Office Space

As many of my faithful and lovely readers out there know, I have been working on making one of our guest bedrooms a home office for Mr. C. The first step was painting the room green....which was stepping out my comfort zone as green usually isn't the first (or second, or third) color that comes to mind when I've planned to repaint a room.

When I was first rolling the color on the walls, I got a little nervous as the color reminded me of a baby's diaper. TMI? Probably, but that was my first impression. Luckily the color took on a whole new glow once dried and I'm in love. The green is so calming and refreshing. The room feels clean, natural, and comfortable. I love being in this room simply to be surrounded by the color. I am so intrigued by the effects that this "Stone Wall" by Behr paint is having on me that I'm considering taking a class (or at least buying a book) related to color therapy. It's very interesting stuff, people. Here are some pictures of the newly painted room:

Through this simple paint transformation I was reminded that some of life's best surprises require taking a risk - no matter how big or small that risk might be. I can't get enough of this room and even though this space is supposed to be all for Mr. C... I find myself wanting to hang out in here, too!

Because we're chomping at the bit with a bunch of other home projects, I tried to repurpose as much as we already owned for this home office. The desk, monogrammed pillow and chair were purchased back in the Fall. All of the desk accessories and the lamp were scattered throughout our house and/or were sitting in boxes in our attic:

All year we had been using the living room as a home office/den, but due to our awesome in every other way open floor plan, it was difficult for Mr. C to concentrate with any comotion going on just a few feet away. Although it's just me and our well-behaved golden retriever making all that comotion, even things like putting away dishes end up sounding much louder when you're straining to hear an important conference call conversation. So, I decided that it made more sense to repurpose one of our guest bedrooms into an office for Mr. C. This office will be on the second floor where it's much more quiet due to the fact that the upstairs rooms obviously aren't an open floor plan, and all the rooms upstairs have doors. Moving the office upstairs allowed us to repurpose the den/front room back into a living room, which gave me another area of the house to decorate...a total win-win situation for everyone!! BTW, here is what our living room looks like now. The desk and chair were originally where the wicker armchair and white ladder bookshelves are currently located.The new living room was reconfigured based on furniture and accessories we already owned....along with a few simple DIY art projects. Check out the sea fan project here and a slew of other art projects here.

Just like the living room, the furniture and accessories for the new office were all repurposed items we already owned. The in-progress day bed is the original full-sized bed that we had in this guest room...along with the white gauzy drapes. I pulled extra pillows, sheets and a white quilt out of our linen closet to dress the day bed:

I'm still searching for some nice green and tan fabric to whip up some throw pillows for the bed. I'm also planning to upholster a headboard for the day bed in the very near future; I'm thinking something like this, fashioned out of tan linen along with some nail head trim:

Williams Sonoma

West Elm

Although the main purpose of this room is to be an office, I still wanted to have this room easily convert to a comfortable place for guests to stay, as well. Whenever we do have guests stay over, they naturally stay in our other guest bedroom which is much larger than this space and includes a queen-sized bed. We've only had one or two instances the entire year where we had both guest bedrooms occupied....so, with that mind I knew that our larger guest bedroom would always be our go-to room for guests, but I still wanted this room to be a cozy and welcoming place on those few instances when we have a large group of visitors staying with us. Because I wanted to keep some of that guest room appeal, I searched around our house (my favorite kind of shopping) for a small nightstand. The winner was a black wall shelf that has since been sprayed white and is the perfect size for a small night stand that can hold just the necessities.
The wicker baskets underneath the window are actually file storage systems that I was inspired to create by a recent Ballard Designs catalogue; see my tutorial here. The green buoy was a gift from several years ago.

The fern wall prints were found online for free (check out my tutorialon how to find and print free vintage prints with expired copyrights) and I framed them in some leftover 11x14" white frames from the Christmas Tree Shop. I replaced the standard white mats with brown and tan mats from Michael's Crafts.

The closet keeps our printer, paper shredder and ugly file storage system easily accessible yet hidden behind the closet doors...I love that. I needed an extension cord to reach the outlet outside the closet, but the cord color matches our carpet perfectly so it's practically invisible.

Excluding paint (and the upcoming headboard project supplies and throw pillow fabric), the only purchase I made for this room were the supplies needed to create a custom dry erase board for my hubby. He uses these frequently when he is at his "real" office and when I told him I would be making this space an office for him the only request he made was for a dry erase board. Here is my tutorial for creating the $20 custom DIY dry erase board which is pictured below:

Stay tuned for my headboard tutorial and my throw pillow tutorial (which will be the first time I've used a sewing machine since Home Ec circa the fifth grade), along with my final reveal of the office space!!!

I will be sharing this post at the following parties this week - stop by and check out some great ideas generously shared by many other fearless, fabulous DIY bloggers out there!