I want to share my physical projects here so we can go through the transformation process start to finish. My first post-graduation project was our home office. It is a converted bedroom to office space and the previous owner had purple walls with stenciled designs from Alice in Wonderland, the Giving Tree, and Edgar Allen Poe poetry. Please refer to the following pictures to see this room in its original state.
A dark color was chosen to cover up the room's initial Cheshire Cat purple. The color is a dark charcoal gray from BEHR. Felt it was dark enough, modern, and wouldn't be a distracting color for a work environment. If anyone likes the gray paint color used in this makeover I'm including a snapshot of the paint can label.
With a new paint color the room started taking shape. It needed something to make the dark charcoal color a bit softer, more inviting. After much deliberation and consideration the best option was to do an accent wall in the office. Some pallets were ripped apart then the wood was sanded and given a light dry coat of paint to give it a white washed look. Next the wood was attached to the wall with finishing nails so there would be minimal damage to the drywall. Below is a halfway shot of the install of the accent wall and then the finished wall.
For a long time it was this desk and a desktop computer in this room and that was it, as far as furniture goes. A new desk was ordered and I was given the small white desk. I didn't think the white color fit the room very well so I decided to update the small desk to a black and marble look. The top of the desk is done in chalkboard paint so it could be written directly on. The sides I put black marble contact paper on to it for a more streamlined, luxurious, and contemporary style.
Next once this desk began to feel too small to accomplish the tasks that I needed (and the funds were acquired). I ordered a matching desk for my side of the office. Oh the difference an L-shaped desk makes for space and productivity. I came up with a digital design of how I envisioned the office looking so we had a plan to follow. The program I use is roomstyler.com for two reasons. One because it's user friendly and secondly because it's free. Below is the design I came up with for a well balanced and cohesive work space.
It really did not take long after making this concept drawing to get this office put together. We took the small old desk and made it a central location for the printer and made a coffee station beside it. We upgraded the living room TV to a 55" 4K Roku TCL smart TV so we moved the 50" Samsung TV that was there up here to the office. It's great because it has an amazon Fire stick installed to make it a better smart t.v. that we can link to our computer for presentations. The curtains for the windows are navy blue with a black out panel to the backside. They were not expensive, just picked up both the rods and the curtains from Walmart. I went with the 60" length because I wanted them a bit shorter and I bought one panel for each window because when they are opened I did not want any fabric covering the flat screen in-between the windows. We have plenty of storage for not only our books but our camera gear as well. This is the finished product of the room. I would love to get your thoughts on how it turned out. I love how well it works for us and I think it's a great space we can bring clients to an be very proud that we did it all ourselves. Stay tuned for my next project blog for more exciting makeovers!
