I’ve always enjoyed dabbling in home improvement. My mother tells stories of me racing home from elementary school to watch Hometime on PBS. I was convinced I could build an entire log cabin from scratch, as long as I had the right tools. I did put together anything my parents ever bought, be it Daddy’s new propane grill or Mama’s new computer desk. They were giant puzzles to me.

In real life, I’ve tiled the back splash in the kitchen, landscaped all around the house, reupholstered furniture, and painted every room in the house twice–once when we moved in, and once with Low-VOC paint because my doctor told me to. (I’ll now admit that second time was mostly an excuse to redecorate!)

The last room on my list of easy renovations was my home office. I’ve worked from home since we moved back to Tennessee doing translation work, writing, and editing for Thomas Nelson Publishers. The original plan was to turn my office into a nursery once we had a baby. It was already painted yellow, and I’d never spent any time improving the furniture or curtains in there because I just knew it was all temporary. A few months ago, I decided it was time to invest in me and get rid of what had become a constant unconscious reminder of my infertility:

I had to do this renovation on the cheap. The wall paint was leftover from when I repainted the kitchen, the curtains were a $5 find that I augmented with some trim, the furniture was rearranged, and I framed the Harvard prints myself with leftover fabric and old frames.

I lived with the office this way for a few months, loving it but sensing something was missing. I decided I needed a new light fixture. Something that was bold, and something that would put the light closer to my desk to reduce shadows as I worked. I found this at Home Depot:

What do you think? Too much? I wired it myself. 😉