Thrifty purchase: new desk chair

My "home office" has long been the most neglected space in my house, largely in part because we never have company in that room and also because it inevitably doubles as storage. Now that we have moved and our office is no longer behind closed doors on the second floor, but the first room people see when they visit, I have become a bit more motivated to do what I can to make it look more aesthetically pleasing. It will be a a very long, and very slow work-in-progress, that's for sure!

Here is one "thrifty" update that I made tonight: the purchase of this chair, seen below.






In college, my office chair was the hard chair provided in the dorms. While at home, it was a spare chair from my parents' kitchen set. Once I moved out, it was a $10 office chair purchased off of Craigslist. It did the job just fine, but I later realized it didn't fit my height or my back right. Since I have poor posture and back pains from regularly lifting children to begin with, I decided it was time to find a replacement chair! The chair I bought is originally $150 from Staples, and a very close match to the Eames style and Crate & Barrel chairs that are so popular. If this chair were white, it would have been perfect, but Staples doesn't offer this particular chair in white, and the closest match was an additional $150+. There was one other chair I had my eye on, a white one, but this one slightly beat it in comfort, and definitely beat it in price as the other one was $200, not on sale, and no longer available online. In fact, when all was said and done, I paid $37 for this chair! I had $50 in Staples rewards accumulated ($10 from recycling ink + $40 from a rebate on a ream of paper that I strategically purchased, since we needed more printing paper and it was by far a better deal to buy the case... especially with my husband being a first-year teacher, that paper WILL get used!!). I waited until the chair went on sale for $99, and then I discovered that online they were offering an additional $15 off a $100 purchase + free shipping. Now, I'm so used to stores manipulating these promotions not in the customer's favor (Kohl's, anyone?!), but Staples actually let me count the true purchase price of $100 (I added a $2 set of notepads to bring it up to $101 since it wouldn't recognize the $99.99 as qualifying) and not the $50 tag that was left after my rewards coupons. I've already tested the chair out in stores so I'm pretty sure I'll be happy with it, and you can't beat a purchase price of $35 and free 1-day shipping!

I'm still a long way from finalizing my "vision" for my office, but there are definitely things about this space that appeal to me, and I appreciate that my chair is already worked into it! Most pictures I see on blogs or pinterest have white office chairs, so I'm excited to see that a space can look "open and airy" with a black chair.

(source)

My desk currently is large, natural wood, and has a hutch. It was originally a floor sample purchase from Ethan Allen. It has a pretty big footprint, but it offers so much storage space and is so well built that I can't see myself ever parting with it. It's gotten a lot of wear and is starting to show it with some dings on the surface, so I've been toying with the idea of painting it white or gray. The inspiration photo above now has me thinking about doing a two-tone effect and painting it white and the drawer fronts a soft gray. We'll see where I end up...