Our office slash library slash art room

I've said it before, but I'll say it again. Our new house is small. Fortunately it has an internal garage off the lounge that we've set up as an office for Paul, slash art space, slash library, slash general dumping ground while we get sorted.

My one-day plan is to replace the garage door with glass sliding doors, to let in natural light and properly seal this room. At the moment the wind whistles over the top of the garage door, which I imagine is going to get pretty chilly this winter.

Paul is less keen to replace the garage door, because he loves how dark and man cavish it is in here. Perfect for building this epic game.

We will see.

I didn't think I would share photos of this room with you all, since it's so dark and messy, but I got inspired last night to create an art supplies area for the kids and taking photos of that lead to taking photos of the whole room so now, here it is.

Art supplies shelves.

There's nothing original or exciting about our art supplies shelf. I just repurposed a bookcase that was housing knick knacks upstairs, by bringing it downstairs to the office and setting up all the kids' art gear on it. It's so good to have this stuff all in one place though. Paper and colouring things were getting strewn all about the house before.

As soon as I showed the art shelves to my kids this morning, they grabbed what they wanted and set up an art station on the dining table. It was such a fun start to our day.

Paul's desk. 

Long view of the room. 

Art shelves, storage, games cupboard, bookshelf and reading chair. 

In the next photo you can glimpse the lounge next door, which is so much lighter than this room thanks to windows and white paint. The garage didn't get repainted when the rest of the house did, so it's still a darker cream colour. Whenever we replace the garage door, I will paint this room and replace the ceiling, which is a bit warped.

View past the bookshelf and chair to the door leading to our bright lounge. 

Games cupboard. 

I'm so glad we have this room. It really makes the house functional for us and I don't know how we would manage without it. Who knows, maybe one day these photos will be the 'before' in a before and after post. I hope so.