Cottage Studio Before Photos

I know everyone has probably seen photos of my sunroom / office / future craft studio a million times, but for the sake of comparison later, I wanted to share some photos of my "studio in progress". We're coming up on the second weekend of work in here and I was able to get a head start on it last night and today.

By the way, if you'd like to see the *BEFORE* before photos (that is, what the space looked like months ago when I was just dreaming of a studio), just click here.

I took out the banister and carpet on the steps quite a while back, but last weekend we patched the walls as well as insulated the ceiling where the old sky lights use to be. We removed the poorly installed skylights years ago when we replaced the roof and will someday even remove the current old ceiling. The beadboard is ok (I love beadboard!) but it's the thin imitation beadboard and wasn't exactly installed with the greatest of care. So for now, we are left with recessed "patches" on the ceiling, as I call them. My solution to the eyesores was to paint a sky mural within each of the square holes to give the effect of skylights. I painted the murals today but will show them to you later:) I still have one sweet detail to add, plus this weekend hubs will be adding a nice wide moulding around the perimeter of each skylight. When the moulding is up, caulked, and painted, I'll take some photos. But I will tell you that I LOVE how the murals have turned out so far. I didn't know what I was going to do with those big ugly plywood holes, but I really think the murals were just the right solution.

So this is what the studio looked like last night. I apologize for the dark photos - I rarely photograph at night for this reason. It is a small space for sure, but I think the tall ceilings and lots of natural light will make the studio feel less cramped.





(Has anyone seen my ladder?)





What is really exciting for me is that I've finally figured out a color scheme! The walls are *not* going to be the same as kitchen and living room as I thought I would probably choose. I'm going to keep it a little secret until after they are painted, but if you have any good guesses or opinions, I'd love to hear them! I will say that the accent colors I'll be using are white, off-white, and chocolate brown (neutrals that go with just about any color, I think). Choosing paint colors is soooo hard - there are too many options!

So what colors would you choose for this space?