Embracing Simplicity: A Home Office Makeover, COMPLETE!

 

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If you’ve been following along with this series, you’ll know that this project wasn’t just a room makeover. It also involved some room swapping. My home office was going to be where my guest room was and vice versa. And my craft room was going to be a dedicated workout area. And my craft room was going to become a craft cubby located in the closet of the guest room. I’ll admit it, I didn’t think it was going to be possible to cram all my books, printers, and office and craft supplies into one room and make it make sense. BUT…after much planning, painting, and paring back, the room swapping experiment was a success.

Keep in mind, the office and guest bedroom spaces are mirror images of each other, so some of these pictures might look like they were taken in the same room. They weren’t. But they do give a nice before and after effect! 

But first…let’s take a look at the big picture. My new office work area turned out better than I had even imagined. We started by giving the entire room a new coat of paint. Then we made a trip to IKEA and bought two Tarva 3-drawer chests which Sweetiepie incorporated into his bridge bookcase plan. After some math, sawing, gluing and fastening, he passed the bookcase (which he made in three parts–left right and the top bridge part) to me for priming and painting.

 

The desk, you might notice, used to be in my old craft room. That got its own makeover with a good sanding, some paint (to match the new bookcase) and stain. (I chose to stain the top to create a transition from the woodwork to the wood floor.) The articulating lamp, by the way, I snagged at a local thrift shop for $8. Love it. Oh, and the rug is from Target and the chair is from IKEA, which I made over as well. 

 

The big window wall in my old office was filled with bookcases (the opposite wall was where my old desk was). 

 

Its new twin in the new office space (I chose to add brushed nickel pulls to the Tarva chests along with some drawer card holders from Rockler, also in nickel, to give them some personality):

Continuing our tour to the right of the corner above, you see my DIY clothesline photo wall display:

 

Another right turn and we’re at the new craft cubby, which began its transformative odyssey like this:

The original owners of our house were obsessed with light. Nearly every closet in our home has lights in them. Not attractive lights, but lights nonetheless. (We’ve since switched all the incandescents to CFLs.)

 

To turn the closet into a craft cubby, we spent a couple hundred dollars on track and laminated shelving.

 

We also took the shelving into every nook and cranny inside the closet to make as much storage space as possible:

 

Then it was just a matter of populating the shelves. (Would you believe that stool used to look like this?? [The square blue one.] I can’t, and I was the one who did the makeover!)

I designated the space inside the closet to be sewing on the right, and crafting on the left. (I reused all my old bins that were in my old craft space, but I did add labels to everything.) And yes, the space actually gets SUN in the afternoon!

 

The center shelves hold my toolbox and some fabric bins that I recently recovered, which holds my yarn stash. The collection of vintage Mason jars may move some day to create more storage space, but, for now, it’s the perfect spot for them.

Another right turn and we find a 2-drawer lateral filing cabinet which I snagged off Craigslist for FREE. I made it over  with wallpaper that is embossed to look like tinned ceiling tiles. I trimmed all the edges and corners out with thin slats of wood, made new wood handles, and then finished it off with a proper wood top. The filing cabinet is now the perfect length to house both of my printers. Love! 

And another slight right turn, and we see the left side of the office work area.

And we’re back at the beginning:

 

All in all, I adore my new workspace. Making the bridge bookcase made a HUGE difference in that it freed up a ton of space. The room seems huge compared to its twin before. As for the craft cubby, I had considered putting a curtain of some sort across it to hide the inner workings, but it’s so organized and tidy (which I’m finding is super easy to maintain), I’ve scrapped that idea. The only thing that I’ve kinda regretted is going with the IKEA chair. I was so worried about getting a chair with the right seat height, I didn’t think about how its back slats would feel after sitting in it for a couple hours at a time. In this case, not great. So, I may, in the future, either remake the chair (I have an idea) or get a new one entirely. 

And that, my fellow Curbliers, is my new office and craft cubby space. Hope you enjoyed the tour!