they are all in one place.  I swapped out one military poster for another in some of the custom frames we had done for some military posters years ago. The colors weren't working with the old posters ... but the one for the Royal Air Force [a souvenir from when Kyle did an air show in England] looked perfect with the "join Navy" poster [that we have had framed for years], so I  chose the 2 of them.  I LOVE the way they look together.

Funny thing about the floating desk ... when Kyle & his friend who was helping moved the desk into the room [8 months ago], they had it floating in the middle of the room. I laughed. And might have joked "Who do you think you are?!"  :) It looked random. And really funny. I won that battle & minutes later the desk was facing the window. But the other day when I was rearranging furniture & looking at Pottery Barn design ideas for inspiration, I saw several 'floating' desks. And a light bulb went off ... that ... it ... just ... might ... look good ... after all. :) [Sorry I laughed, Kyle]