New Work Space

I live in a tiny, tiny apartment. It's literally a shoebox. I think it's the price to pay for loving your neighborhood. This means I have to be really creative with my space and the way I decorate it. I also can't paint or make any big changes because we rent and on top of that we are only living in Boston temporarily, we move back to California in a year and a few months, give or take...so we don't want to put a ton of money into a place that will only be home for a while longer. I preface you with all of this because I had to make a big no no design choice that was pertinent to my life. Now that I'm back in school, I needed a place where I can study...so I had to get creative. I opted to make my non-working fireplace a work space {I know, yikes!}.

Here is what my fireplace looked like when I first moved in, here I'm still using it for space:

This marble has given me nightmares since we moved in. I hate it. Despise it. I apologize if you are into it, I hope I'm not offending anyone...but I can't stand it.

So a quick tangent, this is what the bench looks like now, I talked about it first here:

Very easy change. Found the fabric on sale at Joanns and quickly put my staple gun to it. Some of the linen pillows were on sale ridiculously cheap at Pottery Barn so that was an easy purchase.

I had to think of something creative to cover up that marble. I didn't want to use a screen, or a large bookshelf, etc. because I needed that alcove of space inside the non-working fireplace for some type of storage and for it to be accessible, so I did this {sorry my camera is HORRIBLE}:

I went to Home Depot and purchased foam board and cut it to fit the size of the marble. I then covered the pieces in burlap. After that I attached the pieces and finished it off with nailhead. It's not perfect, but it is sooo much better than that marble. I am happy to not be looking at it anymore.

Oh yeah, I also moved the amateur painting to above the work space. I think we like it better here because it was a little much for the bedroom. Again, you've heard me say it before, it will probably get moved again...

So do you agree? Do you like the new space? I understand if others can't look past the fireplace issue and I am very aware that a fireplace should not be used in this manner...but it was necessary for me and my grades. Of course there still needs to be a lot of tweaking here! I'm happy with the start though!

Let me know if you have any questions about this project! I am more than happy to answer them!

Hope everyone has a great start to their week!