Introducing…My Reading Room

I love to get up early. Before the noise of the day begins – when the sun is just starting to peek through the trees, when the house is quiet and still. The smell of coffee wafts through the house as the pot kicks off from when I set it the night before.

It’s my favorite time of day.

In the quiet, I take time for myself. I spend time journaling and reading, praying for the day ahead and what’s on my mind.

Until a few months ago, I would do this in my living room. I love the peaceful view of our wooded backyard from the couch. You get a front row seat to watch nature unfold in real time just on the other side of the pane of glass (hello deer, hawks, cardinals and so many other little creatures!). I love to watch the morning light shift through the big picture window as the seasons change.

But, when your husband works from home, you have two crazy dogs scurrying around and a teenager coming and going, things tend to get distracting. And loud.

So, when we moved my husband’s office to the basement last year, I declared that I was going to make the front room (his old office space) my reading room – a library of sorts. A place for me, where I could close off the rest of the house and have my morning quiet time.

I envisioned a calming space…filled with a wall of bookshelves, a big cozy chair and a basket overflowing with blankets. Soft lamps lighting the space, with candles glowing and special photos and pictures on the walls and shelves.

I could see it all in my head. It would look just like the photos on my Pinterest board. And (also in my head), this transformation would be easily done in a matter of a few weeks and wouldn’t break the bank.

But this is what I saw every time I walked by the actual room…

I had a lot of work ahead of me.

In reality, this transformation took several months. Partly due to my own procrastination at the daunting task of trying to fix the water damage on the wall – I had a healthy fear that once we did start the repairs, that they would snowball into something more significant. (Thankfully, some sandpaper and a bucket of joint compound was all we needed!) The other reason it took this long was because I wanted to savor the creative process. Picking just the right paint colors, looking for pictures for inspiration of the final product, shopping for furniture and accessories (and then realizing we had everything already in the house to use).

[Side note: We have lived in this house for 7 years, and when there is a “new” room to decorate, I get excited and don’t want the fun to end. I love the dreaming, the planning, the organizing- I get so energized through the process of putting a decorating vision together.]

For the walls, I knew I wanted a soothing, creamy color that would give the room a very warm and inviting feel. We lived with a few samples on the wall for a couple of weeks to see them in various lights – day, night, lamps, no lamps. I ended up choosing Behr’s “Wheat Bread” color, which is creamy, neutral beige that has undertones of gray or brown depending on the lighting and other colors around it.

The color changed the entire feel of the room, and every time I’m in it, I feel like I’m wrapped up in a warm fuzzy blanket.

Several months ago, I had begun to look for large bookshelves to fill the long wall and a big, comfy oversized chair and ottoman – both key elements of my vision. When I realized that those pieces (purchased new) were likely going to set me back several thousand dollars, I started looking at other options.

We already had an office furniture set with a bookshelf on top of a cabinet (in the photo above) – these were huge, heavy pieces in a very traditional style with dark cherry stain and formal brushed brass hardware. We had intended to give the full set away, but I ended up keeping the bookshelf/cabinet combo and giving it a face lift. I painted it Benjamin Moore’s “Mediterranean Green” and updated the hardware with modern brass handles and leaving the bottom cabinet doors off to create an open shelf look. I love how it turned out!

After several discouraging shopping trips for a chair, I realized we had an unused (and nearly brand new) brown leather recliner chair that came with the set in our basement media room. It sits in a corner and only gets used when we have a football watching party down there…which has only been like three times in 5 years. It was a bit of a different style than I was originally thinking for the room, but it was FREE. (The magic word.) And I actually think it looks great in the room, softened a bit by a chunky knit throw and feminine pillow (and my sweet Wilson snoozing on the rug…he has decided this is his room as well).

The other piece that I have in the room is an old pine hutch, given to me 25 years ago by a family I used to babysit for in high school. The piece was part of a full dining set they had – but they were using this hutch to cover up a hole in their garage wall that a kid had made with their bike. I took it to college where my roommates and I used it as a TV stand in our apartment, and then it was in my own apartments and then my first townhouse. It’s scratched and dinged up and has definitely seen better days – and I love it because it tells so many stories and holds so many memories.

The rest of the accessories were gathered from around my house – blankets, lamps, pictures, books. The only brand new items in the room are the pillows on the bench window seat (Target clearance!) and the round woven basket holding blankets (a Homegoods find).

Every time I come down the stairs and see this room, I smile. It is such an inviting, cozy place to be curled up reading any time of day. (In fact, my family agrees so much that I frequently find them there enjoying the space.)

I loved every part of the process of creating the room – from dreaming up a vision to picking the materials and paint colors to arranging and accessorizing the space.

But, perhaps what I love most of all is that when I sit in that cozy chair with my book and look around the room, I see pieces that have stories behind them. Furniture that holds memories and other items that reflect parts of my life that together make up the story of me.

And that makes my heart smile.