I had two weeks off over the holidays, and I was very much looking forward to doing a whole lotta nothing. Sleep in, read, and play the Wii. Those were pretty much my plans. That, and one thousand family events.

But it turns out? I'm not very good at doing nothing. For a weekend, I am. But for longer than that, I need to be doing something. I was bored by the 2nd day. So I decided to redo one of the rooms upstairs, which has been next on my list of house projects.

This room stood empty for a long time, then it was the designated "Naughty Room" for the cats. Most recently it has been our junk room - filled with out-of-season clothes, suitcases, unused frames, just all that stuff we have but don't have a place for.

My plan all along for this room was that it would be the library. Which I feel compelled to pronounce as lahhbrary because having a library in one's home feels so 18th century pretentious or something. I envision some man, the sort who goes fox hunting, retiring to the lahhbrary for the evening in his dressing gown and with his pipe.

The shape of this room is a challenge - the ceiling slopes down on two sides, which gives it character but doesn't allow for tall furniture. There really isn't much room for shelves, so it's a pretty terrible room for a lahhbrary. But I didn't have a better use for it, and I really wanted to get at least some of our books out of boxes in the basement.

We won't spend much time in this room, so I didn't want to spend much money on it. I bought two new shelves and the papasan chair, but pretty much everything else was stuff I already had. Well okay, so some of the decorations I bought specifically for this room...years ago. Seriously, years ago. I tend to do that - have a vision for a room and buy a bunch of stuff for it, even though I have no intention of remaking the room anytime soon. This annoys Rob. Especially when years later I tell him, "And I decorated it all with stuff we already had!" Which is, technically, true.

The before. The room had been sponge-painted green, with tan trim and white ceiling.

After painting. The trim looks white in these photos, but it's actually the same color as the ceiling, which is like a linen. Walls are "macadamia."

Left side.

Right side.

Wide-angle shot. (Which makes the room look way bigger than it is.)

(Still shopping for a rug....)

It's still not the best room in our house, but considering the odd shape and the fact that I didn't want to spend much, I'm pretty happy with it. And I'm thrilled to have gotten rid of the junk room! (I've been organizing closets, which is where some of that stuff went. The rest was either tossed or stashed in the basement. Organizing the basement is another project on the list, one I'm putting off as long as possible.)

My brother helped me tons with the painting, and the whole project took less than a week. Still, with all the other holiday events we had, I spent pretty much all of my free time working on this room. And then proceeded to complain, of course, about how I didn't have any time during my entire break to do nothing.